The potential loss could require some children to repeat a grade. However, play with family members can stem decline and support parental mental health.

We should pay extra attention to the home schooling and care of disadvantaged children during the Covid-19 crisis. Their potential loss of learning could require that some students repeat an entire grade. However, play with families, as well as government help with computer access, can help mitigate the damage.

These students are at particular risk of a ‘Covid-19 slump’ in learning compared with their middle-income peers. Addressing this danger demands government action to improve access to laptops and the internet. Parents and extended families can also help by marshalling unrealized capacities to play with and stimulate children, even while they are cooped up at home, with no museums, no park and little outside space.

Grandparents can play with children virtually

Grandparents can give parents a break by video chatting with young children to read them a story. Research shows that it works almost as well as reading in person. They can also get out the building blocks that many grandparents have at home, and young children can match what they are making at the other end – that’s good for STEM skills. At a distance, they can still create puzzles, a quiz, play games, or even visit a museum virtually and try to find an exhibit, like in the movie “National Treasure.”

At home, parents have options even in confined space. There’s building a fort in the living room, ‘hide and seek’ and organizing a treasure hunt. A bucket of soapy water, a sponge, and something to clean can keep a three-year-old entertained. Even a tiny outside space can let children to search for five sticks, different leaves left in the fall, or what’s hidden behind a blade of grass.

Cook with your child – it’s like doing chemistry – or plant something and learn about nature; learn a new word every week. Playing a board game combines lots of learning – giving everyone a turn teaches the social graces. Count the squares – that’s math. Explaining rules and moves offers language practice.

You can make daily walks more stimulating for children. In many neighborhoods, homes have put teddies in their front window so kids can go on a bear hunt. You can chalk a hopscotch court on your sidewalk for passers-by and leave a message asking children to spot something hidden outside your home.

Covid-19 slump could be worse than summer slump

We’ve known about a ‘summer slump’, experienced particularly by disadvantaged students compared with their wealthier peers, that occurs during just a couple of months of vacation. But the summer slump could be minor compared with no classes from now until at least September.

During the US summer vacation, following third grade, students lose, on average, nearly 20 per cent of their school-year gains in reading and 27 per cent of their school-year gains in math. Research shows that the loss increases with age: after seventh grade, students lose on average 36 per cent of their school-year gains in reading and 50 per cent in math.

However, these figures mask inequalities in impact: learning among most middle-class children doesn’t plummet in this way for many reasons. Typically, better-off families retain a schedule and can provide interesting summer travel. Their children are sent to soccer, drama and computer camps. They continue to read at home. Adults are often available, talking to them, playing, sharing activities. It’s not the same in homes where parents might be working two or three jobs and families don’t have diverse childcare options, or money for trips and camps.

Covid-19 is multiplying pressures on these families, bringing additional job insecurity and money worries as cramped homes are shared for homework that parents may feel ill-equipped to support. And whereas those families who lack connectivity might, before the epidemic, have gone to a coffee shop for internet access, such places are now closed.

Play with children helps stressed adults too

Playing isn’t just good for the kids – it can help parents who are stressed by extra burdens as they struggle to switch off, trying to stay on top of work at home, while schooling and feeding the children in small spaces. Reading a story can help the adults too: many of us can remember falling asleep reading to a child. That’s because it relaxes us as well, as confirmed by skin arousal tests we’ve done in the lab. The US Association for Psychological Science is urging parents, during the epidemic, ‘to care for your own mental health, because your mental health can have an impact on your kids’.

Many of these recommendations require a concerted attempt to end the digital divide and ensure that children can connect to learning opportunities. We can take a lesson from Plan Ceibal, an initiative which has ensured that every child in public education has a computer for personal use with a free internet connection and educational resources. When Covid-19 hit Uruguay, even families on very low incomes were ready with what they needed to switch to learning at home.

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The concept of a “community of care” should be adopted in relation to the care of children, extending beyond just mothers to include grandparents and others. “Family resilience” should be supported.

A review of 206 studies of care by grandparents has proposed a more coherent framework to analyse and understand how care by grandparents contributes to children’s development and health.

The research identifies:

• two types of care by grandparents
  • custodial care in skipped generation families (no parent present)
  • care within multigeneration families (one or both parents present)

• three measurements of involvement of grandparents
  • contact – e.g., co-residency, visit frequency
  • behavior – e.g., feeding, washing, transport
  • support – e.g., school fees, home expenses

• two types of contextual factor that influences care by grandparents
  • personal – e.g., age of child/grandparent, health of child/grandparent, gender of child/grandparent, cultural norms of family care, the parental relationship (status/quality)
  • structural – e.g., race, class, neighbourhood, situations of conflict or crisis, available of care in the community, income, loss of parental care through death or incarceration

• three types of child outcomes from care by grandparents
  • physical health – e.g., health, diet, growth, accidental injury
  • socioemotional health – e.g., mental health, behavior, substance use
  • cognitive development – e.g., academic achievement, language development, school readiness

In addition to making recommendations about more systematic research in the future, the researchers offer directions for policy and practice.

1. The concept of a “community of care” should be adopted in relation to the care of children, extending beyond just mothers to fathers, grandparents, friends, neighbors, siblings, other relatives, paid caregivers, teachers and pastors. Policy should promote networks of support and “family resilience”. More evaluations are needed of interventions that engage with communities of care.
2. Better support in practice and policy directly to grandparents in “family-level care”, including financial assistance, health, education and housing support.
3. Attention to gender bias in how grandmothers and grandfathers are viewed, similar to perceptions of mothers and fathers. Male carers are often framed in more negative terms than female carers.

Grandparental care is increasing around the world. Extended lifespans, decreasing family size, increased maternal employment, higher divorce rates, more single-parent households, economic stagnation and increasing drug use are all expanding the caring role of grandparents. Grandparents are often the first to assume caring of children when parents are unable to do so.

In the USA in 2018, 7.8% of 0-18 year olds lived with both a parent and a grandparent in three-generation families, and 2.3% lived with a grandparent without a parent present in skipped-generation families. In a study of several East European countries, 29.7% of households contained at least one grandparent; the figure in Western European countries is 5.5%. In Asia, a huge number of children in rural areas live with their grandparents because their parents have gone to cities to find work. And although Africa has a strong tradition of multigeneration care of children, it is also seeings an increase in care by grandparents in the wake of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and parental migration.

Research interest in grandparents has increased recently, and we’ve also seen some developments in support programmes that target grandparents who have custody of children. In the USA, the Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Act was signed into federal law in 2018, largely in response to the opioid crisis, which is affecting parental care. Support for grandparents includes information about school systems, access to mental health services and building community support networks.

Of the 206 studies of grandparents reviewed, 68 were from Africa, 60 from the USA, 32 from Europe, 17 from Africa, 12 from Latin America, three from Australia and two from Israel. Twelve were multi-country studies.

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Child development research explains why the loss of a family relationship during divorce is so excruciatingly painful for a child.

The parent-child relationship, particularly with the father, is at risk during separation and divorce. Worse development outcomes in later life are among the effects of divorce on children who lose a parent-child relationship. That is not to say every individual child does worse, just that the risk of doing worse is significantly higher. By understanding effects of divorce on children, we can help families avoid damaging patterns of behaviour and work to improve child development outcomes.

Sometimes a solution designed to protect the child from parental conflict serves to suspend or attenuate one parent-child relationship. This approach is problematic: empirical research shows that continued family relationships can be a protective factor against the damaging effects of divorce on children when there is conflict. Limiting a parent-child relationship when there is conflict can make things worse for the child. This, of course, does not apply to a parent-child relationship that is itself dangerous and damaging to the child.

One expert on family law in Australia, Professor Patrick Parkinson, has proposed that family law professionals should be well briefed on the latest research on the effects of divorce on children and on child development. This article responds to that proposal by setting out the evidence to date.

All child development takes place within parent-child and other family relationships

In 1964, renowned paediatrician and child psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott went so far as to say “there is no such thing as a baby”. He meant that a baby’s development as a human being is so embedded in parent-child relationships that it is difficult to mark the dividing line between the individual and the family.

“Sometimes a solution proposed to conflict is to protect the child by suspending one parent-child connection. This approach is problematic.”

In the past 40 years, psychologists have studied and measured the role of parent-child relationships in child development and have confirmed Winnicott’s memorable insight. The pivotal importance of early childhood relationships has been a dominant theme in child development psychology for a long time. The United Nations, through its Nurturing Care for Early Childhood Development Framework, has just declared that family relationships, parent-child relationships in particular, in the early years are the most important thing for all children in the world.

A new book, The Development of Children’s Thinking: Its Social and Communicative Foundations, by three leading researchers, sets out the understandings to date. Social interaction, it says, is the “crucible in which children’s cognitive development takes place, charged with emotion”.

Photo: Shutterstock.

Neuroscience further demonstrates this process. It is possible to see brain circuits forming in synchrony in parents and children, which goes on to predict children’s later developmental outcomes. The brains of parent and child are interwoven. The parent-child relationship is wired in both their brains.

For example, brain scanning research in Israel has shown that when a father cares for his baby in the first months of its life, his brain changes – caring circuits are triggered and honed. The more child care he undertakes, the more brain circuits associated with understanding and ‘feeling’ the needs of the infant become active. Thus, the act of providing care to his baby strengthens the parent-child relationship and the father’s life-long capacity to respond sensitively to his child’s needs. The baby’s brain develops accordingly: the more the father’s brain changes in the first year, the more the child’s social skills are developed four years later. Those who love us in infancy become part of us.

This perspective goes some way to explain the excruciating pain when a parent-child relationship is severed. The end of a parent-child relationship is part of ourselves dying.

Children don’t just form one parent-child relationship

There was a time, albeit brief, when scientists believed children had one “primary” parent-child relationship or “attachment” that created the foundation for all others. They believed that, in all but very rare cases, the mother filled that role. The idea originated with the father of the attachment idea, John Bowlby, who, before he died, was reconsidering his position, accepting that many children have multiple attachments. Nevertheless, the “primary” idea has proved remarkably resistant to change over the decades, because it accords with social norms and interests.

Photo: Harsha K R. Creative Commons.

Following research going all the way back to the 1970s, the answer is now definitive: a baby forms multiple attachments, all starting at roughly the same time in the first year, and all different from each other – that is, one is not the template for another. Attachments need time to develop – no high-quality parent child relationship can be developed in a hurry. Child psychologists have also concluded that father-child attachments can be as strong as mother-child attachments and that men and women can be equally sensitive to their infants, provided they have had the amount of practice that women ordinarily get. Children with a strong parent-child relationship with their fathers do better on average in every domain of development — cognitive, social and emotional.

So family law should make it a priority to preserve not “at least one” relationship, but all parent-child relationships. That is a tough proposition when parents are falling out with each other.

Parent-child relationships after parents separate: the importance of time

William Fabricius at Arizona State University has studied the effects of divorce on children by looking at young adults whose parents have separated. He found that the average quality of the parent-child relationship between young adult and father was related to the time spent with the father during earlier childhood. The relationship was poorest where there was no care, and strongest when mothers and fathers were equally involved. The same pattern for the parent-child relationship held true for overnight stays with the father during the first two years of life: the more overnight stays, the stronger the relationship between father and young adult. At the same time, there was no deterioration in the parent-child relationship between the young adult and mother. Indeed, when children had spent more nights with the father before the age of three, the mother-young adult relationship was slightly stronger, on average.

In a comprehensive review of research covering 60 studies, Professor Linda Nielsen at Wake Forest University in North Carolina found that shared parenting and shared physical custody mitigate the negative effects of divorce on children: lower levels of depression, anxiety and dissatisfaction; lower aggression; less use of alcohol and drugs; less smoking; better school performance; better physical health; and better family relationships.

Photo: Shutterstock.

The consensus among psychologists who study child development is that overnight stays form an important part of the process of developing secure infant-parent attachments. Bedtime and night-time routines are crucial opportunities for social and nurturing activities. In 1997, 18 experts sponsored by the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHHD) concluded in a consensus statement that to “keep nonresidential parents playing psychologically important and central roles in the lives of their children,” distribution of custodial time should ensure “the involvement of both parents in important aspects of their children’s everyday lives and routines—including bedtime and waking rituals, transitions to and from school, extracurricular and recreational activities”.

“Conflict and its future trajectory are difficult to assess at the time of the separation.”

In 2014, a group of 111 experts from 15 countries published another consensus report reinforcing the earlier consensus on overnight stays and extended it to children of all ages, including very young children.

Psychologists offer several reasons that fathers’ involvement may improve outcomes for children, in addition to all the benefits associated with sustaining the relationship itself:

• Fathers are likely to invest more in the child and are less likely to drift away.
• The social capital available to the child through two parents is greater.
• When fathers are more involved, the children’s relationships with the paternal grandparents are more substantial. Research by Maaike Jappens in Belgium has found that grandchildren with good grandparent relationships are less likely to be depressed and have higher life satisfaction.
• With two parents, strong parenting by one can compensate for the weaker parenting of the other. This effect can vary over time, covering for periods of lower availability by one parent and adapting to the child’s changing needs as he or she grows up.

What happens when there is conflict?

The issue of conflict is what brings out the trench warfare, as Patrick Parkinson has described the debate about the 2006 and 2011 family law reforms in Australia.

Photo: Sander van der Wel. Creative Commons.

Empirical research leads to two conclusions.

1. All the benefits of joint physical custody that mitigate the negative effects of divorce on children also apply when the parents are in conflict.

Nielsen’s review of 60 studies looked at children who had experienced high-conflict situations. She found that limiting joint custody and one parent-child relationship is not correlated with fewer negative effects of divorce for children in high-conflict families. Joint physical custody is associated with improved outcomes in all areas—academic/cognitive, emotional, behavioural, social and physical—even when there is conflict.

However, joint physical custody is linked to worse outcomes for children exposed to conflict in some exceptional circumstances: adolescents in high-conflict families who have a poor parent-child relationship with one of the parents sharing custody; teenage girls (but not boys) whose parents have sustained high conflict for eight years or more; and adolescents who are highly conscientious or extremely extroverted. Again, all these are averages: young people in these groups are more likely to suffer harm but not certain to do so.

2. Having more than one parent-child relationship typically protects children from the harm associated with conflict.

William Fabricius found that one of the consequences of parental conflict for children is a fear of abandonment by one parent. This fear is lessened somewhat if the child does not see the parent very much anyway and lessened considerably if the child sees the parent 50% of the time. The strongest fear of abandonment occurs when the child sees the parent between 25% and 35% of the time, because the extent of the potential loss of the parent-child relationship and the perceived risk of its happening are both high.

Photo: Camera Eye Photography. Creative Commons.

How to deal with parental conflict in family law without risking parent-child relationships?

Child development researchers are the first to agree that some forms of conflict preclude any kind of sharing, which is why judges have so much discretion over each case. For example, systematic abuse and controlling behaviour by one parent, or manipulating the child to reject the other parent, renders shared custody unviable. Any parent-child relationship that endangers the child clearly needs to be changed or ended.

But conflict and its future trajectory are difficult to assess at the time of separation. Current conflict is an unreliable measure of what arrangements are appropriate, adding yet more complexity to the task of family law professionals to protect parent-child relationships.

• There are many kinds of conflict, and not all conflict is toxic.
• Some kinds of conflict can be mitigated without risking a child-parent relationship – for example, organising transfer of children at the school gate, rather than outside one home.
• Conflict can change over time. In particular, it can drop over time, more so if parents are supported effectively. In Australia, a survey of 10,000 mothers who reported domestic violence at the time of separation found only 18.5% were still fearful by the time the researchers interviewed them at various time after the separation.

Photo: Shutterstock.

A nuanced assessment of the nature of conflict is a crucial part of balancing the harm to the child done by exposure to conflict and the harm to the child done by breaking a parent-child relationship. The more we understand the child development implications of conflict and breaking relationships, the better we can support children through a terrible time, to limit long-term harm.

This article is based on a series of articles covering recent research on family separation reported on the Child and Family Blog.

Duncan Fisher, Child & Family Blog editor

Report on research by Sanford L. Braver and Michael E. Lamb, A panel of leading child development experts answer the burning questions about shared parenting after divorce

Report on research by William L. Fabricius, Divorce harms children’s emotional security, but this is mitigated by more shared parenting

William L. Fabricius, Teenagers who feel they matter to dad have better mental health

Maaike Jappens, Shared custody increases contact with grandparents, who may help children cope with divorce

Report on research by Edward Kruk, A presumption of shared parenting after divorce? 40 years of research and argument paving the way

Charlie Lewis and Jeremy Carpendale, Cognitive development theory: a relational approach

Report on research by Nicole E. Mahrer, Karey L. O’Hara, Irwin N. Sandler & Sharlene A. Wolchik, Family law should give higher priority to support for quality parenting

Report on research by Linda Nielsen, Effect of divorce on child development less with joint custody – even when there is parental conflict

Report on research by Linda Nielsen, Family courts should prioritise more the protection of child-parent relationships

Report on research by Patrick Parkinson, Teaching family law professionals about child development needs may be more influential than predictions about what the courts will do

Report on research by Jani Turunen, In Swedish study, children of separated parents who share physical custody are less likely to be stressed

Richard A. Warshak, After parents divorce, regular overnight stays with dad are best for most young children

Report on research by Richard A. Warshak, Early child development research demonstrates that overnight stays with fathers after a divorce are important for very young children

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Early child development research shows importance of sustaining father-baby relationships after divorce and separation.

Professor Richard A. Warshak, Clinical Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, has marshalled a wide body of evidence to demonstrate the importance of developing and sustaining early father-baby relationships after divorce and separation. He argues that overnight stays with both parents, even for babies, are important to support early child development. He challenges widespread notions that there is something inherently risky about babies staying overnight with their fathers.

Warshak points out that sharing care of very young children is now the norm in society. It has long been established that good childcare provision does not damage early child development by separating the child from the mother. Mothers regularly work evening and night shifts. Children are often cared for by grandparents. Babies regularly sleep in different places. The general advice to parents of babies is that both parents need to spend adequate time with their children, establish routines, and show affection.

But when parents separate, Warshak argues, new questions emerge. Is the separation of a young child from the mother damaging after all? Is there something special about nighttime? Is an overnight sleep different from an afternoon nap? Is the first person a child sees in the morning significant for child development? Is the night a time of anxiety that only a “primary” parent can handle, and is this factor more important to the child than the psychological state of that parent at the time? Warshak quotes a recent researcher who argued: “Overnight stays away from the primary caregiver in early infancy are generally best avoided, unless of benefit to the primary caregiver”.

Warshak charts the changing story of custody arrangements over the past two centuries. Until well into the 19th century, fathers had absolute custody after divorce. The idea then emerged that children have one psychological primary parent, a mother, and from this came anxiety about any mother-infant separation. This also gave rise to the idea that a relationship with both parents is beneficial only if there is no conflict between the parents.

The importance of multiple attachments and shared parenting for early child development

Since the 1970s, research has increasingly challenged the notion of primary carers as a psychological reality. Modern attachment research shows that multiple attachments are important for early child development.

• Babies normally form multiple attachments that are different from one another, and security in one is not dependent on security in the other.
• These attachments start in the same period, in the middle of the first year.
• Whilst a single secure attachment is an absolute minimum for healthy child development, the odds of a child having at least one secure attachment to a parent double when the child regularly interacts with two parents.
• Mothers and fathers are, on average, equally sensitive to their infants when equally experienced and confident in their care.
• Secure attachment takes parent-child time to develop.
• Multiple attachment appears to be an evolutionary advantage in humans, allowing early child development to proceed even when one parent is absent through physical separation, incapacity or death.

Attachment theory is not the only source of evidence that children benefit from having multiple carers. Warshak also refers to “bioecological theory”. For example, when both parents care for a child, both are less tired when they do so, so they tend to do it better. Care from two parents affords the child a greater diversity of experience and more intellectual richness in the home. More varied conversation improves early child cognitive development. Having two parents also means greater access to grandparents.

Overnight stays with fathers support early child development

On the basis of this evidence, early child development researchers have specifically advocated measures that strengthen multiple relationships after divorce or separation. Moreover, they have argued that overnight stays are an important part of the process of developing secure infant-parent attachments; bedtime and nighttime routines are crucial opportunities for social and nurturing activities. This time together also allows parents to keep up with their children’s rapidly changing needs through infancy.

In 1997, 18 experts sponsored by the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHHD) issued a consensus statement concluding that to “keep nonresidential parents playing psychologically important and central roles in the lives of their children,” distribution of custodial time should ensure “the involvement of both parents in important aspects of their children’s everyday lives and routines—including bedtime and waking rituals, transitions to and from school, extracurricular and recreational activities”.

Because early attachments are so important for early child development, and because of the desirability of maintaining routines and avoiding sudden changes, Warshak argues that patterns of care should be established as early as possible.

Early child development researchers do not say that overnight stays with fathers are the right thing for every infant, however. Each case is different; overnight stays should not be mandatory.

The evidential case for early overnights with fathers

Warshak presents six categories of evidence from fatherhood research that, together, strongly support the idea that overnight stays with both parents from infancy are, in general, a good thing for early child development.

1. Strong evidence shows that, on average, fathers’ emotional investment in, attachment to, and positive parenting of their children predicts better psychological outcomes across a wide range of social, emotional, and cognitive development.

2. Compared with children whose parents are married, other children have a higher incidence of adjustment difficulties that extend into adolescence and early adulthood, including high school dropout and suspension, externalizing behavior problems such as aggression, substance abuse, and poor relationships with both parents.

3. In the US National Survey of Children’s longitudinal study of young adults 14 years after their parents’ divorce, the majority of children from divorced homes scored within normal limits in most developmental domains, with one exception: two out of three suffered chronically poor relationships with their fathers.

4. Children whose parents divorced when the child was younger than six years are more likely to suffer problems than children of later-divorcing parents. The father-child relationship (but not the mother-child relationship) is likely to be worse for these children. These data point to the need for particular support for the father-child relationship for younger children when parents separate.

6. When father–infant contacts include overnights after parents separate, we see a lower incidence of father absenteeism when compared to father–infant contacts that were restricted to the daytime. As the evidence above shows, father dropout is a significant early child development issue.
7. Divorced fathers who feel enfranchised rather than marginalized as parents maintain greater contact with their children and are more apt to pay child support. Depriving a father of the experience of having his child spend the night in his home is likely to diminish the father’s sense of being a fully enfranchised parent.

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The link is stronger if the children’s parents of the children are lacking in financial and/or education, suggesting that grandparents may be providing substitute support in some less-wealthy families.

This research suggests that practitioners who work with vulnerable families should assess grandparents’ as well as parents’ resources.

The picture is mixed across countries and doesn’t correlate with known differences in culture and welfare provision –generating a bit of a mystery for future social researchers to figure out!

• In Denmark, Germany and Israel, both grandparents’ education and financial resources correlate with a child’s educational achievement.
• In Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium and Slovenia, there is no correlation.
• In Italy, there is a correlation only with grandparents’ financial resources.
• In the Czech Republic and Luxembourg, there is a correlation only with grandparents’ education.

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The researchers, Natasha Pilkauskas and Rachel Dunifon, selected data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal study of 5,000 children born from 1998 to 2000 in large US cities. The researchers looked at 84 grandfamilies (82 grandmothers and 2 grandfathers) and also looked at information from 79 of the children in these families.

They compared characteristics of grandparents raising their grandchildren with the characteristics of those same children’s non-resident parents (47 of the mothers and 34 of the fathers). Results show that the grandparents were better off than the non-resident parents – twice as likely to be married, more likely to be college educated, and less likely to be unemployed and to be suffering poverty and hardship.

Pilkauskas and Dunifon also compared grandparents raising their grandchildren to families in which a biological parent was raising the child – 3,098 mother-child pairs and 2,174 father-child pairs. Results showed few differences across these groups in terms of marriage, education and employment.

Despite the fact that grandparents raising their grandchildren look very similar to parents raising their own children, the well-being of the children in grandfamilies was worse on average than that of other kids. Teacher reports of academic performance (literacy and math) showed lower attainment. Children’s behaviour – such as anger, defiance, sadness, lack of affection – was also worse, according to ratings by caregivers, teachers and the children themselves. Average child health issues were not significantly different except in the case of attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD) – 20% of the children in grandfamilies were diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, compared to 11% of children living with their mothers.

Why might these children fare worse on average, even though the grandparents are better off and their parenting similarly to that of other families? The researchers suggest that the results could be related to the traumas experienced by a child being cared for by grandparents – both earlier traumas that led to the move in the first place, and continued contact with non-resident parents who have particularly high rates of depression, substance abuse and poor health.

They conclude that support services need to pay particular attention to grandfamilies.

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Contact with paternal grandparents rises when compared to sole mother residence, while contact with maternal grandparents remains largely unchanged.

Divorce often reduces children’s contact with their paternal grandparents. In our study, in fact, about 10 per cent of grandchildren whose parents divorced had no contact at all with their paternal grandparents. We showed that the explanation for this loss largely lies in grandchildren’s residence arrangements after a divorce.

Although custody arrangements are changing to some degree, in most Western countries children still typically live mainly with their mothers after divorce. This arrangement shapes differences in how often they see their grandparents on the mother’s and father’s side of the family—contact with paternal grandparents falls while contact with maternal grandparents does not. When mom and dad share physical custody of their children, however, contact with paternal grandparents increases—compared even with intact families—while contact with maternal grandparents remains largely unchanged.

“Divorce, largely because of residence arrangements, often reduces contact with paternal grandparents, compared with what happens during marriage, and also compared with maternal grandparent contact after divorce.  About 10 per cent of grandchildren from divorced parents never saw grandparents on their father’s side of the family.”

We conducted our study of grandparent contact in Flanders, Belgium, surveying more than 1,000 grandchildren between the ages of 10 and 25, and more than 1,100 grandparents of grandchildren from 0 to 25 years old. Flanders is a particularly interesting place to study children’s post-divorce residence arrangements. After a divorce, as in most Western countries, the majority of children there live with their mother. Some live with their mother full-time, and some stay with their father now and then. Sole residence with fathers is uncommon and occurs most often in difficult family situations and when mothers are educationally and economically disadvantaged.

However, recent policy changes have encouraged shared physical custody arrangements, in which children live about half of the time with each parent. Joint parental authority was legally established in 1995, and in 2006 joint physical custody, or shared residence, became the default residence arrangement after parental divorce. About one-fifth of Flemish children with divorced parents (and more than one-quarter of those whose parents divorced after the 2006 law was passed) live alternately with the mother and the father.

Sole residence lessens grandparent contact on the non-residential parent’s side

We found that, typically, grandchildren whose parents were married had more frequent contact with maternal than paternal grandparents. After a parental divorce, grandchildren who lived mostly or always with their mothers tended to have considerably less contact with paternal grandparents. However, when physical custody was shared between mom and dad, the gap was closed. In the rather exceptional cases where grandchildren lived with their divorced father, contact between grandchildren and paternal grandparents was higher than contact with maternal grandparents; in these cases, contact with maternal grandparents was often much lower than among children of married couples.

Paternal grandparents may be playing an important role in caring for the children of their divorced sons when children live with their fathers for a substantial part of the time. Grandparents may also be influencing residence arrangements, in the sense that fathers may be more inclined to seek joint physical custody when their parents are willing to be involved and help with child care.

We were surprised to find that when divorced mothers had sole physical custody of the children, contact with maternal grandparents didn’t increase. This might indicate that divorced mothers don’t need or can’t count on extra help from their parents, even when the children live with them all the time. However, it’s also possible that extra help comes in forms that don’t require more contact, such as monetary support.

Grandparents’ care correlated with children’s well-being after divorce

In a more recent study, yet to be published, we identified correlations between the quality of grandparent relationships and grandchildren’s subjective well-being. Our results showed that grandchildren who lacked any good grandparent relationship reported significantly more depressive feelings and lower life satisfaction than those who enjoyed at least one good relationship with a grandparent. Children who had a very good relationship with a grandparent, in contrast, reported higher life satisfaction, self-esteem and feelings of being in control of their lives. This was especially true for children of divorced parents. These links suggest that grandparents can offer benefits to children regardless of their parents’ relationship status, but that strong grandparent relationships particularly matter for children whose parents have divorced.

Policy implications

These findings may have important implications for policy makers, who face pressure to increase the level of contact that fathers have with their children after divorce. When considering the arguments, policy makers should be aware that different residence arrangements have consequences not only for the parents and children involved, but also for the grandparents on both sides of the family. Increasing children’s access to their divorced fathers raises the frequency of contact with paternal grandparents while leaving contact with maternal grandparents largely unchanged, and thus leads to greater grandparent involvement in total.

Additionally, we have found a correlation between grandparents’ involvement and children’s well-being, especially in difficult times such as a parental divorce. Shared physical custody has upsides and downsides, and it involves considerable disruption to children’s lives. But the potential benefits for children from contact with grandparents on both sides of the family deserve closer scrutiny. We also shouldn’t forget that grandparents themselves derive joy from time with their grandchildren and that disruption of these contacts has adverse effects on their own emotional well-being.

These days, grandparents are potentially also more available. Considerable increases in life expectancy mean that grandparents often survive into their grandchildren’s adulthood. In addition, declining fertility means that grandparents have fewer grandchildren, so the older generation has more time and attention for each grandchild. Given the instability of many parental relationships and the consequent risks to supporting children, grandparents’ availability may be particularly important.

Questions about the importance of extended family

Our research raises further questions about whether policy makers, when considering how to manage where children live after divorce, should think about children’s access to other parts of their extended families. Researchers could examine what happens to relationships with aunts, uncles, cousins and other extended family members after parents separate. We need to know whether such access is likewise influenced by residence arrangements and whether children may benefit after divorce from extra contact with these relatives.

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Couple relationships are more unstable, but people are having as many children. That means more complex families, particularly among the poor.

Today there are more complex families. That’s down to a simple explanation – parental unions are much more unstable than 50 years ago, but we’re having just as many children. So the co-location of marriage, living together and biological connectedness that characterized families of the mid-20^th century is far less common today. There are now many more models, such as mothers living with children from two different partners, fathers living with stepchildren but away from biological children, and children living with half-siblings, whose biological father might be elsewhere. These are just a few examples of the many variants.

But complex families have different experiences. Families have become more complex for some more than for others. Complexity is correlated in the US with minority racial/ethnic background, poor education and a history of incarceration for fathers. As Andrew Cherlin, the US sociologist, has commented, stable marriage seems to have become a luxury good, much more likely to be gained and maintained by those with higher socio-economic status. We don’t have any evidence that complexity has a worse impact at the poorer end of the socio-economic scale, but we do know that it is more prevalent among this social group. It is also easy to see that having access to plentiful resources makes managing life easier, so having less is harder to manage for an intact family – even more so for a complex family.

“Complexity dilutes investments in children, and policy has been slow to respond. Social programs must recognize that many children spend time in different households and that adults may have family commitments beyond a single household.”

Does it matter that children are being raised in family forms of varying complexity? Yes, to the extent that complexity dilutes resources available to children. When a commitment to one single family is broken up and parents are coordinating across different households—especially when new partners are involved—children may not get as much from their families, both in terms of money and time. For example, Dad might not trust his money to his child’s Mom in the same way as he did when they lived together, and economies of scale that sprang from having everyone in the family living in one place are lost. Also, if Dad’s children (by different mothers) live in two households, it may be harder for him to spend quality time with them. And moms may be navigating complex stepfamily dynamics if their new partners aren’t related to some or all of their co-resident children.

There can be other losses. Kristen Harknett and Jean Knab, US sociologists, have found that when a parent has another child with a new partner, there is less extended family support. Grandparents, they have found, are more involved with children when parents are married, perhaps because they consider that the perceived permanence of marriage makes investment in the union more secure.

A major outcome from more complex families has been the contingency of fatherhood. Men in stable, co-residential relationships typically have an important role in the hands-on care of their children, one that is increasing as mothers work more outside the home. These men are more likely to be well-educated and of higher socio-economic status, with marriage and parenting going together more like they once did in a so-called “package deal”. In contrast, less well-educated men are more likely to be in unions that do not last, and, because mothers tend to be primary caregivers after separation, fathers can quickly become marginal to their children’s lives. Such men can lose a major part of their identity as fathers, and their children miss out on the social capital that could be leveraged from them.

Beyond the individual effects on children, the absence of fathers from their children’s lives has huge potential societal impact. If fathers are not spending much time with their children, they may be less attuned to children’s growth and development, meaning that millions of people are less aware than previous generations about the need to invest in young people, in schools and other social institutions that nurture children. In a democracy, this could affect our policy choices.

We need to become more sensitive to the increasing complexity of families, with social programs recognizing that many children spend time in different households and that adults may have family commitments beyond a single household. If, as is often the case now, one parent – the one with custody – tends to hold eligibility to benefits, there is a risk that one parent will exclude the other parent in order to retain such benefits.

What’s the best way to tackle the issues thrown up by family complexity? It seems unlikely that the stability of childbearing unions/marriage is suddenly going to be restored – or that public policy can affect this very much. And there is no sign that the value people set on having children is going to fall away.

In “Generation Unbound”, published by the Brookings Institution, Isabel V. Sawhill, a long-time proponent of marriage, has reassessed its future, arguing that the key for raising families successfully is not marriage but having children later, when individuals are more mature and unions are likely more stable.

We also should shift the focus of gender discussions. We have rightly spent a great deal of energy exploring how to challenge the exclusion of women from the public sphere, in particular the work place. Perhaps, we need to examine much more closely a phenomenon that has been taking place contemporaneously – the increasing exclusion of some men from the private sphere. This experience is costing men and children – and possibly women too – a great deal in terms of social and economic capital that is not leveraged for children and families.

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1 in 50 U.S. children is raised in “grandfamilies” – grandparents without parents. The challenges faced by these families are hidden below the public radar.

Grandparents increasingly play a key role in the lives of their grandchildren, as our recent study of U.S. families shows. But some of the most vulnerable in this group are failing to receive the childrearing support that other similarly at-risk families receive.

Between 2001 and 2012, the U.S. experienced a 30 percent increase in the proportion of children living with their parents and grandparents, in what are referred to as three-generation households. Much of this increase can be attributed to the Great Recession, which led families to double up in order to conserve resources. In 2012, a total of 10 per cent of U.S. children lived in a household with their grandparents, with 8 per cent living in three-generation households. Clearly, then, social policies to support the elderly also help millions of children, a fact that has implications when policymakers consider modifying the social welfare safety net for older people.

“The challenge to policy makers, practitioners and researchers is to throw light on this form of childrearing and ensure that the supports put in place for other vulnerable families are both available and accessed by this often hidden group.”

Grandparents who are raising their grandchildren with no parent in the household are particularly far off the policy radar. Such families are often referred to as “grandfamilies.” One in 50 U.S. children is being reared in such a family, but the figure almost doubles for black children. President Obama himself was raised by his grandparents in Hawaii for part of his childhood.

U.S. grandfamilies are, on average, economically disadvantaged. Nearly a third live below the federal poverty line, and almost another third have incomes less than 200 per cent of the poverty level., Grandparents in such families are less likely than parents in other family structures to be employed and are less likely to be married. We see strikingly high levels of health problems in these families – not only in the grandparents but often in the mental health of the children, likely reflecting the misfortune they have often experienced in their lives.

Despite their needs, grandfamilies are usually ineligible for the higher levels of financial help available to foster parents and often don’t receive even the more modest welfare benefits to which they are entitled. Indeed, our research has found that only 12 per cent of U.S. grandfamilies were receiving cash assistance, despite the fact that many more should be eligible for such payments.

Grandfamilies often exist outside the reach of social services, chiefly because children typically came to live with their grandparents via an informal arrangement, rather than through the involvement of a social service agency. We found that almost half of our sample of children who were being raised by grandparents entered into the arrangement because the parent voluntarily gave up the child. Only a small proportion did so because a social welfare agency got involved.

As a result, many grandparents raising their grandchildren don’t have legal custody, meaning that they may lack the legal authority to make medical or school decisions for the child. They may also face repeated court challenges if the parent tries to reclaim the child. This legal ambiguity can undermine both the security and parental authority of the grandparents.

At the same time, our interviews with grandfamilies identified numerous strengths. Grandparents are mature and experienced parents, having raised children already. They know the children’s parents and often try to see the best in them, despite their mistakes. Many grandparents say that raising their grandchildren gives them a purpose in life, keeping them young and connected. Children themselves express a great deal of warmth and appreciation for the grandparents who raise them and keep them safe.

The challenge, then, to policy makers, practitioners and researchers is to throw light on this form of childrearing and ensure that the supports put in place for other vulnerable families are both available to and accessed by this often hidden group.

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