Parenting Apart: Patterns of Childrearing After Marital Disruption

by Frank JF. Furstenberg, Jr¹ and Christine Winquist Nord²

Abstract

Contents of This Page

Introduction
The Data
Results: Conflict Between Outside Parents and Their Children
Responsibility Taken by the Outside Parent
Children's Relations with Their Outside Parent
Relations Among Resident and Nonresident Parents
Contact with the Outside Parent and Relations
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Back to Contents

Historians of the 20th century family may look back on the period from 1965 to 1980 as no less remarkable than the baby boom era that preceded it. Any illusions that the shaping of the modern family was completed by the middle of the 20th century were utterly shattered by the experience of the recent past. The institution of marriage was changing long before the last decade, but the rapid rise in divorce seems to have accelerated the transformation and ushered into place a new set of marriage practices.

If current rates are maintained, half of those who have married recently will eventually divorce. Most of these individuals, however, will ultimately remarry. Approximately three out of four divorced women and five out of six divorced men make the transition to second marriages (Glick, 1984). Thus, the expectation of conjugal permanency has given way to a pattern of conjugal succession (Furstenberg, 1982a)

Divorce has only minor implications when a couple is childless. In about three out of five divorces, however, children are involved (Glick 1979). A sociological proposition, derived from Malinowski's observations, holds that marriage provides a social contract for assigning parental - particularly paternal - rights and obligations. Unless provisions are made for dealing with the dissolution of that contract, parents and children are placed in an anomalous situation.

Remarriage further complicates that predicament. It restores the integrity of the family, but it also can add to the complexity of family life. Parents are not supplanted as in previous times when death preceded remarriage. Conjugal succession permits parents to be added onto the existing roster of caretakers. Consequently, a large number of families today are facing circumstances that are culturally uncharted (Bohannon, 1970; Cherlin, 1978; Furstenberg, 1979; Weiss, 1975). Parents must divide their attention and resources between two or more families; and children, in turn, frequently grow up with multiple parents. Our kinship system provides little guidance for adjudicating the conflicting claims of coparents and stepparents or for assigning priorities to children who may have to deal with many parent figures (Duberman, 1975; Ahrons, 1980; Walker et al., 1977).

An intriguing question, not fully addressed in previous research, is how parents and children respond when their families are restructured by divorce and remarriage. Drawing on data from a nationally representative household sample of children, this paper describes relations among parents, stepparents, and children after separation and divorce, with particular attention to how divorce and remarriage may be altering conceptions of parenthood and parenting practices.

The Data

Back to Contents

In 1976 the Foundation for Child Development funded a study on the well- being of children (Zill, in press). Data were collected from a nationally representative sample of households containing children between the ages of 7 and 11. Up to two children between these ages in each household were interviewed, yielding a total of 2,279 children from 1,747 households, or 80% of the identified households. In 1981, in collaboration with Nicholas Zill and James L. Peterson who carried out the initial survey, a follow-up to the original National Survey of Children (NSC) was designed to examine the effects of marital disruption on the development and well-being of children and on the operation of single and multi-parent families. Because we wanted to concentrate on the households that had experienced a change in the marital situation of the parents, all children whose parents were known (from the earlier survey) to have experienced marital disruption or who were at risk of separating because they had reported a high-conflict marriage were included in the follow-up. In addition, we drew from the initial sample a randomly selected sub-sample of children living in stable, low-conflict families as a comparison group; these were later weighted back to represent their true proportion in the original sample.

Nearly 90% of the children identified to be reinterviewed were located. Interviews were obtained in over 90% of those found, yielding an overall response rate of 79.3%. Further discussion of the interview procedure and content is fully described in an earlier paper (Furstenberg et al., 1983).

Although occasional reference is made here to the larger group of children living with both biological parents or with adopted parents in intact marriages, this paper concentrates on the experiences of children in single-parent and step-parent families. Children whose parents have formally divorced dominate the group (75%), but children whose parents have only separated (16%) and children whose parents have never married (8%) also are included in the discussion that follows. Because we are interested in patterns of parenting by both the resident and nonresident parent, only children whose nonresident parents are alive are included in the analysis.

In previous analyses of the NSC, we estimated that close to half of all children would not live with both of their biological parents continuously during childhood. Moreover, most children whose parents separated or divorced would not maintain regular contact with the parent living outside the home. In fact, a near majority of children in our sample (49%) had not seen their nonresident parent in the preceding year, and only one child in six averaged weekly contact or better.

A sharp attenuation of contact occurred over time, partly owing to geographical mobility; regular visits were much more likely if the nonresident parent lived nearby. Attrition of contact was higher in families of low socioeconomic status, where the noncustodial parent also was less likely to pay child support. Although the payment of child support was an important correlate of continued contact, we did not find that the current marital status of the parents (either the custodial or noncustodial) had much effect on the amount of contact between nonresident parents and their children or the amount of support that they provided. (For further details see Furstenberg et al., 1983; Furstenberg, 1982b.)

This paper picks up where the previous analyses have left off, exploring in greater detail the quality of family relations after divorce and particular consequences of continued contact for family functioning. We begin by characterizing the nature of contact, when there is any, between children and their outside parent, taking into account the interval of time that has elapsed since separation. This leads us to a discussion of the extent of childrearing responsibilities assumed by outside parents, relations between former spouses and, finally, a brief examination of the implications of continued contact for the children's adjustment to life in single-parent or stepfamily households.

Results

The Nature of Contact Between Outside Parents and Their Children

Back to Contents

Each child's interview contained a series of questions about the nature of contact with the outside parent and the respondent's subjective impression of the quality of that contact. The data presented in Table 1 point to the limited role that outside parents play in the day-to-day lives of their children. According to the adult informants, three out of five children had not seen their outside biological fathers in the past month. Children were much more likely to have had contact, however, if their parents had separated recently. The parents' accounts square rather well with the children's reports of the amount of contact occurring in a typical month. Except for the period immediately after separation, children typically report infrequent contact with their parents, averaging only about two visits per month.

Visits only rarely involved sleeping over at the outside parent's house. Four out of five children said that they never slept over at the nonresidential fathers' houses in a typical month, and half of those who did sleep over at least occasionally did so only once or twice a month. Again, there are clear differences by length of time since separation. Conceivably these figures understate the amount of intimate, intensive contact because some families cluster their overnight stays during vacations or in the summer months. About one out of five children reported staying at their outside fathers' houses for a week or more, indicating that in the course of a year some children manage more contact than is reflected by the typical pattern. Although there are still differences by length of time since separation, they are not as sharply delineated. This could mean that there is a transitional stage for some outside parents between a period of intense involvement and a greater degree of disengagement, perhaps occasioned by a geographical move or a remarriage. Thus, child-care practices are something like patterns of interaction with extended kin. Fewer than one out of five children stated that they had space in their nonresidential fathers' homes to keep clothing or personal effects, and the majority of children reported that their outside fathers' homes were like "visiting in someone else's home" (19%) or that they never visited their outside parents at all (58%).

Furthermore, outside fathers tended to have little contact with their children by telephone. Overall, children averaged fewer than one conversation per week with their noncustodial fathers. Phoning, too, declines sharply as duration since separation increases. Letter writing was even more uncommon. Thus, it would seem that indirect forms of communication do not make up for the lack of direct contact that characterizes relations between outside fathers and their children.

As for mothers living outside the home, Table 1 reveals that they tend to maintain a much more active role in childrearing. Although few in number, nonresident mothers are distinctly more likely to visit with their child on a regular basis, have overnight visits, and have more indirect contact by phone and letter. Accordingly, children living apart from their mothers are more likely to say that they have places to store their things at the mothers' houses and that they feel like their own homes. There are not enough cases to examine the pattern of contact between children and their noncustodial mothers by duration since separation, but our impression is that the level of contact does not drop off so sharply for mothers over time. Nonetheless, even most mothers living outside the home do not have frequent and continuous contact with their children.

Extent of Childrearing Responsibility Taken by the Outside Parent

Back to Contents

Contact with the outside parent, if it occurs at all, is usually social or recreational (Table 2). Among the minority of children who had seen their parents during the past week, only a tenth had been given assistance with schoolwork; slightly more than a fifth had worked on projects together, such as making something, cooking, or sewing; about a fourth had played some game or sport. These figures are overstated owing to the exclusion of children who have not seen their outside parents in the past year. Were we to include these cases, it would turn out that only a miniscule percentage of the sample had received help with homework; and a small fraction of the sample-less than one child in ten-had worked on projects together or played some game or sport with their outside parents. While this list of behavior hardly represents a complete inventory of childrearing activities, it is clear that the outside parent normally plays a very limited role.

We get a clearer impression of the extent of childrearing by outside parents when their behavior is contrasted to parental practices of parents living inside the home. Table 2 displays the activities and family practices of resident and nonresident parents in single-parent and step-families as reported by the children. For purposes of comparison, the reports of children living with two biological parents also are included. Thus, the relative influence of family structure and of the parent's residential status can be assessed on patterns of family interaction. Keep in mind that most of the data on the outside parent were collected only if the child reported at least 14 days of contact during the preceding year.

Children generally have significantly lower levels of contact with outside parents than with parents living inside the home, even when comparisons are confined to the more active group of outside parents. Differences in patterns of parenting are generally much greater between resident and nonresident parents than between any of the family forms. The disparity in social and recreational activities is not quite as large as task-oriented activities such as homework. Again, this would seem to suggest that the role of the outside parent is generally confined to entertainment and excludes most of routine caretaking responsibilities of household management. Partly because their contact frequently occurs outside the home, nonresident parents are less likely to expect their children to straighten up around the house or help prepare meals or to have definite rules about their children's day-to-day routines. Although the relative differences are quite sizable, a minority of outside parents who see their children at least 14 days a year do manage to exercise parental responsibilities.

As an interesting aside, Table 2 also shows that instrumental exchanges between parents and children do not vary greatly by family type. Children in reconstituted and single-parent families are as likely as children in unbroken families to say that their parents make demands on them for helping out. Indeed, if anything, more seems to be expected of children in single-parent households. Rules are not more lax for children of disrupted marriages, with the possible exception of dating restrictions. Family structure also appears not to affect significantly the degree to which children are included in the process of rule making.

The Quality of Children's Relations with Their Outside Parents

Back to Contents

A clearer picture of how children in different family circumstances feel about the time spent with parents is gained from their own reports on the quality of relations with parents living inside and outside the home. Because each biological parent was assessed separately, we can learn from Table 3 whether the quality of the parent-child relationships varies more by family structure or by residential arrangement. Unfortunately, there are too few single fathers to appear as a separate subgroup in the table. Remember also that most entries in Table 3 exclude children who had little or no contact with their outside parents.

In general, children in all family situations are disinclined to report serious disturbances in their relationships with their outside parents. A majority say that they do not often argue with their outside parents; that they feel loved, appreciated and trusted; and that they spend enough time with their outside parents. Close to half say that they want to be like their outside parents when they grow up.

In comparing children's perceptions of residential and nonresidential parents, however, some interesting differences emerge. A strong similarity exists in children's feelings towards their mothers regardless of the latter's marital or residential situation. Children from nonintact families are somewhat less likely to say that they want to be like their mothers when they grow up, but they are otherwise similar in their relations with their mothers. By contrast, children with fathers living outside the home are decidedly more discontent with their paternal relationship than those residing with their father. More than half say that they do not get all the affection they need, and nearly as many say they are only fairly close or not close at all to their fathers. Outside fathers are also faulted for not making clear and consistent rules and for not being firm enough.

A possible reason for the differences in the way that children regard mothers and fathers living outside the home was suggested in the findings presented earlier, namely that children have more contact with outside mothers than with outside fathers. Conceivably, the lesser degree of contact - rather than parent's gender - explains children's lower assessment of their fathers. While the number of cases precludes a definitive test of this hypothesis, greater paternal contact does have some effect on the children's assessment of the quality of relations with their fathers (not shown). However, the effect is not as large as might be expected. Only at the extreme, when contact had not taken place in the past year, were children noticeably more critical of their fathers. It appears, then, that children who see more of their fathers do not generally enjoy much closer relation than those with occasional contact.

Mothers with infrequent contact were accorded even more importance. These rather extravagant evaluations may be nothing more than poignant reminders of the symbolic importance to the child of maintaining links to the biological parent, but it also appears that children are prepared to adopt something like a sliding scale when they judge their relations with nonresident parents. Less is expected and, therefore, whatever attentions are given are gratefully received. These findings closely parallel the results of previous research among low-income blacks, focusing on relations between unmarried fathers and their children: what seem like tenuous or nonexistent ties to outside observers are experienced by participants as important and meaningful relations (Furstenberg and Talvitie, 1979).

A mark of the significance of the outside parent is indicated by children's responses to the question, "When you think about your family, who specifically do you include?" Virtually all children included the biological parents with whom they were residing, and more than two out of three (72%) mentioned stepfathers, if their biological mothers were remarried. By contrast, only half of the children with outside fathers included them in their family list. Nonetheless, this latter proportion is impressive in view of what little contact many have with these individuals. Children who saw their parents only occasionally, 3 to 13 days a year, were only slightly less likely to regard their outside parents as members of their families, compared with children who saw their parents on a weekly basis. When visits occurred less often than three days a year, the outside father was only rarely regarded as a "family member" by the child.

Are children more likely to omit their outside parents from their lists of family members if they are living with stepparents? The data for children living apart from their fathers clearly shows that having a stepparent has no effect on the likelihood of the child listing the father as a family member. Children appear to accumulate rather than replace fathers, particularly when the father outside the home maintains an active presence in the child's life. The fact that many children expand the boundaries of their family to include both their biological and stepfathers does not mean, of course, that parents do the same. Indeed, when asked to list the people they considered to be family members, about 1 in 20 adult respondents included their former mates. While hardly surprising, this finding alerts us to the potential complications in the socialization process when parents and children define themselves in family systems that only partially overlap.

Relations Among Resident and Nonresident Parents

Back to Contents

This brings us to a pair of critical questions about which previous research has had little to say: How do resident and nonresident parents share the responsibilities of child care, and how are these arrangements altered when stepparents become involved as well? A few previous studies have addressed these questions in small-scale research (Keshet, 1980; Goldsmith, 1980; Goeting, 1979; Spanier and Thompson, 1984). The data presented in the remainder of this paper provide only an introduction to these topics.

Table 4 includes only families - about half of the disrupted ones - in which the outside parents have remained involved at least to some degree in the past five years. Key indicators of the relationship of the outside parent to the parent in the household are cross-tabulated by the gender of the outside parent and, for outside fathers, the amount of contact with the child. Because the number of children who are not living with their mothers is small, caution should be used in generalizing the results for outside mothers.

TABLE 4. Level and Quality of Adult Respondent's Interaction with Outside Parent (Percentages - U.S. Children Aged 11-16, 1981)
Interaction Reports	Amount of Contact with Outside Father					Outside Parents
	Last Contact 1-5 Years Ago	Number of Days of Contact in Last Year			pa	Total for Outside Father	Total for Outside Mother	pb
		1-13	14-51	52+
Residential Parent Responses
Rarely or never discuss matters concerning child with the outside parent	81	77	57	44	**	67	59
Rarely or never agree with outside parent in rearing child	22	26	32	48	**	32	20
Outside parent takes too little responsibility in rearing child	87	73	74	61		75	71
Outside parent has very little or no influence on decisions about child	91	87	68	45	**	73	77
Outside parent often breaks plans to see child	12	15	4	5	**	9	12
Outside parent often meddles in the way you bring up child	3	3	6	10		5	0
Outside parent often tries to undermine your rules for child	0	4	8	16		8	0
Child sometimes or often takes advantage of differences between you and outside parent	2	9	31	43	**	23	17
Sometimes or often use child to communicate with outside parent	30	28	40	53	**	38	31
Hardly ever or never talk with child about your relationship with outside parent	98	91	69	57	**	46	38
Child Responses
Outside parent and resident parents sometimes or often fight over child's time	3	7	10	14	**	9	20
In matters concerning child, outside and resident parents do not get along	7	13	16	14	*	14	13
Unweighted Nc	(45)	(65)	(65)	(55)		(238)	(28)
aRepresents significant chi-squares comparing outside fathers with varying degrees of contact with their children, including those with no contact in the past year, as long as outside parent is presumed alive: *p < .05; **p < .01. bThere are no significant chi-squares when comparing outside fathers and outside mothers who had some contact with their children in the last year. cNs vary slightly by question because of nonresponses.

Looking first at the total figures for outside mothers and fathers, it is striking how little communication about the child there is between formerly married couples. These responses are in part a reflection of the limited contact that outside parents have with their children. Still, this lack of communication indicates that the pattern of cooperative coparenting, so widely portrayed in popular media, is, in fact, rather rare. Close to half of the resident mothers and nearly two out of five (38%) of the resident fathers say they hardly ever or never talk with their children about their relationship to the outside parents, and a substantial minority (38% of the mothers and 31% of the fathers) report that they sometimes or often communicate with the outside parents through their children. It would appear that children often provide a key communication link between the biological parents, who are reluctant partners in the childrearing process.

Given the low level of communication, it is not surprising that, when asked how much input the nonresident parents have in the decision-making process, about three-fourths of the respondents replied that they had little or no influence and two-fifths stated that the biological parents never made decisions together. This low level of collaboration led most parents to complain about the level of childrearing responsibility assumed by the nonresident parent.

As involvement by the outside parent increases, the proportion of residential mothers who state that they rarely or never discuss childrearing matters with the outside father, that he has little influence on their decisions, and that he takes too little child-care responsibility drops. The proportion of residential mothers who use the child to communicate with the outside father, however, increases significantly. The increase in indirect communication with the outside parent indicates a strategy for reducing potential strain - minimize personal contact.

This explanation seems plausible for two reasons. First, as the level of contact increases, so does the proportion of residential mothers who report that they rarely or never agree with the outside parent in raising the child. Second, even when contact averages once a week, many residential mothers do not discuss child-care matters with the outside fathers or admit their influence on child-care decisions. This suggests that parents often contrive to stay away from one another in order to minimize the potential for open hostility. Even in families where the couple is presumably coparenting, child-care decisions often are made without the benefit of direct consultation and deliberation.

Incidentally, the negative feelings expressed are in sharp contrast to reports by remarried respondents about their current spouses. An overwhelming majority of remarried parents express a high degree of contentment with the level of the child-care support provided by spouses living inside the home, indicating that the negative reports about the outside parents are not merely the inevitable expressions that the other parent is not doing enough (not shown).

The above interpretation gains more support when we examine a set of questions, asked of the resident parents, about tensions that could arise through direct dealings between the outside parents and the children. The resident parents were asked if the outside parent broke plans to see the child, meddled in the raising of the child, or tried to undermine rules for the child. Very few parents complained of any of these problems. Although the amount of strain evidenced by two of these questions (meddling and undermining rules) increased with increasing levels of contact between the outside parent and the child, the proportion who complained about interference was remarkably low even at high levels of contact. It appears that formerly married couples try to minimize the effect of any tension between themselves for their children. Indeed, even though resident parents indicate that they rarely or never agree with the outside parents, very few children report that their biological parents often fight or do not get along well.

From the above discussion, it is apparent that resident fathers are about as likely as resident mothers to report that the parent living outside the home does not assume a fair share of child-care. Gender appears to be of less importance than custodial position in shaping perspectives on childrearing and evaluations of coparenting arrangements (cf. Furstenberg and Spanier, 1984).

Contact with the Outside Parent and Family Relations

Back to Contents

Remarriage can either alleviate or complicate tensions between parents. Virtually no differences turned up when the patterns of communication, the assessments of involvement, and the problems of relating to the outside parent were cross-tabulated by the current marital status of each parent. Remarried respondents also were asked directly whether their contact with the outside parent put a strain on their marriage. Only 3% said this happened often, and another 9% said that it sometimes occurred. The respondents who were in more active coparenting relationships were actually less likely to report that dealings with the outside parents introduced tensions into their marriages (not shown).

Similarly, stepfamily relations were not adversely affected by contact with the outside parent. Only 8% of the sample said that the nonresident parent sometimes interfered with the relationship of the child and stepparent, and 3% said such instances of interference occurred often. Again, no relationship existed between the amount of contact by the outside parent and complaints of intrusion.

In addition to these subjective appraisals by the adults, the children's interview provided further confirmation that the outside parent was not complicating parent-child relations inside the household or making family life more difficult. This conclusion was reached after examining the impact of contact with the outside parent using a wide range of indicators of family functioning drawn from the children's interview. The measures included reports of the quality of relations with custodial parents and stepparents, when present in the household, as well as children's descriptions of their family life during the months immediately preceding the survey.

The consistency of the results is impressive. Children in regular contact with the parents outside the home were no more likely than those whose contact was sporadic or nonexistent to report relational problems with either their custodial parents or their stepparents. This is not to say that family disruption had no consequences for relations with parents or views of family life. Children from broken marriages were not as happy with the quality of family relationships and were more critical of how their families functioned (Furstenberg and Seltzer, 1983). However, the displeasure of children living in single-parent households or in stepfamilies cannot be traced to the level of involvement by the biological parents living outside the home.

Before completely dismissing the possibility that contact with the outside parent disturbs relations in the child's household, a separate analysis was undertaken of children living in three different family types: stepfamilies with biological mothers, stepfamilies with biological fathers, and children living only with mothers. Not enough cases exist to permit a separate examination of children living with fathers only. Even in the three subgroups mentioned above, the number of cases is small - particularly in households where the children are living with stepmothers - requiring that caution be exercised in interpreting the results.

Contact with the outside father clearly does not impair relations with resident parents. In fact, the data hint that satisfaction with family relations may be ever greater when children maintain regular contact with fathers living outside the home. Moreover, relations with stepfathers show no evidence of disturbance when biological fathers outside the home play an active role. Our data suggest that children are usually able to expand their families to include more than one father and perhaps even benefit from doing so in the event of divorce.

The situation looks somewhat different for children living with stepmothers. These children are generally less content with the quality of family life, and they specifically experience difficulties with their stepmothers. Although the number of cases are few, the results imply that regular contact with the outside mother may complicate relations with the stepmother. Children seem to find it harder to incorporate new mothers than new fathers.

Before drawing any policy implications about the advisability of different custody practices from this particular result, several possible interpretations must be considered. Children living with their biological fathers and stepmothers may be different to begin with, because they represent exceptions to the ordinary practice of assigning custody of the children to the biological mothers. Therefore, it seems likely that children living with their fathers may have been exposed to a difficult custody negotiation or may have a special history of troubled family relations. Furthermore, the children in our study are in late childhood and early adolescence; they were all born in the period when divorce rates were just beginning to accelerate. Many, therefore, experienced family disruption a decade ago, when divorce was less common and custody practices more uniformly prescribed. How children would respond to particular custody arrangements today requires a comparable study of children whose parents have divorced more recently.

Conclusion

Back to Contents

Despite inevitable qualifications about the limitations of the data, the National Survey of Chidden yields some surprising results on the way that marital disruption is altering parenting practices. Our major findings can be summarized as follows.

1. Marital disruption effectively destroys the ongoing relationship between children and the biological parents living outside the home in a majority of families. Nearly half of all children have not seen their nonresident fathers in the past year. Only a minority have ever slept over at the father's house; among those who have, overnight visits are a special treat (or perhaps in some cases a special obligation) rather than a regular routine. Children of divorce rarely have two homes as is commonly suggested in the mass media. Many - probably a majority - have never set foot inside the houses of their nonresident fathers, which undoubtedly are less familiar to them than the homes of many relatives or friends.

2. Contact with the outside parent, when there is any, normally takes the form of a social rather than an instrumental exchange. Parents occasionally go out to dinner with their children, take them on trips, or play with them; but they rarely help them with schoolwork or carry out some project together. Outside fathers who socialize their children at all usually do so from a distance and with a great deal of laxity. There seems to be more than a grain of truth to the stereotype that parents outside the home behave more like pals than parents.

3. Most children who see their outside parents on a more or less regular basis do not complain about the amount of love or attention they receive. Children with fathers living outside the home are not as content with their relationship as children with mothers living outside the home; but regardless of who is the custodial parent, children seem to apply a sliding scale in assessing relations with the outside parents, a scale that is far more generous than objective standards might permit.

4. Residential parents disproportionately assume the responsibility of child care. Accordingly, they commonly complain about low level of involvement of outside parents in childrearing tasks. They credit them with little decision- making authority and indicate that direct discussions about the child rarely if ever take place. Over half report that they rarely or never discuss childrearing matters with the outside parents, even when they are in fairly regular contact with the children; the absence of communication dampens the possibility of conflict between the parents. "Parallel parenting" might be a better way of characterizing the pattern of childrearing between formerly married couples, compared with "coparenting", a term that is widely used but rarely practiced.

5. Our data do not seem to support the speculations of a number of researchers and clinicians that stepfamily life is frequently afflicted with problems created by the presence of a multitude of parents. Typically, as we have seen, no more than two parents, if that many, are actively involved after marriage break ups. When the residential parent remarries and the outside parent remains on the scene, we find little evidence from either parent or child of difficulties that can be directly traced to the participation of multiple parents. At least in stepfamilies consisting of the children's mothers and stepfathers, which are the majority of cases, active participation by the outside parents does not generally elevate level of tension in the family or complicate the relationship of children and stepfathers.

In the rarer cases of families with stepmothers, there was some evidence that regular contact with the outside mothers created tensions in the families and complicated the children's relations with their stepmothers. Children seem to find it more difficult to replace mothers than fathers, though the circumstances in families with step-mothers are so different and the number of cases so small that this interpretation must be considered only conjecture.

In general, the ability of children to deal with complexity was impressive. Children seemed to be doing as well if not better in expanded family situations than in arrangements that involve the loss or replacement of a parent. Partly, this may reflect the fact that outside parents who are committed to maintaining a relationship are a special breed and their children recognize it. They also may have experienced a less traumatic divorce, a fact that contributes to the well-being of their children and the relatively low level of conflict with their former spouse.

Finally, we must reiterate that the data presented in this paper do not address the critical question of how divorce and remarriage affect the adjustment of children and their level of functioning with peers, in school, or in the larger society. This is the subject of a separate analysis (Furstenberg and Allison, 1984). All that we have shown here is that the ability of children to manage the trauma of separation and divorce seems to be reasonably high when we consider their relations with their biological parents. Those who encounter family disruption usually retain reasonably close ties to their resident parents and continue to make what they can of their relations with their nonresident parents. In most instances, they are obviously making do with very little.

Stepping back from the data, what do these particular findings tell us about how the growing pattern of conjugal succession is likely to affect the socialization process and the operation of the American kinship system? It is clear that at the present time coparenting among formerly married couples is more of a myth than a reality in all but a tiny fraction of families. Even among the highly educated, the extent to which parental responsibilities are shared after separation or divorce is minimal. As a rule divorce implies not only the dissolution of marital bonds but a partial if not total withdrawal from parenting as well. When noncustodial parents move out, parenting - if it continues at all - usually is reduced to a ritual relationship. Parents outside the home retain certain symbolic rights, but they relinquish most of their actual responsibilities. Thus, while they continue to be their children's "real parents" and are generally accorded a place in the immediate family even when they have little contact with their offspring , they typically give up decision-making authority and exercise little direct influence over their children's upbringing.

How and why outside parents withdraw from their children is a question of vital importance to understanding the impact of divorce on parenting. Clearly, part of the explanation stems from an unwillingness to provide child support, part from the difficulty of maintaining relations with the former spouse who retains custody of the child. The withdrawal from parenting also may be traced to the pattern of conjugal succession itself. Over time, many fathers assume caretaking responsibilities in second families (Furstenberg and Spanier, 1984). One way of portraying our system, then, is to visualize it as a form of childswapping. Parents, fathers in particular, exchange one set of children for another as they move from one household to the next. They are at least as conscientious in the role of resident surrogate parent as they are in their role as nonresident biological parent. On the basis of behavior alone, it might seem that sociological parenthood is more salient than biological parenthood.

There are several grounds for objecting to this conclusion. In the first place, it does not accurately describe all cases. Some outside parents maintain a high degree of involvement in childrearing. Second, our system is currently in a state of flux as custody practices are being reconsidered in response to the changing roles of fathers and the growing involvement of women in the market-place. Admittedly, the picture we have provided is a static one that does not take account of changes that may be under way. Current practices as described in this paper are not inevitable, and they may indeed be changing. Finally, it is important to recognize that the perspective presented here not only is historically cross-sectional but also focuses on the family at a single point in its development. Noncustodial parents sometimes become more involved in late adolescence or early adulthood when the child is emancipated from the household.

These objections notwithstanding, our data suggest that the significance of biological parenthood may be waning in response to the emerging pattern of conjugal succession. Biological ties to the child seem to count for less, sociological ties for more. This observation is consistent with another more general trend that may be taking place in family relations. Like marriage, childbearing and childrearing are processes that have become dictated less by constraint and obligation and determined more by voluntary participation. Increasingly it seems that parenthood is no less impermanent than marriage.

References

Back to Contents

Ahrons, C R (1980) "Joint custody arrangements in the postdivorce family", Journal of Divorce 3 (Spring): pp 189-205.
Bohannon, P. (Ed) (1970) Divorce and After: An Analysis of the Emotional and Social Problems of Divorce, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books (Doubleday).
Cherlin, A J (1978) "Remarriage as an incomplete institution", American Journal of Sociology, 84: pp 634-650.
Duberman, L (1975) The Reconstituted Family: A Study of Remarried Couples and Their Children, Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
Furstenberg, F F Jr (1979) "Recycling the family: perspectives for researching a neglected family form", Marriage and Family Review 2(3):1, pp 12-22.
Furstenberg, F F Jr (1982a) "Conjugal succession: reentering marriage after divorce", pp 107-146 in P B Baltes and O G Brim (Eds), Life span Development and Behavior (Vol 4), New York: Academic Press
Furstenberg, F F Jr (1982b) "Child care after divorce and remarriage", Paper presented at the MacArthur Foundation Conference on Child Care: Growth Fostering Environments, Chicago.
Furstenberg, F F Jr and Allison, P D (1984) "How marital disruption affects children: variations by age and sex", Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Furstenberg, F F Jr, Nord, C W, Peterson, J L and Zill, N (1983) "The life course of children of divorce: marital disruption and parental contact", American Sociological Review 8(5): pp 656-668.
Furstenberg, F F Jr and Seltzer, J A (1983) "Divorce and Child Development", Paper presented at Orthopsychiatric Association, Boston.
Furstenberg, F F Jr and Seltzer, J A (1983) "Divorce and child development", Paper presented at Orthopsychiatric Association, Boston.
Furstenberg, F F Jr and Spanier, G B (1984) Recycling the Family: Remarriage After Divorce, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Furstenberg, F F Jr and Talvitie, K (1979) "Children's names and paternal claims: bonds between unmarried fathers and their children", Journal of Family Issues 1(1): pp. 31-57.
Glick, P C (1979) "Children of divorced parents in demographic perspective", Journal of Social Issues 35(4): pp 170-182.
Glick, P C (1984) "Marriage, divorce, and living arrangements: prospective changes", Journal of Family Issues 5(1):7-26.
Goetting, A (1979) "The normative integration of the former spouse relationship", Journal of Divorce 2: pp 395-414.
Goldsmith, J (1980) "Relationships between former spouses: descriptive findings", Journal of Divorce, 4, pp 1-20.
Keshet, J K (1980) "From separation to stepfamily: a subsystem analysis", Journal of Family Issues, 1 (4), pp 517-532.
Spanier, G B and Thompson, L (1984) Parting: The Aftermath of Separation and Divorce, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Walker, K N, Rogers, J and Messinger L (1977) "Remarriage after divorce: a review", Social Casework, 58, pp 276-285.
Weiss, R S (1975) Marital Separation, New York: Basic Books.
Zill, N (In press) Happy, Healthy, and Insecure: A Portrait of Middle Childhood in America, Garden City, NY: Doubleday.