‘I think it’s okay; I’m not going to say it’s unfair’: Children’s views of financial arrangements in post-separation families

Abstract

This paper draws on interviews with 22 children conducted as part of a larger qualitative study during which 60 parents were interviewed once a year over three years (2009–2011) about their post-separation parenting and financial arrangements, to explore any changes to these over time. The aim of this part of the project was to explore children’s own descriptions and views of their and their parents’ financial circumstances after parental separation (including arrangements for children’s financial support). We found that most children’s responses suggested a lack of knowledge about, and also a discomfort in, discussing financial issues. Thus, while most children in primary mother time arrangements described greater differences in parents’ wealth (mothers were poorer), they endeavoured to rationalise inequality. In contrast, children in shared time (especially equal time) were less likely to perceive parental financial inequality, focusing more on parents’ conflict over who paid for what and appearing more aware of financial arrangements for their support. Across both care groups mothers, on their own and their children’s reports, commonly bore greater substantive and procedural responsibility for their children’s financial support, yet were criticised by their children if they complained about this. Overall, children’s descriptions appeared illustrative of the notion of money as surrogate measure of love, with the result that children preferred to see financial arrangements as fair.

Keywords:

• Post-separation parenting
• property division
• child support
• economic disadvantage
• children’s views

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (project ID DP0877125). The authors would like to thank Associate Professor Bruce Smyth and Maria Vnuk for valuable discussions and feedback in the course of writing this paper.