Shared Parenting: Adding Children's Voices and Their Measures of Adjustment to the Evaluation

Abstract

Shared parenting has been advocated to be a better arrangement for children than sole residence and access arrangements after parental separation. Although there is some research on this issue, studies have been restricted in their reliance on the reports of others. In this paper, we report on a study in Australia, in which children in each of these arrangements were compared with children in intact families on a range of adjustment measures and with each other in relation to their responses to their parents' separation, using both self- and parent-reporting. We found that there was little difference between children in the three family configurations, suggesting that shared parenting is not necessarily associated with better outcomes for the child. On other aspects of adjustment, the children in shared parenting and sole residence/access families did not differ. We also found that parents in all groups underestimated the emotional problems reported by children. In separated families, they also overestimated the children's desire for parents to re-unite. Finally, we found that parents in shared parenting families are more satisfied with their situation than are their children, and fathers are particularly so. The findings suggest that the promotion of shared parenting as the best post-separation family structure is contestable.

KEYWORDS:

• child adjustment
• parental separation
• shared care

Notes

Although this research was with joint legal custody, fathers they also had greater time with children.

The term “intact” to delineate not-separated families from separated families has been carefully considered for this research and not been used lightly. Some criticism has been directed at the use of this term based on the idea that it connotes separated families as “broken.” This research considered “unified,” “non separated,” “conventional,” “two parent,” “couple,” “biological,” or “nuclear” terms as even less useful alternatives. These terms have negative overtones, do not distinguish between separated and not-separated families, or repartnered and not repartnered families and create confusion. To conform with Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Institute of Family Studies standards, “intact” is used as the most effective term.

In separated families only one parent's consent is required as the law recognizes both parents as equally able to give guardian consent (Mason, 2000). Attempts were made to gain both parents consent in all families; however, in sole residence families where only one parent was interviewed, the residence parent alone gave guardian consent.