Children’s Residence After Parental Separation: Arrangement Diversity and Associated Factors in Quebec

Articles
By Arnaud Régnier-Loilier, Amandine Baude, Amy Jacobs-Colas
English

This article describes the diversity of children’s residence arrangements after their parents separate and examines the characteristics associated with organizing and scheduling parenting time. We draw on data from the Longitudinal Study of Separated Parents and Stepfamilies in Quebec, conducted in 2018. We bring to light a wide range of residence arrangements through a descriptive analysis of the responses of the 677 mothers and 599 fathers who filled in a 28-night calendar indicating where their children spent each night. We found that children generally move from one parent’s residence to the other’s around weekends and on Wednesdays. However, we also found contrasts by sex of the parent. Multivariate analysis revealed that several factors—including parents’ income and education level, employment situation at separation, country of birth, which parent initiated the separation, context of parental relations at that time, and children’s age and sex—are associated with children’s living arrangements. Thus, despite an increase in shared residence in Quebec over the last decades, important contrasts persist in children’s post-separation living arrangements.

Keywords

  • residential arrangements
  • shared residence
  • parenting time
  • separation
  • gender
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