Post-separation parenting trajectories and child psychosocial adjustment: a research note

Solene Lardoux, Université de Montréal
David Pelletier, Université de Montréal

Research linking post-separation parenting arrangements (or de facto physical custody arrangements) and child well-being almost exclusively rely on cross-sectional analysis. As children’s living arrangements after separation may change over the years, classifying children according to their current living arrangement might not be the best way to assess the direction and strength of this association. Working with data from a cohort study following 2120 children born in the Canadian province of Quebec in 1997-1998, we reconstructed complete trajectories of living arrangements from a child’s birth to his or her 12th birthday in order to study the links between post-separation parenting arrangements and child behaviour and adjustment at age 12. We compare two classifications of children according (1) to their living arrangement at the time of the survey and (2) to the most common arrangement between the separation of their parents and the time of the survey. The two classifications sometimes lead to very different conclusions, mainly for equally shared parenting arrangements.