Prevalence and Predictors of Children's Joint Physical Custody in Europe with Implications for the US

Background: Parents in separated families are increasingly sharing the care of their children post-separation. Understanding patterns of children’s physical custody arrangements and the predictors related to joint physical custody (JPC) are crucial as custody patterns have significant implications for the well-being of children and parents. There is scant comparative research on the prevalence and predictors of JPC across Europe. Research examining which individual-level characteristics are associated with JPC in different countries has the potential to deepen our understanding of how families are organizing themselves post-separation. In this study we provide new evidence of children’s JPC arrangements in Europe by analyzing 1) the overall level of JPC in Europe as well as cross-national variation in children’s JPC, and 2) the socioeconomic, child- and family-related characteristics related to the variation in children’s JPC arrangements.

Data and methods: We use the 2021 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey (EU-SILC). Our sample comprises of 6,698 children from 17 European countries. Our sample is restricted to children of separated or divorced parents that reside in their mother’s household and have another parent residing outside of the household. As methods, we use descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analysis with average marginal effects.

Results: Our preliminary results show that around 15% of children in separated families have JPC arrangements. Nevertheless, there is a substantial cross-national variation: in the Nordic countries, Belgium, France, and Spain children are most likely to have JPC whereas in Latvia, Greece and Romania JPC is nearly non-existent. Our results also reveal that various individual-level characteristics predict the prevalence of JPC. First, in terms of socioeconomic factors mother’s education and labor markets status matter: child's likelihood of having JPC is increased by their mother's higher education and when she is employed. Second, child’s age is related to JPC as children in the age groups 6-10 and 11-15 have a higher probability of JPC than younger or older children. Third, family–related characteristics that predict children’s JPC are tenure status and the total number of children in the household: JPC is more prevalent among children in homeowner households and in households with two children. Finally, differences across countries remain even when individual-level factors are controlled, suggesting that country-level policies and norms may be important.

Conclusions and implications: We have documented that a large share of children have JPC arrangements in Europe although cross-national differences are significant. This paper improves on previous cross-national analyses by using more recent data, incorporating all ages of children and examining a wide set of individual-level characteristics. Further research is still needed, especially comparative research, to better understand how the societal norms, custody legislation and policies are related to the children’s living arrangements. Nonetheless, the country-level differences imply that policy may be important and suggest that countries review their family polices to examine their effects on families that share parenting.