Family Life, Parental Separation, and Child Custody in Canada: a Focus on Quebec
| Published date | 01 October 2013 |
| Author | Gessica Di Stefano,Francine Cyr,Bertrand Desjardins |
| Date | 01 October 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12050 |
SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLES
FAMILY LIFE, PARENTAL SEPARATION, AND CHILD CUSTODY
IN CANADA: A FOCUS ON QUEBEC
Francine Cyr, Gessica Di Stefano, and Bertrand Desjardins
The United States and Canada have been experiencingmajor changes in family formation and dissolution over the past decades.
Within this context,the French-Canadian Province of Quebec has consistently been at the forefront—in 2011, for example, 37.8
per cent of Quebec couples were cohabitants and 63 per cent of births were from nonmarried parents. Is this difference strictly
due to Quebec’s distinct social and cultural characteristics or can the Quebec experience be seen as a predictor of things to come
for the rest of Canada and the United States? This article discusses the causes of these new behaviors in Quebec, presents
changes in the Canadian legal system to facilitate less adversarial procedures, and reports the results of a Quebec longitudinal
study exploring the relationship between child adjustment and custody arrangements. The quality of the psychological and
relational environment in which the child lives is shown to be more important than the type of family structure and custody
arrangement.
Keypoints for the Family Court Community
• Family structure changes in Quebec and Canada
• Divorce less adversarial dispute resolution options
• Contribution of child custody arrangement to postseparation child well-being
• Moderating factors of child well-being in separated divorced families
• Emotional well-being, parenting practices, and household income of mothers with joint versus sole custody
Keywords: Canadian Family Formation and Dissolution;Child Adjustment;Custody Arrangement;Divorce Law;Maternal
Depression;ParentalPractices;and Parental Separation.
This article first provides a demographic portrait of family formation and dissolution in Canada
with a focus on the specificity of the province of Quebec. In Canada, demographic indicators show an
important decrease in marriage rates and a concomitant rise in the number of cohabiting couples.
This phenomenon is more acute in Quebec where over 37.8 percent of couples were cohabitants in
2011 while in the rest of Canada this proportion was slightly above 10 per cent, a level similar to the
United States. These unions tend to be more fragile than those formed through marriage although
lasting longer in Quebec than in the rest of Canada. Another particularity of Quebec is that 63 percent
of 2011 births in Quebec were from nonmarried parents (Institut de la statistique du Québec, 2012).
Hypotheses are proposed to explain these trends. Second, the laws governing mar riage and divorce
are presented, and changes in the legal system to facilitate less adversarial procedures are briefly
described. Finally, results of a study on the adjustment of children to parental separation are reported.
This study is based on the analysis of data from a longitudinal survey of children born in Quebec in
1997 and 1998. Maternal depression and parental practices showed to be the best predicting factors of
a child’s well-being in this study, generally confirming previous findings in the divorce literature.
Among the numerous transformations the Western world has experienced since the end of the
Second World War, none perhaps have been more important than those pertaining to the essence of a
society’s reproduction, that is, fertility levels and the context under which these levels are achieved.
Correspondence: Francine.Cyr@umontreal.ca; gessicadistefano@gmail.com; Bertrand.Desjardins@umontreal.ca
FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 51 No. 4, October 2013 522–541
© 2013 Association of Familyand Conciliation Cour ts
The primary aim of this article is to present some aspects of these transformations in Canada, focusing
on the social aspects of family formation and dissolution and the legal framework of separation and
divorce, including family mediation, and other alternative dispute resolution methods. Then, insight
on the psychological reality of families having experienced separation or divorce will be offered
through the analysis of the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development (QLSCD; Institut de la
statistique du Québec, 2013). This study discusses the best predictors of children’s well-beingin intact
and separated or divorced families, and examines if the reported differences between these twogroups
hold once custody arrangement is controlled1(Cyr, Di Stefano, & Chagnon, 2012).
This article focuses on the special case of Quebec within Canada regarding the issues of marriage,
family, and divorce. As will be explained later, this focus on Quebec is interesting given its specific
legal and social realities.
IMPORTANT CHANGES IN FAMILIES: COHABITATION AS A WAY OF LIFE?
Since the 1960s, as has been the case at varying levels for most Western countries, mar riage and
divorce in Canada have undergone profound changes that have substantially altered the meaning of
marriage, the probability of its ending in divorce, and the circumstances surrounding a marriage.
These changes encompass the formation of unions, their duration and the conditions under which
they end, the economic relations between spouses, the number of children they produce, and the
organisation of their living conditions when their parents separate.
Although the family remains undoubtedly the most important social institution, demographic
indicators show a lasting decline in the proportion of individuals who are likely to marry during their
lifetime; whereas in the 1960s more than nine women out of ten would marry over the course of their
life, in the mid-1970s, marriage started to lose ground progressively, and by the turn of the century,
just slightly over half of women were expected to marry in Canada. This decline has been accompa-
nied by a significant rise in age at first marriage, and statistics also point to a growing level of
instability, with a seemingly endless rise in the proportion of unions ending in divorce.
However, this overall picture in Canada is muddled by a deep and overpowering transformation of
the traditional portrait of marriage and the family. Forcenturies and up to not so long ago, two people,
a man and a woman, met, courted, and decided to form a couple. The start of their life together was
sanctioned by a public act, both legal and religious, called marriage, and it is within the marriage that
the family came to be and to grow with the arrival of children. But over the last 30 years, Canada has
experienced a dramatic increase in cohabiting unions—people living together as a couple without
being married—and thus the long lasting traditional model is no longer the norm. Moreover, cohabi-
tation itself has different characteristics, changing in importance over time. Initially constituting a
childless prelude to marriage, cohabitation has increasingly become widely accepted as forming the
basis for family life. There is a practical effect of this transformation: the beginning of unions is no
longer statistically observed nor is its counterpart, the breakup of unions. Marriage and divorce
statistics inform us on the formation and the ending of a selection of unions, one would suppose the
most traditional ones, tainted by cultural and religious factors, while the other unions, becoming more
and more frequent, can only be apprehended with costly surveys that soon become obsolete because
the social reality is rapidly changing. The great majority of couples today begin their common trek by
cohabiting.
COHABITATION IN QUEBEC
There is a specific reality in Canada that needs to be explained. Canada, as we know it today, dates
back only to 1867, when four territories, or Provinces, artificially constituted over time by the British
crown after their victory over France in 1763, agreed to federate.The four territories have since been
joined by six others, the latest in 1949, to form a ten province Confederation. The initial deal involved
Cyr et al./FAMILY LIFE, PARENTAL SEPARATION, AND CHILD CUSTODY IN CANADA 523
To continue reading
Request your trial