Children's and Parents’ Well‐Being in Joint Physical Custody: A Literature Review

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12372
• Date: 01 June 2019
• Author: Anja Steinbach
• Published date: 01 June 2019

Children’s and Parents’ Well-Being in Joint Physical

Custody: A Literature Review

ANJA STEINBACH*

To read this article in Spanish, please see the article’s Supporting Information on Wiley Online

Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/famp).

Joint physical custody (JPC), a parental care arrangement in which a child lives with

each parent for at least 25–50% of the time after separation or divorce, is increasingly com-

mon in many Western societies. This is a major shift from the standard of sole physi cal cus-

tody, with mostly mothers providing primary childcare after a parental separat ion or

divorce. The increasing share of separated or divorced parents who practice JPC, which in

some countries, U.S. states, and regions reaches 30% and more, results from increasing

gender equality due to mothers participating considerably in the labor force and father s

being actively involved in their children’s daily lives. This review focuses on the effects of

JPC on children’s and parents’ well-being, based on 40 studies from North America, Aus-

tralia, and Europe published between 2007 and 2018. In sum, there is empirical evidence

from different countries that suggests that JPC arrangements can have positive effects on

the well-being of children and of parents. However, the existing studies are conceptually,

methodologically, and contextually very heterogeneous. In addition, self-selected hig hly

educated parents with a high socioeconomic status, a low conflict level, and children

between the ages of 6 and 15 practicing JPC dominate the samples. Thus, the risks and

benefits of JPC are not clear yet and are heavily debated by advocates and academics. The

review concludes with suggestions for future research.

Keywords: Children’s well-being; Child custody; Custody; Divorce; Divorce and custody;

Joint physical custody; Parents’ well-being; Separation; Shared parenting; Shared

residence; Bienestar de los ni~

nos; Tenencia de los ni~

nos; Divorcio; Tenencia compartida;

Bienestar de los padres; Crianza compartida

Fam Proc 58:353–369, 2019

INTRODUCTION

Acare arrangement after parental separation or divorce, increasingly common in a

growing number of Western countries, is the joint physical custody plan (also shared

parenting or shared residence), in which a child spends at least 25–50% of the time with

each parent (Smyth, 2017, p. 494). Although there are only relatively few robust empirical

results on how joint physical custody arrangements affect the well-being of children and

parents, the topic is heavily debated by, for example, social scientists, family law profes-

sionals, mental health practitioners, counselors, and policy makers. These debates are in

part highly ideological (e.g., Harris-Short, 2010; Kruk, 2012). The central question of the

discussion is which custody plan meets juridical requirements focused on “the best

*Department of Sociology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Anja Steinbach, Department of Sociology,

University of Duisburg-Essen, Lotharstrasse 65, Duisburg 47057, Germany. E-mail: anja.steinbach@

uni-due.de

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Family Process, Vol. 58, No. 2, 2019 ©2018 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12372

interests of the child” after a parental breakup. The children’s interests, however, are

sometimes inseparable from the subjective interests of the parents, which are often not

explicitly stated, but should also be taken into account. Thus, the debate revolves around

the problem of whether joint physical custody should be mandated by judges even against

the will of one of the parents, or whether shared parenting can be recommended only if

both parents come out in favor.

Given the great attention on the topic by family scholars, practitioners, and law profes-

sionals, it is not surprising that several meta-analyses and reviews about joint physical

custody or shared parenting have been published in recent years. The majority focused,

for good reasons, on the well-being of children (meta-analysis: Baude, Pearson, & Dra-

peau, 2016; reviews: Fehlberg, Smyth, MacClean, & Roberts, 2011b; Gilmore, 2006; Kelly,

2007; Nielsen, 2014, 2017; Smyth, 2009; review of Swedish studies: Fransson, Hjiern, &

Bergstro

¨m, 2018), but two of them also concentrated on parental adjustment (meta-analy-

sis: Bauserman, 2012; review: Nielsen, 2011). So what does this particular review add to

the existing literature? First, it is a review of the most recent empirical studies (2007–

2018). (For an overview of the 40 studies included [e.g., sample, sample size, methods, key

results], see Table S1 under “supporting information” on the Family Process webpage.)

Thus, it includes new studies not already considered in other reviews. These new empiri-

cal studies are of particular interest because they capture research from European coun-

tries, where JPC has just started to receive public and scientific attention. Second, and

most importantly, this paper summarizes the arguments and empirical results regarding

the effects of joint physical custody on both children’s and parents’ well-being. Accord-

ingly, the present review provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the discussion

and the empirical evidence on joint physical custody, for children and for parents, taking

recently published studies from North America, Australia, and Europe into account.

METHOD: LITERATURE SEARCH

The review is based on an extensive and systematic literature search. First, th e search-

platforms Web of Science/Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), International Bibliography

of the Social Sciences (IBSS), JSTORE, Scopus, and Google Scholar were used to find all

books and papers on joint physical custody, independent of the year of publication, the

country of observation, the scientific research area, the particular subject, or the applied

method. The following keywords were used for the search: joint physical custody, phy sical

custody, custody, child custody, shared parenting, shared residence, shared-time parent-

ing, dual residence, residence arrangement, co-parenting, and parenting plan. Second, the

reference lists of all of the publications were scoured systematically to avoid overlooking

books or papers which were not listed in the electronic databases. The literature search

was restricted to publications in English.

In total, 163 journal articles, book chapters, and working papers on joint physical cus-

tody were identified. They included not only empirical studies, but also meta-analyses,

reviews, and discussions of certain aspects such as legal decision-making about parenting

plans. The publication dates reached from 1986 to 2018. For this review, the decision was

made to focus exclusively on recent empirical studies (2007–2018). Altogether, 40 empiri-

cal studies were included (see Table S1 in the online appendix–supporting information).

Even though the literature search was not focused on results from only a specific region,

all of the publications were from Western countries in North America, Australia, and

Europe.

In addition, the majority of the studies published in the last 11 years are from a few key

countries, states, and regions in which joint physical custody has already been widely

practiced for many years, such as Wisconsin (USA), Sweden, Australia, or Flanders

www.FamilyProcess.org

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