The Effect of Physical Custody Change on Parent-Adolescent Relationship Quality: Findings from a Swedish Chort Study

Background/Significance

In many countries, the proportion of children who live with both parents post-divorce/separation (shared physical custody) has increased dramatically. The change has been fueled in part by research that shows better outcomes for children (and parents) in shared physical custody arrangements compared to those in sole custody arrangements. However, better outcomes in the cross-sectional analyses done to date (such as better-quality parent-child relationships) might not be a result of the custody arrangement. Instead those with better relationships may select shared physical custody, or this association could be caused by an unobserved factor (like parental conflict or personality type). Another way in which the previous research is limited is that custody arrangements are not fixed, but some children change to different arrangements over time, and this cannot be seen in cross-sectional data.

We study the association between custody arrangement and parent-child relationships using improved methods and longitudinal data from Sweden. Sweden is an especially important context because it has the highest prevalence of shared physical custody among the European and North American countries that have been studied.

Research question:

Are adolescents who move from sole custody to shared custody more satisfied with their parental relationship than those who move from shared custody to sole custody, or those who remain in their original custody arrangement?

Data and Methods

Data were derived from the Swedish cohort study Futura01, with information collected from 3622 adolescents in grade 9 aged 15-16 years, who were followed-up two years later.

We use individual fixed effects regression to estimate change in the adolescent reported relationship quality with the parents. The relationship quality is measured by a single item variable for how satisfied the adolescent is with his/her relationship with the mother and father respectively. Custody arrangements are reported by the adolescent.

Results

Of the full sample of 3540 children most remained within the same physical custody arrangement between the waves but 32 changed from a sole to a shared physical custody arrangement and 109 changed from shared to sole physical custody. The multivariate results are statistically significant and consistently showing that adolescents who change their residential arrangement from a sole physical custody to shared physical custody, i.e. from living with one parent to living alternately in two parental households, report that they are more satisfied with their parental relationships.

Implications

This research suggests important benefits of shared physical custody on an aspect of child well-being. Together with other research, this implies that countries examine their policies regarding the criteria over where children live after parental separation to see if shared physical custody is appropriately acknowledged or even encouraged. Moreover, this implies that social workers and others working with families in the process of separation (and after) discuss with families the variety of custody options available to them and help families continue to assess whether current arrangements are working.