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E-book Shared Physical Custody : Interdisciplinary Insights in Child Custody Arrangements

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Penilaian

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Shared physical custody (SPC)1, the care arrangement in which a child lives from30% to 70% of the time with each parent after their separation or divorce, has beenon the rise in most Western regions in the last two decades (Smyth2017). Prevalenceand incidence of SPC vary substantively by context though. While the percentage ofSPC among divorced and separated parents grew from 12% to 50% between 1989and 2010 in some contexts like in the US state of Wisconsin (Meyer et al.2017), itremains mostly a minority arrangement, ranging from 12% in the UK to 40% as inBelgium and Quebec in 2017 (Steinbach et al.2020).The emergence of SPC can be related to increasing aspirations to gender equalityamong parents, where mothers are increasingly active on the labour market andengaged in demanding professional careers as well as wanting equality in houseworkshares, while, at the same time, fathers want to care more for their children(Goldscheider et al.2015; Hook2016; Westphal et al.2014). The daily time thatboth residential and non-residential fathers report to spend in childcare increasedsubstantially over the last decade (Klünder and Meier-Gräwe2018; Schoppe-Sullivan and Fagan2020), indicating that many separated fathers increas-ingly engage with their children. The introduction of more gender-neutral familypolicies facilitating active fatherhood (e.g., longer parental and paternal leaveThevenon2011) contributed to this shift (Bartova and Keizer2020).In addition, shared physical custody is also seen as a way to counteract thenegative consequences of separation and divorce for children. Several social andpsychological studies addressing this issue have pointed out the multiple risks ofchildren when losing contact with one of their parents (in the large majority of casesfathers). Economic and psychological hardships would threaten children’s adjust-ment, their future development and life chances (Amato2000, 2010; Amato andCheadle2005; Härkönen et al.2017).Last, and relatedly to these societal developments and scientific evidence, theexponential increase in SPC care arrangements depends on changes in the principlesguiding courts’and judges’decisions. These have shifted from an implicit prefer-ence for mothers’physical custody, to an encouragement to prefer shared physicalcustody or to hold a presumption in its favor (Goubau2009). Change started withshared legal custody granting unmarried parents, as well as married ones, equal sayin important decisions concerning child development and living conditions (health,education, residence and religion). The demand for shared physical custody was alogical next step as the shared responsibility of legal custody would have to matchthe parental experience of raising the children. Nowadays, legal custody is widespread but it is not always followed up by shared physical custody despite thestrong advocacy it has received.The key turning point in shared physical custody occurred when juridical guide-lines for decisions regarding post separation custody arrangements began to beconstructed as if the“best interest of the child”was something different from theinterest of the child’s primary caregiver (the mother until then). The notion is trickythough as the best interest of the child as an autonomous person seems to be at oddswith the fact that the child depends on at least one of its parents and the interest ofboth parents may not overlap with the child’s interests. When parents disagree oncustody arrangements, judges often have to evaluate a complex set of factors in orderto identify the best interest of the child.The societal and legal debate on the best interest of the child is often informed byideological positions (Kruk2012). On the one hand, the need for the continuity ofthe relationship with both parents has been contrasted to the idea that mothers are theprimary carers and therefore shall have priority in shared physical custody. On theother hand, the issue of equal treatment among parents questions the moral basis onwhich fathers are charged forfinancing children that they could visit and not livewith. Father’s movement have been vocal about more equality, to an extent the issuehas come to dominate both the legal and political landscape. Fathers’rights groupsidentified the fact of ensuring justice and equality between parents with the pre-sumption of a post separation SPC, possibly a 50/50 one, unless the child’swellbeing suggested otherwise (Spruijt and Duindam2002).As a consequence, in the last few decades, maintaining the relationship with bothparents after the marital separation or divorce through co-parenting has evolved intoa political as much as an emotional debate (Harris-Short2010). The idea is that bothparent-child relationships shall continue despite the fact that the conjugal relation-ship has broken apart, replacing the non-substitutability of the mother as primarycarer. Debates are still hot on whether this is also the case for babies and toddlers, incase of absent or conflictual communication among parents and in cases of severeprecarious living conditions. In addition, parents’ability to establish cooperativeco-parenting after separation seems to clash, at least in the short term, with the factthat they have put an end to their alliance as a couple. Newly published researchshows, for instance, that it is not SPC that may benefit adolescent children but ratherthe family characteristics that led them to prefer such arrangements (Steinbach et al.2020). As a matter of fact, empirical evidence is still to be solid and reliable, as oftenbased on heterogeneous studies involving selective populations of higher educatedand low-conflict parents or smaller scale studies, as we will discuss in the nextsection.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

304.6 BER s

Penerbit

Switzerland : Springer Nature., 2021

Deskripsi Fisik

328 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783030684792

Klasifikasi

304.6

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Demography, Population

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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