The Influence of Parental Separation and Divorce on Father–Child Relationships

ABSTRACT

Using a risk and resilience theoretical framework, this study examined the influence of parental divorce during childhood on father–child relationship quality in young adulthood. Relationship quality was measured using nurturant fathering and modified father involvement scales, and self-reports of current amount of face-to-face and verbal father–child contacts. Comparisons on these measures were made between 107 young adults from intact and 96 from divorced family backgrounds. The divorce group was also examined in isolation to explore how divorce-related factors—including structural, early contact, and interparental relationship factors—predict young adults' perceptions of their father–child relationship. Results demonstrate young adults from intact family backgrounds report a comparatively stronger father–child relationship. Among divorce group participants, structural factors (higher father socioeconomic status and joint custody) and early contact (greater percentage of time spent with father postdivorce) were predictors of higher scores on combined nurturant fathering and involvement measures. Greater early contact and stronger interparental relationship factors (low conflict and high contact and cooperativeness) similarly predicted current contact.

KEYWORDS:

• Divorce
• father–child relationship
• young adults
• nurturance
• involvement

Preparation of this article was supported by a Canada Graduate Scholarship awarded to the first author and by a Standard Research Grant awarded to the second author by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which are gratefully acknowledged. The authors thank Dr. Catherine Costigan, Dr. Christopher Lalonde and Dr. Michael Hunter for their helpful comments on this article.

Notes

1. http://www.socialpsychology.org/expts.html; http://psych.hanover.edu/research/exponnet.html; Author Reference Web site.

2. The Hollingshead method (Hollingshead, 1975) was used to calculate SES information, as will be detailed when describing the measures included in this study.

3. Thirty-five divorced group participants completed the online study in an on-campus computer lab while the remaining 61 completed the study elsewhere. No significant demographic differences were observed for participant sex, living arrangements, or education (ps  =  ns) before combining the divorced group subsamples. Significant differences were found for participant age, F(1, 94) = 11.20, p < .01, and time since parental divorce, F(1, 94) = 19.55, p < .01. Participants recruited online had a mean age of 23 (SD = 3.89) compared to the younger 21-year-old lab group participants (SD = 1.93). Internet group participants were reporting on their father–child relationship, on average, 12 years (SD = 4.08) after their parents' divorce, compared to 8 years (SD = 2.89) among lab participants. As differences between age and time since parental divorce were thought relatively small and in keeping with the lab participants having been recruited largely from first-year university classes, the two subsamples were combined.

4. Note that the living arrangement variable only differentiates those participants currently living at “home” or independently; participants who reported living at home and whose parents had divorced may therefore be living with their mothers (62%), fathers (5%), or alternating between mother and father residences (33%).

5. Correlations between participant sex and dependent variables measuring affective fathering, r(201) = .108, p = .13, and father contact, r(201) = .07, p = .33, were nonsignificant.