Equal time with parents children do well
CHILDREN who spend roughly equal time with both parents after a divorce or separation are doing well, though no better or worse than children who spend most time with their mothers, a study shows.
Providing parents hold no fears for their children’s safety or for their own, most are happy with shared care, and make it work. Many mothers like the break and many children think the arrangement is ”fair.”
The study, commissioned by the federal Attorney-General’s Department, is based on the responses of 1028 parents and 136 children, and other data.
Conducted by a team under the leadership of the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of NSW with academics from the University of Sydney and the Australian Institute of Family Studies, it is part of a government-funded investigation into the impact of reforms to the Family Law Act made in 2006.
”On the whole the more contact a child has with both parents the better for the child,” said Professor Ilan Katz, the chief investigator. ”But if you impose shared care on situations where parents live far apart, where there is conflict, and the child doesn’t like it and wants stability, it can be damaging.”
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