Child Care

Shared Parenting

Connecticut’s Marsha Kline Pruett, a psychologist with extensive experience in the child custody area, wrote a book summarizing research on shared parenting. Click here for excerpts from Your Divorce Advisor. Here is a summary of a seminal study of Father Absence done at Princeton University, Center for Child-Wellbeing: “This study measures the likelihood of incarceration among contemporary male youths from father-absent households, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Hypotheses test the contribution of socioeconomic disadvantage, poverty, family instability, residential adults in father-absent households, as well as selection bias. Results from longitudinal event history analysis show that while certain unfavorable circumstances, such as teen motherhood, low parent education, urban residence, racial inequalities and poverty, are associated with incarceration among father-absent youths, net of these factors, these youths still face double the odds [of incarceration] of their peers. Nonetheless, youths from stepparent families are even more vulnerable to the risk of incarceration, especially those in father-stepmother households, which suggests that the re-marriage may present even greater difficulties for male children than father absence.” Emphasis and brackets added. From FATHER ABSENCE AND YOUTH INCARCERATION by Cynthia C. Harper, Ph.D. and Sara S. McLanahan, Ph.D. Go to: 5. https://sharedparentinginc.orgWP99-03-HarperFatherAbsence.pdf

Here’s what the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services has to say:
“More than a quarter of American children—nearly 17 million—do not live with their father. Girls without a father in their life are two and a half times as likely to get pregnant and 53 percent more likely to commit suicide. Boys without a father in their life are 63 percent more likely to run away and 37 percent more likely to abuse drugs. Both girls and boys are twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to end up in jail and nearly four times as likely to need help for emotional or behavioral problems.” — HHS Press Release, Friday, March 26, 1999.

For more research from Princeton’s center for Child-Wellbeing, go to: http://crcw.princeton.edu/