Finley, G. E. (2003). Father-child relationships following divorce. In
J. R. Miller, R. M. Lerner, L. B. Schiamberg, & P. M. Anderson
(Eds.). Encyclopedia of human ecology, Volume 1: A - H. Santa
Barbara: ABC-CLIO, pp. 291-293.
Father-Child Relationships Following Divorce
Gordon E. Finley
Department of Psychology
Florida International University
The question facing both fathers in particular and society as a
whole at the dawn of the twenty-first century is: Are fathers to be - or
not to be - a part of the human ecology of children? Unprecedented and
conflicting changes have occurred in the American family over the past
half century that have transformed father-child relationships and our
expectations for the role of fathers in their children's lives. In the
1950s, both the divorce rates and the rates of unmarried motherhood were
low, and as a consequence fathers reasonably could count on continuing
contact with their children throughout the adult life-cycle. Beginning in
the 1960s, however, the American family has undergone radical
transformations, which continue today. The social context has changed to
the extent that some feminists have declared fathers to be non-essential
(Silverstein and Auerbach 1999). For some, America has gone from "father
knows best" to father is nonessential.
Many family forms are present today in large numbers that were
infrequent in the 1950s. In recent years, the percentage of children born
to mothers who were not married at the time of delivery has hovered around
33 percent; the first-marriage divorce rate around 50 percent, the
permanent separation rate around 17 percent; and the step-family divorce
rate around 60 percent (Hetherington and Stanley-Hagan 1997). What is of
critical importance to society is that in virtually all of these events,
it is the father-child relationship that is marginalized or severed. Of
perhaps equal importance is the reality that this marginalization and
severing of father-child relationships comes at the same time that
nurturant father involvement in the lives of their children has become an
issue of national concern (Braver and O'Connell 1998; Farrell 2001; Knox
1998; Parke and Brott 1999).
The father-child relationships of children born to never-married
mothers is tenuous, and in any case beyond the scope of this article,
which focuses on the consequences of divorce for children and
fathers. The most powerful determinant of father-child relationships
following divorce are the policies and practices of the family court
system, which awards either sole custody or primary residential parental
responsibility to the mother around 85 percent to 90 percent of the
time. Fathers generally are awarded "visitation" - a term abhorred by
father advocates, who view visitation as structuring the role of the
father as a visitor in his child's life rather than as a meaningful
parent. What this means for fathers and children is that they are living
in different residences and see each other on a limited and fixed
visitation schedule, which is determined by the courts or negotiated "in
the shadow of the law". Thus, what was formerly daily father-child
contact in a shared residence now becomes infrequent contact on a fixed
schedule, with father and child living in different residences. Under
these court mandated circumstances, the father-child relationship is at
greater risk of being marginalized or severed than is the mother-child
relationship, since mothers and children continue to share a residence and
have daily contact.
The risks of negative consequences for fathers and children as a
result of the marginalization or severing of the father-child relationship
with divorce appear to be substantial for both fathers and children. An
early review of the literature (Thompson 1994) provides one of the best
discussions of the issues to date. Ross Thompson's lasting contribution
was to focus on the division of the intangible assets of a marriage, the
emotionally meaningful relationships between the former spouses and their
offspring. While much of the dominant discourse on divorce at that time
tended to focus on the division of the tangible assets of divorce
(primarily financial assets), Thompson had the foresight to focus on the
emotional relationships between former spouses and their offspring, as
well as the long term impact of these relationships on the lives of
fathers and children.
Consider first the consequences of divorce for fathers (Amato
2000; Braver and O'Connell 1998; Knox 1998; Parke and Brott 1999; Thompson
1994). Compared to mothers of divorce, fathers of divorce have higher -
and often substantially higher - rates of: suicide, depression, alcohol
abuse, drug abuse, poor health, work problems, relationship problems, and
social isolation. Although numerous explanations for these negative
outcomes for fathers have been proposed, those favored by father advocates
focus on the loss of meaningful contact with their children. The core
argument here is that postdivorce father-child relationships are of
critical importance not only for the well-being of children, but also for
the well-being of fathers. Additionally, some of these negative outcomes
for fathers also likely stem from the changing role expectations for
fathers that began in the mid-1970s. Beginning in the mid-1970s, fathers
were increasingly expected by society to be involved in nurturing their
children. At the same time, however, the opportunity structure for the
fathers's nurturing involvement with his children was decreasing, due to
increasing rates of divorce and unmarried motherhood. Such a conflict
between changing role demands and changing opportunity structures hardly
can be conducive to either fathers' or children's physical or mental
health.
For children, the consequences of divorce are commonly
negative. The most significant exception is that divorced children from
high-conflict marriages fare better than children who remain in
high-conflict intact marriages. The negative consequences for children of
divorce, as compared to children of intact families, are immediate,
short-term, and long-term. Although there currently is intensive debate
in the scholarly literature regarding the magnitude and subtlety of these
negative effects, there nonetheless is substantial evidence to suggest
that the consequences for children of divorce are present and pervasive,
and that they include higher levels of academic problems, a higher rate of
dropping out of high school, conduct problems, poor psychological
adjustment, psychological distress, poor self-concept, low social
competence, precocious sexual activity, teen pregnancy, alcohol and drug
use, long-term negative health consequences, and relationship difficulties
in adolescence and adulthood (Amato 2000; Booth 1999; Emery 1999). There
also is a growing realization that divorce does not affect all parties in
the same way. Outcomes of divorce are mediated and moderated by a variety
of factors inherent to different families, different children, different
fathers, and different mothers, as well as by their social and economic
context. Indeed, very recent longitudinal studies suggest that some of
the negative outcomes of divorce for children formerly attributed to the
act of divorce are manifested prior to the event of divorce. In short,
the picture is complex and evolving.
While the consequences of divorce for the father-child
relationship can be viewed from many different perspectives, the
perspective least explored focuses on the voices of children of divorce
themselves. One view comes from the longer-term, retrospective
perspective of adult children as they look back on how they wished things
might have been in their relationships with their fathers - their
perceptions of the wants, regrets, and missed opportunities of father
involvement caused by divorce. In a recent study (Finley and Schwartz
2001), a colleague and I asked children of both intact and divorced
families "What did you want your father's level of involvement to be
compared to what it actually was?" The critical results demonstrated
that, as compared with adult children of intact families, what adult
children of divorce wanted most from their fathers was companionship,
sharing activities, leisure/fun/play, providing income, emotional
development, and caregiving. What was most important to children of
divorce were the emotionally meaningful intangible assets lost through
divorce (Thompson 1994) - the "being there" assets of affection, emotional
connection, and companionship with their fathers. If fathers and children
are to be spared the suffering that goes with the current situation, then
changes must occur in social attitudes, social policies, and social
practices that reinvigorate the father-child relationship following
divorce.
There are many changes that have the potential to enhance
father-child relationships, including (1) restructuring the divorce
industry to provide equal opportunity for both fathers and mothers to
maintain meaningful postdivorce relationships with their
children; (2) replacing the inherently adversarial family court system
with one based on a vision of divorce as a social service rather than a
legal service; (3) changing the dominant discourse on divorce to emphasize
the research findings that show fathers and mothers to be equal in their
parenting skills and capacities; and (4) reducing the use of false abuse
complaints as a tool to gain a competitive advantage during custody
disputes.
There is ample evidence to indicate that the filing of false abuse
allegations during custody disputes has severe emotional, social, and
mental health consequences for the child, for the targeted parent (mostly,
but not exclusively, the father), as well as for the parent who filed the
false allegation (as mediated through the increasingly disturbed behaviors
of the child who served as the tool for the false allegation). Through
proactive interventions, both the domestic violence industry and the
divorce industry have the opportunity to better serve the best interests
of the child by reducing false abuse allegations. Such proactive
interventions would maintain the falsely accused parent (again, most
commonly, but not exclusively, the father) as an important figure in the
human ecology of the child (Farrell, 2001; Finley, 2001; Tong, 2002).
The interventions suggested above have the possibility of
reinvigorating and enhancing postdivorce father child relationships. They
contain the seeds of hope for improving the quality of life and well-being
of all members of the former family triad - children, fathers, and mothers
- as well as facilitating the transition to the uncertainties of
postdivorce family life.
References and further reading
Amato, Paul R. 2000. "The Consequences of Divorce for Adults and
Children." Journal of Marriage and the Family 62: 1269-1287.
Booth, Alan. 1999. "Causes and Consequences of Divorce: Reflections on
Recent Research." Pp. 29-48 in The Postdivorce Family. Edited by Ross
A. Thompson and Paul R. Amato. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Braver, Sanford L., and Diane O'Connell. 1998. Divorced
Dads: Shattering the Myths. New York: Tarcher/Putnam.
Emery, Robert E. 1999. "Postdivorce Family Life for Children: An
Overview of Research and Some Implications for Policy." Pp. 3 - 27
in The Postdivorce Family. Edited by Ross A. Thompson and Paul R.
Amato. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Farrell, Warren. 2001. Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the Dads
We Need to the Children We Love. New York: Tarcher/Putnam.
Finley, Gordon E. 2001. "Reduce false-abuse reports." The Miami Herald,
December 28, 2001, p. 6B.
Finley, Gordon E. and Seth J. Schwartz. 2001. "Father Hunger, Divorce,
Family Court, and the Reconstruction of the Essential Father." Poster
presented at the meetings of the Society for Research in Child
Development, Minneapolis, MN.
Hetherington, E. Mavis and Margaret M. Stanley-Hagan. 1997. "The Effects
of Divorce on Fathers and Their Children." Pp. 191-211, 361-369 in
The Role of the Father in Child Development. 3rd ed. Edited by Michael
E. Lamb. New York: Wiley.
Knox, David. 1998. The Divorced Dad's Survival Book: How to Stay
Connected with Your Kids. New York: Plenum.
Parke, Ross D. and Armin A. Brott. 1999. Throwaway Dads: The Myths and
Barriers That Keep Men from Being the Fathers They Want to Be.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Silverstein, Louise B. and Carl F. Auerbach. 1999. "Deconstructing the
Essential Father." American Psychologist 54: 397-407.
Thompson, Ross A. 1994. "The Role of the Father after Divorce."
Pp. 210-235 in The Future of Children. Vol. 4, no. 1, Children and
Divorce. San Francisco: Center for the Future of Children.
Tong, Dean. 2002. Elusive Innocence: Survival Guide for the Falsely
Accused. Lafayette, LA: Huntington House Publishers.
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