In light of the adverse consequences of divorce for children, the Dutch government stimulates shared parenting after divorce or separation. In 1998 joint legal authority became obligatory and a new 2009 law stipulates that children have the right to equal care of both parents. Shared residence, also called co-parenting, is the prime example of equal care, and this type of living arrangement has been on the rise since the late 1990s. Although it is implicitly assumed that co-parenting is good for children, the effects in part depend upon who opts for co-parenting. Not every divorced or separated couple wants or is able to equally share childcare tasks, so the group of co-parents may be a selective group. So far, little is known about who opts for co-parenting, in part because the number of co-parents in most existing surveys is usually very low.
In this paper, Dr Poortman uses recent large-scale data (New Families in the Netherlands, N= 4271) about divorced and separated parents, to investigate the determinants of children's living arrangements after divorce or separation - with a focus on opting for co-parenting vis-à-vis sole-custody arrangements. Analyses show that co-parents differ from all other divorced parents (father or mother residence) in that they have low levels of pre-divorce conflict, few personal problems and that co-parenting mothers have a relatively high education. Co-parents have in common with couples who opt for father-residence that the mother works many hours prior to divorce, the father is relatively highly educated and much involved in child-rearing prior to divorce and have older children as compared to those who are in mother-residence arrangements. Overall, co-parents seem to be a selective group of parents who already have the resources to give their children a head start in life.
Anne-Rigt Poortman is associate professor at the Department of Sociology, Utrecht University. She has specialised in family sociology and social demography. She is particularly interested in divorce and separation, new relationship types and legal aspects of partner relationships. Currently she is program leader of a large data collection and related research program about contemporary parenthood among divorced and intact families.