At present, at least a third of American children experience the divorce of their parents before they reach their legal majority, and the number continues to grow. Accompanying these changes, there have been rapid reforms in family law, with a decline in the traditional presumption for maternal custody, an increase in father custody and a rapid proliferation of legal presumptions for joint custody. There is urgent need for information concerning these various custodial options. This proposal seeks support for a three-year longitudinal study of divorcing families.
The specific aims of the research are to: (1) Identify the determinants of the initial custodial arrangements at the time the legal process is begun; (2) Assess the factors that lead to the custodial and financial provisions of divorce decrees; (3) Describe and compare family functioning within each custodial form; (4) Examine the stability and change of various aspects of custodial arrangements. Data will be taken from a stratified sample of approximately 600 families who file for divorce in Santa Clara County, California, over a six-month period. As a pioneer in custodial reform, California offers a greater incidence of paternal and joint custodial arrangements than would currently be found in a national sample. Five interviews will be taken, beginning near the time of filing and at six, twelve, twenty-four and thirty-six months thereafter. Telephone interviews will be used to collect information about the problems and advantages involved in the on-going management of visitation and child care, the amount and quality of contact the child has with both parents, the kind and amount of inter-spousal communication and decision-making regarding the child, the maintenance of financial support, and about any negotiations concerning custody that occur prior to the actual divorce decree. The research is explicitly designed to provide information which is not available from existing data, and to include a broader spectrum of divorcing families than have been included in other custodial research. Results of the investigation will provide useful information for the formation and modification of child custody policy, and permit testing a set of hypotheses concerning the factors that affect the cross-time functioning of single-parent families.
