New Study of Joint Legal Custody
Does joint custody help to reduce conflict between parents or is
it simply that more cooperative parents are more likely to agree to
joint custody arrangements in the first place?
Many studies have demonstrated that joint custody arrangements
lead to much better compliance in financial child support and
greater parental involvement. But opponents of joint custody have
claimed that these benefits occur only because the more cooperative
parents were the ones that chose joint custody.
A new study by Judith Seltzer, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
provides strong evidence to refute this claim. Seltzer used data
from the National Survey of Families and Households, a survey of
over 13,000 families that collected data in two waves, 1987-1988 and
1992-1994. Because the NSFH included data on the quality of family
relationships, it was possible to study the effects of joint legal
custody while controlling for pre-separation family relationships.
Seltzer identified data on families that had separated or divorced
between the first and second survey periods.
The results clearly indicated positive effects for joint legal
custody: "Controlling for the quality of family relationships before
separation and socioeconomic status, fathers with joint legal
custody see their children more frequently, have more overnight
visits, and pay more child support than fathers in families in which
the mothers have sole legal custody."
Remarkably, Seltzer found that the level of conflict before
separation had no impact on the prospects of parents obtaining joint
legal custody at divorce. She says, "My findings show that neither
conflict nor marital happiness before separation affect the
likelihood that parents will acquire joint legal custody at
divorce." The fact that children benefited from joint legal custody
even after taking account of the quality of family relationships and
economic resources before separation provides further evidence that
these positive effects are not simply the result of more cooperative
parents choosing joint custody.
Seltzer proposes a "role oriented" explanation for the benefits
of joint legal custody. She says that "By clarifying that divorced
fathers are 'by law' still fathers, parents' negotiations about
fathers' participation in child rearing after divorce may shift from
trying to resolve whether fathers will be involved in child rearing
to the matter of how fathers will be involved." [emphasis in
original]
Seltzer concludes that children's advocates appear to be right:
"At least on the dimensions of increased contact between nonresident
fathers and children, joint legal custody may, as advocates claim,
make the lives of children after divorce more similar to their lives
before divorce or to the lives of their peers in two-parent
households."
Seltzer's report is entitled "Father by Law: Effects of Joint
Legal Custody on Nonresident Fathers' Involvement with Children."
The report can be obtained through the internet at
http://ssc.wisc.edu/cde/nsfhwp/home.htm, or from the Center for
Demography and Ecology, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, 4412 Social
Science Bldg., 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison WI, 53706-1393.