Parental break-up and father-child contact over the life ... - Nova

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Parental break-up and father-child contact over the
life course in Norway
A literature review
Anne Skevik Grødem
NOVA
Paper prepared for the Mid-Term Conference of the NCoE Welfare,
‘Reassessing the Nordic Welfare Model’, May 18-20, Oslo, Norway
(www.reassess.no)
Anne Skevik Grødem
NOVA – Norwegian Social research
P.O. Box 3223 Elsenberg
0208 Oslo
Norway
Phone +4722541222
Fax +4722541201
e-mail: anne.s.grodem@nova.no
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Today 80 per cent of children live with their mothers after the break-up between the parents…
Many fathers are frustrated with this unequal division and feel significantly weakened in their
role as a parent as a consequence of having far less contact with, and responsibility for, the
children. (St.meld. nr. 8 (2008-2009):80)
That many fathers have strongly reduced contact with their children after a break-up, can
have consequences also in the longer run. The reduced contact appears to last, so that men
will not receive the same care and concern from children as women do when they grow older.
This is a social consequence of gender inequality in earlier phases of life that is little
discussed (op.cit. :82)
The two quotes above come from the Norwegian government’s report to the Parliament on
men, masculinities and gender equality (St. meld. nr. 8 (2008-2009)). The report was
launched in December 2008, and is the first-ever parliamentary report in Norwegian history to
focus on gender equality from men’s perspective. As the quotes indicate, the government is
concerned about the marginalisation of men in relation to their children, and the consequences
this marginalisation has in the short and long run.
Rates of parental break-up – both as divorce and as break-up of cohabiting relationships – are
high in Norway. While we have relatively good data on contact between non-resident parents
and dependent children, information is scarce when it comes to contact between adult children
and ageing parents. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of what we know
about father-child contact after the break-up in various stages of life. The paper is a literature
review, aimed at summing up what we know and identifying challenges for future research. I
shall focus on Norway, and bring in evidence from other countries where this is necessary to
compliment (the limited) Norwegian data.
The paper proceeds as follows: first, I discuss the situation in Norway relative to that in other
countries, with an emphasis on parental break-up, fatherhood policies and practices, and the
exchange of help between adult children and their parents. Second, I consider the
complexities inherent in measuring and evaluating contact, before moving on to presenting
Norwegian data about post-breakup contact between dependent children and their nonresident
fathers. The final sections of the paper discusses patterns of contact between divorced
fathers and their adult children: the level and determinants for such contact, evidence of crossnational
variation, and possible explanations. The paper ends with a discussion of the
remaining gaps in research.
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Fatherhood policies and practices in Norway
Norway, like the other Nordic countries, has developed active policies to encourage men to be
more involved in care work. The most important measure in these policies is the “daddy
quota” in parental leave, that is, sections of the parental leave period that must be taken by
fathers or else are lost to the family (Brandth and Kvande, 2003). There is some evidence to
suggest that this policy does shape practices and attitudes, for instance, time-use studies show
that fathers spent more time doing caring work in 2000 than they did in 1970 (Kitterød, 2003).
International comparisons of time-use also indicate that Nordic mothers and fathers have a
slightly more gender-equal division of labour than parents in non-Nordic countries (Finch
2006). Qualitative research indicates that fathers who take the opportunity to spend time alone
with their infants during paternity leave seem to learn to interact with the child in a way that
other fathers do not, and thus develop a more independent fathering role (Brandth and
Kvande, 2003:160ff).
At the same time, the Nordic countries have higher divorce rates than most other European
countries, and also very high rates of extra-marital births. Most of these extra-marital births
take place in cohabiting couples, thus the father is normally present in the household at the
time of birth. However, cohabiting couples are even more unstable than marriages. This is
also true for cohabitation with children (Liefbroer and Dourleijn, 2006; Texmon, 1999). For
children born in the early 1990s, it has been estimated that 40 per cent will experience
parental break-up before their 16 th birthday (Jensen and Clausen, 1997a). And in Norway, as
in most other countries, children normally reside with their mother after a break-up. In a
survey among parents living apart in 2004, 82 per cent said that the child lived with the
mother, 8 per cent that the child lived with the father, and 10 per cent said that the child spent
about the same amount of time in both households (Lyngstad and Kitterød, 2008:12).
There have been several changes to the provisions for parents and children following a
parental break-up in the last decade. The right of the child to be heard is strengthened,
following the incorporation of the UN Children’s Charter in Norwegian legislation in 2003
(Sandberg, 2004). The responsibility of the parents to determine child maintenance privately
has been tightened up, so that there is now a fee on public determination (Skevik, 2003).
Proportional sharing of travelling costs in connection with contact between the non-resident
parent and the child was introduced in 2002. The child maintenance system was revised in
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2003, with new guidelines that rewarded non-resident parents with extensive contact with
their children ( (Skevik, 2003). In short, Norwegian policy makers have implemented a
number of policies in order to encourage contact between fathers and children. Changes in
practices are however slow, as discussed below.
The family is an important provider of care for the elderly, as several studies have shown
(e.g.Daatland and Herlofson, 2004; Gautun, 2003, 2008). While there are few comparative
studies in this area, evidence available through the OASIS-study (Daatland and Herlofson,
2004) suggests that the amount of this help is no smaller in Norway than in other
industrialised countries. Around 40 per cent of the frail elderly (75+) in Norway reported
receiving some form of practical help from their family in this study, which is very similar to
the UK, higher than in Germany and Israel, and slightly lower than in Spain (48 per cent). The
findings from the study thus run contrary to any pessimistic accounts of welfare state efforts
“crowding out” family solidarity, rather, the OASIS study suggests a division of work
between families and welfare states (Daatland and Herlofson, 2004).
The OASIS study focused on the exchange of help. The introductory quote from the
governmental report on men and gender equality also emphasised that men might receive less
care from their children than women do as they grow older. This paper is less concerned with
help, but rather brings the concern for contact from the “dependent children” stage into the
later stages in life. Contact is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for exchange of help –
in fact, the precise relationship between contact and help is an understudied topic in itself.
However, research findings on how much contact parents and children have, how much help
is exchanged and how good the relationship is, may very well depend on who we ask. That is
the topic of the next section.
Contact between parents and children: different perspectives
When studying contact between parents and children, asking different people will elicit
different responses and in turn give rather different impressions. This is well-known from the
study of contact between parents and young children after a parental break-up: custodial and
non-custodial parents will typically give different information about how much time the child
spends with the non-custodial parent. On the aggregated level, if we compare responses from
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separate samples of custodial and non-custodial parents, this patterns can at least partially be
explained by patterns of non-response: it is likely that the most passive non-resident parents
opt out of surveys of this sort, while the participation of custodial parents is unlikely to be
strongly influenced by how much contact the child has. Samples will therefore contain
“average” custodial parents and “active” non-custodial parents, which will lead to overall
results where non-custodial parents as a group report higher levels of contact than custodial
parents do (Jensen and Clausen, 1997b:23ff). However, even in studies that compare matched
samples, that is, responses from custodial and non-custodial parents of the same child, this
discrepancy between the reports of custodial and non-custodial parents is found (Braver et al.,
1991; Kitterød, 2004b, 2004a). For instance, in the survey about contact and child
maintenance payments from Statistics Norway (see below), 83 per cent of non-resident fathers
and 77 per cent of custodial mothers reported that the father had spent time with the child in
the last 30 days. 20 per cent of the fathers, and 31 per cent of the mothers, reported that the
child had not spent a single night with the father in the last month. Discrepancies were even
larger with regard to contact during the holidays: 42 percent of the fathers, and 24 per cent of
the mothers, reported that the child had spent time with the father during the most recent
autumn break.
Sample bias cannot explain these discrepancies: these analyses omitted all responses from
participants who were not matched by the child’s other parent. How, then, should we
understand the differences in mothers’ and fathers’ responses? One possible explanation is
that mothers do not know how much time the child spends with his or her father. As children
grow older and more autonomous, they may arrange to meet their father without the mothers’
knowledge. This is however unlikely to account for the discrepancy in the number of nights
the child reportedly spends with his or her father – it cannot be that common that children
spend nights away from home without their parent knowing where they are. We must
therefore consider the explanation proposed by Bradshaw et al (1999:84), “…that lone
mothers may not welcome, and be reluctant to acknowledge, the continuing involvement of a
non-resident father. Or they may feel that the nature of that contact is to trivial to recognise.
In contrast, the fathers may want to assert their parental role, and perhaps claim greater
involvement than they in reality have”. To the extent this explanation is valid, the
discrepancies observed are partly a result of continued conflict between the parents, and partly
caused by the need for self-presentation that is observed in many surveys.
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Sample bias and self-presentation also present challenges in surveys looking into relationships
between ageing parents and their adult children. For instance, a Norwegian study of exchange
of practical help between parents and adult children showed that parents see themselves as net
providers of help until their mid-70s, while children see themselves as net givers already in
their early 40s, referring to parents who are about 70 and older (Daatland and Herlofson,
2006:153). In the OASIS study, outlined above, children on average reported giving a little
more help than the parents reported receiving (Daatland and Herlofson, 2004). The children
wish to present themselves as helpful, while the parents may wish to come across as selfsufficient.
Different issues arise when studying the quality of relationships between adult children and
their parents. Here, a common finding is that parents describe relationships as closer and less
conflicted than what children do (Rossi and Rossi, 1990; Herlofson and Hagestad, 2009). A
common explanation for this is the “generational stake” theory (Bengtson and Kuypers,
1971), which emphasises the different psychological needs of the two generations at various
stages of the life course. Young adults tend to emphasise conflict and difference in order to
establish their independence and a separate sense of identity, while parents emphasise
harmony and continuity. This pattern of positive parents and more negative children is
however not uniform, as Aquilino (1999) has shown with US data. Analysing dyads of
parents and children, he finds that parents and children agree on key characteristics of the
relationship in 54 per cent of the cases, parents are more positive than children in 25 per cent
of the cases, while children are more positive than parents in 21 per cent of the cases. Patterns
vary, among other things, with education levels in both generations. Aquilino (1999:869)
argues that collection of equivalent data from both generations should be a standard procedure
in designing research on parents and adult children, as the choice of informant has the
potential to severely alter the results. If this call is to be taken seriously, researchers should
also aim at interviewing dyads of parents and children, to avoid the problems of self-selection
and sample bias. While this form of research would be ideal, it is difficult to manage. Most of
the studies quoted in this paper rely on information from only one perspective (parent or
child), or on information from unmatched samples of parents and children.
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Contact between non-resident fathers and their young children
Since the mid-1990s, there have been four surveys in Norway on patterns of contact between
non-resident parents and their children. The pioneering study was undertaken by Statistics
Norway in 1996, and included (unmatched) custodial and non-resident parents identified
through the population register (N=1256, response rates 71 among custodial parents and 57
among non-resident parents) (Jensen and Clausen, 1997a). In 2001-2002, there were three
studies carried out almost simultaneously, though independently of each other. One was
carried out at NOVA, and was a postal survey to non-resident fathers identified through the
National Insurance register of parents liable to pay child support (N= 584, response rate 54)
(Skevik and Hyggen, 2002). The second was undertaken at the University of Bergen, as a
postal survey to non-resident parents identified through the National Insurance register, and
through the membership records of the Norwegian Joint Custody association (N=1813,
response rate 60) (Thuen, 2004). Unlike the NOVA survey, the Bergen sample included both
mothers and fathers. By far the biggest study was however done by Statistics Norway, who
interviewed both custodial and non-custodial parents of both sexes in 2002 and 2004. The
sample in 2004 was drawn independently of the sample in 2002. The samples were matched,
so that both parents in a parental couple were interviewed (N2002=2306, response rate 59,
N2004=2692, response rate 75). The 2002-round was postal survey with some follow-up by
phone, the 2004-survey was a phone survey with some follow-up by post (Lyngstad and
Kitterød, 2008:6).
All these studies show that there is extensive contact between non-resident parents – normally
fathers – and their children in Norway. The proportion of non-resident parents who have
never had contact with the child is between two and five per cent in all the studies, while the
proportion who have not had contact in the last year prior to the survey varied between eight
and 11 per cent (Kitterød, 2004a; Kitterød and Lyngstad, 2006, 2007; Skevik, 2006; Skevik
and Hyggen, 2002; Thuen, 2004). The proportion who report seeing their child at least once a
month varies between about 80 (Kitterød, 2004a; Skevik and Hyggen, 2002) to 90 per cent
(Thuen, 2004). Thuen (2004:47) found that a lack of routine monthly contact was often
compensated by contact during holidays: the vast majority of parents who did not see their
children regularly during the year, had contact with them during the holidays. This was
largely confirmed in similar analyses by Kitterød (Kitterød, 2004a:25, 2006).
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Comparing these figures to similar findings from the survey in 1996 (Jensen and Clausen,
1997a, 1997b) indicates that the proportions with regular contact increased somewhat during
the second half of the 1990s. In the survey from 1996, six per cent of the fathers reported
never having seen the child, while 12 per cent had not seen him or her during the last 12
months. 77 per cent of the fathers had seen the child in the last month prior to the survey
(Jensen and Clausen, 1997b:23ff). Lyngstad and Kitterød (2008:14) note a small increase in
the average number of days non-resident parents had contact in the last month between 2002
and 2004, and also a small – but not statistically significant – increase in the proportion who
reported having shared physical custody. There is thus evidence that non-resident parents
have gained somewhat in terms of contact in the last 10-15 years, but the changes are
marginal.
The figures also indicate that levels of contact in Norway are slightly higher than in many
other countries in which this has been investigated. For instance, Bradshaw et al. (1999:91)
found that 42 per cent of British fathers said they had seen their child during the last week,
while 28 per cent said it had been more than a week, but less than a month. This gives a total
of 70 per cent who had seen their child in the last month. 17 per cent had not seen the child in
a year or more, including those who had never seen the child. In Australia, only 51 per cent of
custodial parents reported in 1997 that their child had regular contact, defined as meeting up
daily to once a month. 30 per cent reported that contact occurred less than once a year or
never (Smyth and Wolcott, 2004). Since this information comes from custodial parents, who
tend to report lower levels of contact, it cannot be compared directly to the Norwegian or
British data. Still, the reported level of contact is so much lower, it is worth mentioning. This
may indicate that the Norwegian policies to encourage father-child contact has had a certain
impact, although far more careful comparative research is needed before we can say anything
definitive about this.
What are the factors that influence the chances of non-resident parents and children having
contact, and the extent of contact that they have? Travelling distance is a key factor. This
contributes significantly to the level of contact in all the relevant studies (Jensen and Clausen,
1997b; Kitterød, 2004a, 2006; Skevik, 2006; Skevik and Hyggen, 2002; Thuen, 2004). Nonresident
parents who live far from their children have less weekly/ monthly contact, but this is
to some degree compensated through contact during the holidays. Many of these parents
actively maintain contact through phone calls, SMS and e-mailing (Skevik, 2006).
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Children’s age is also a key determinant for contact. Skevik and Hyggen (2002:62) and
Kitterød (2004b:41) both found that younger children have more contact than older children.
In particular, children aged 15/ 16 and older stand out with lower levels of contact. Thuen
(2004:54) modifies this slightly: he also finds that teenagers are less likely to spend weekends
with their non-resident parents, but more likely to have contact during holidays. Kitterød
(2006) finds that children aged 10-14 are far more likely than older children to spend holidays
with non-resident fathers than children who are both younger and older. Age influences both
the level and form of contact, although precisely how these patterns look varies slightly
between different surveys.
The parent’s relationship history is another important determinant for contact. A clear finding
in all the studies quoted is that non-resident parents who have never lived with the custodial
parent have much less contact than those who did live together at the time of birth. But are
there differences between parents who have been married, and parents who cohabited without
marriage? Findings in this respect are unclear. Jensen and Clausen (1999) analysed this very
carefully, and found that while formerly married and cohabiting parents had the same average
levels of contact, there was far more variation among former cohabitees. In particular, the
levels of contact among formerly cohabiting parents depended on their education and income
level: well-educated ex-cohabitees had more contact than similarly educated divorcees, while
the low-educated had less (op.cit.: 301). Skevik and Hyggen (2002) and Kitterød (2004b) both
found that formerly cohabiting parents had slightly lower levels of contact than the formerly
married, but in both surveys the difference is very small and not significant. Thuen (2004)
reports no differences at all. Skevik (2006) looked in particular at the extremes of the
distribution – parents with weekly contact, and parents who had not seen the child in more
than 3 months – and found that while those who had never lived with the other parent were
significantly less likely to be in the former group, and more likely to be in the latter,
cohabitation had no effect on either end of the distribution. It may be that cohabitation
differed less from marriage in the early-mid-2000s than what was the case in 1996, then
again, none of the newer studies have aimed explicitly at updating Jensen and Clausen’s
(1999) finding. We can therefore not rule out that contact among former cohabitees varies
more, and by different criteria, than what is the case for divorced parents.
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Findings are equally insecure when it comes to the impact of new partnerships among the
custodial and/ or non-custodial parents. In bivariate analyses, both Skevik and Hyggen (2002)
and Kitterød (2004) find that non-resident parents who are single have more contact than
those who have repartnered (by marriage or cohabitation). In multivariate analyses, this
difference however disappears when controlled for factors such as the child’s age, time since
the break-up and travelling distance. Kitterød (2004) finds no effect in multivariate analyses
of custodial parents’ repartnering on how the custodial parent reports levels of contact. She
has not looked at how the custodial parents’ repartnering might influence how non-resident
parents report contact. This could be significant, given that Skevik and Hyggen (2002, app. A)
and Skevik (2006) find relatively strong and negative effects of custodial mothers’
repartnering on contact as reported by non-resident fathers (for a discussion, see Skevik
2006:128).
Jensen and Clausen (1997b) were particularly concerned with how social status, as measured
by education, income and labour market participation, influence parent-child contact. Their
findings indicate that resourceful parents (educated, high earnings, in employment) had more
contact than less resourceful parents. A similar finding is reported by Thuen (2004). Skevik
and Hyggen (2002) however found no significant effects of education and income, possibly
due to limited variation on these variables in this sample. In later analyses, Skevik (2004,
2006) however found strong negative effects on levels of contact of the receipt of social
assistance, which in turn is an indicator of poverty and labour marked exclusion. This finding
has been replicated in the larger-scale surveys by Statistics Norway (Kitterød and Lyngstad
2006, 2007, Lyngstad and Kitterød 2008). Results from these surveys also reveal clear
associations between income, education and levels of contact, in line with the findings of
Jensen and Clausen from 1996.
With the three surveys from 2001-2002, and the 1996-survey before that, we have very good
and reliable information about how much contact dependent children have with their nonresident
parents, and the determinants for such contact in Norway. The situation with regard
to continued contact after the children are grown is however not so well covered in research.
The next section sums up what we know about the situation in Norway, supplemented with
evidence from other national contexts where relevant. The aim is the same as in this section –
to review evidence regarding how much contact divorced fathers have with their children, and
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the determinants for such contact – only now the emphasis is on adult children and ageing
fathers.
Contact between divorced fathers and their adult children
American researchers have researched intergenerational relationships in families with
divorced parents for two decades (e.g. Aquilino, 1994b, 1994a; Cooney and Uhlenberg, 1990;
Lye et al., 1995; Shapiro, 2003). One of the most consistent findings from these studies is that
divorced fathers have less contact with their children than married fathers. Differences
between divorced mothers and married mothers are typically smaller or not significant. Will
we find the same in Norway?
At the moment, the only larger-scale, representative survey that contains information about
contact between adult children and their parents in Norway, is the NorLAG (The Norwegian
Life-course, Ageing and Generation study). This is a panel study, where the first round of data
collection was carried out in 2002-03 (N=5589, response rate 67%). NorLAG1 targeted
persons who were 40 years or older. The second wave of NorLAG is part of LOGG (Life
cOurse, Generations and Gender) which is a combination of NorLAG and the Norwegian
version of the UN-anchored Generations and Gender Survey (GGS). Data collection took
place in 2007-08 (total sample 15.156, response rate 60%). NorLAG2 comprises the original
NorLAG sample, and an additional national representative sample of about 11.000 persons
aged 18-79. Both data collections (NorLAG1 and NorLAG2/LOGG) combine telephone
interviews, postal questionnaires and registry data (e.g. on household composition, family
history, education, occupation, assets and debts, income and source of income). Compared to
NorLAG1, NorLAG2/ LOGG is larger and includes a wider age range. As of yet, very little
has been published from the NorLAG2/LOGG survey. The findings reviewed below are based
on NorLAG1-data unless stated otherwise. Since all respondents in NorLAG are aged 40 or
older, it mainly conveys the opinions of parents with adult children. Respondents are however
also asked about their relationship with their own parents, provided that they have at least one
living parent, thus relationships as seen by children aged 40 and over can also be explored
(Daatland, 2007).
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Among parents with adult children in the NorLAG survey, 24 per cent have experienced
divorce (Daatland and Herlofson, 2005:63). The proportion is higher among the younger
respondents in the survey, which reflects that divorce has become increasingly common in
recent years. Divorce rates were also higher among parents with higher education. About half
of the male respondents who were divorced had repartnered, the same was true for one third
of the divorced women (op.cit.:59).
Five key indicators are used in NorLAG to measure intergenerational ties: (1) frequency of
contact, (2) whether or not parents and children celebrate events (Christmas, birthdays,
holidays) together, (3) the parents’ subjective evaluation of the relationship to the (oldest)
child, (4) receipt of help from their children, and (5) norms of filial responsibility. When
looking at how divorce affects intergenerational relationships, this study finds negative effects
of divorce on all indicators except normative solidarity (Daatland and Herlofson, 2005). The
effects are particularly strong for divorced men. As a group, divorced men and women have
less contact with their children than married parents and widows/ widowers, they more rarely
celebrate events such as Christmas and birthdays, and they have a slightly poorer relationships
with the children. Divorced men also receive less help from their children, while no such
effect is found for divorced women. All these effects are net of effects of control variables
which could influence the relationship between parental breakup and intergenerational
relationships: age, education, health, and the number of children. A later analysis (Daatland
and Herlofson, 2006:155) also controls for local environment (urban/ rural), and finds that the
negative effects of divorce are still visible when this is taken into account. The effects of
divorce are stronger for men than for women, and appear to be stronger for contact than for
the provision of help.
Daatland (2007) delves deeper into the effects of family change evidenced in the NorLAGmaterial,
and asks how (1) divorce in the parent generation and (2) unmarried cohabitation in
the children’s generation affects intergenerational solidarity. In line with the results outlined
above, he finds clear effects of the parents’ divorce. No effects are however found for
unmarried cohabitation (as compared to marriage) among children. Effects of divorce are
stronger among fathers than among mothers, between two and three times stronger on five of
the six indicators of solidarity. There is however also a negative effect for mothers, albeit not
as strong. While this article discusses in-dept other demographic factors that influence
contact, it does not discuss variation among the divorced mothers and fathers.
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Utilising data from NorLAG2/ LOGG, Herlofson and Hagestad (2009) have studied the
relationship between divorced parents and their adult children. The outcome variable they
focus on is relationship quality, as measured by responses to the question “how happy are you
with your relationship to your mother/ father/ oldest child?”. The main aim of this analysis is
to illustrate the discrepancy between parents’ and children’s responses. Parents are generally
very unlikely to describe the relationship to their child as poor, while children are far more
likely to describe their relationship with their parents in this way. Nevertheless, whether one
asks parents or children, relationships are poorer in families where the parents are divorced.
Father-daughter-relationships suffer particularly strongly: while fewer than one per cent of
married fathers describe their relationship with their oldest daughter as poor, ten per cent of
divorced fathers give this response. Correspondingly, six per cent of daughters whose parents
are married describe their relationship with their fathers as poor, compared to more than 30
per cent of daughters whose parents are divorced. Similar patterns, although far less strong,
are found for relationships between mothers and daughters, sons and mothers, and sons and
fathers (Herlofson and Hagestad, 2009:26).
Analyses based on NorLAG thus confirm the general finding from previous studies, mainly
from the US: divorce has a negative effect on relationships between parents and children, and
fathers are more vulnerable in this respect than mothers. This is true for both contact
indicators (frequency of contact, joint celebration of events), for the subjective evaluation of
relationship quality, and for receipt of help. So far, analyses of the NorLAG data have not
discussed differences between groups of divorced mothers and fathers. Unlike what is the
case for studies of contact between dependent children and their parents, determinants for
contact have not been a main topic in studies of adult children and their parents in Norway.
Yet there are a number of questions that could be raised, most obviously, how dependent is
the relationship between adult children and their fathers on custody and contact arrangements
when the children were young? In other words, do elderly fathers lose out because they have
not lived with their children, or are there other reasons for this pattern? Another crucial issue
is repartnering: does repartnering in the parental generation increase or decrease contact with
adult children? Does mothers’ reparterning have the same effect on contact as fathers’
repartnering? What effects do characteristics of the children – their age, gender, marital and
parental status – have, and are these effects similar for married and divorced mothers and
fathers? What happens when there is divorce in both the parental and the child generation?
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Available analyses of Norwegian data cannot answer these questions, we therefore turn to
international literature in the next section.
Why do contact decrease after divorce, and why are fathers more
vulnerable?
It is a relatively well-established finding in the international literature on intergenerational
relationships over the life course that there is a “divorce penalty” that particularly affects
divorced men. Only recently have researchers been able to start the discussion of why this is
so, that is, to examine differences between divorced men (and women) with different
characteristics. There are three main hypotheses in this respect: the “marital conflict”-
hypothesis, the “investment-hypothesis” and the “marriage protection”-hypothesis. The three
are not mutually exclusive, but can very well operate in parallel.
The marital conflict-hypothesis is suggested by Svein Olav Daatland (2007:823), who sees
divorce as an indicator of parental conflict: “The negative association between parental
divorce and the relationship to adult children can… be rephrased simply as a negative
association between parental conflicts and the quality of the parent-child relationship”. This
hypothesis can explain why both parents experience a divorce penalty: long-term conflict in
the family, and lack of success in dealing with such conflicts, tears away at parent-child
relationships. This would explain why children with divorced parents – and, presumably,
children from high-conflict families where the parents have not divorced – maintain more
distance to their parents than children whose parents are happily married. In order to test for
this, we need to compare adult children with divorced parents, adult children with married
high-conflict parents, and adult children from married low-conflict couples.
The investment-hypothesis emphasises the investment parents have made in their children in
their formative years: how much time they have spent with them, how involved they have
been in parenting (de Graaf and Fokkema, 2007; Kalmijn, 2007). The basic idea is that close
parent-child relationships formed in the child’s early years will be maintained over the lifecourse.
Given the norm of reciprocity, parents who have been absent or distant through the
child’s formative years cannot expect to have frequent contact with their children once the
children are grown. To the extent this hypothesis is true, custody rather than gender should
14

determine post-divorce contact. The custodial parent is the parent who makes the (bigger)
investment. Also, later divorces should matter less than early ones, widowhood should matter
less than divorce, and parents who have been active and involved while married should
experience a lower penalty than parents who were not.
The investment hypothesis is essentially backward-looking, emphasising the degree to which
parents “invested” in their children during their formative years. The marital protection
hypothesis focuses on the here-and-now, and the propensity of ageing parents to actively
maintain contact with their children. Women tend to take this role more actively than men do
– women are the “kinkeepers” (Hagestad, 1986) in the family. It is generally mothers who
arrange visits and does other work necessary to maintain contact between family members.
Mothers may actively monitor the relationship between fathers and children, and try to
improve the relationship in cases where it is poor. Married men benefit from this kinkeeping
work in a way that divorced men and widowers do not, hence marriage has a protective
function for men. According to this hypothesis, men who live with a female partner should
have more contact with their children than men who do not. It is worth noting that
repartnering is expected to have opposite effects in the investment hypothesis and the
marriage protection hypothesis: repartnering can signal a move away from the original family
(a “de-investment”) (de Graaf and Fokkema, 2007) and thus imply even less contact with
children from the first marriage, on the other hand, it installs the man with a new potential
kinkeeper and can thus imply more contact with children as well as other kin (Kalmijn 2007).
Putting the marital conflict-hypothesis to the test, American researchers Sobolewski and
Amato (2007) compares children from low-conflict marriages, children from high-conflict
marriages and children of divorced parents in terms of their feelings of closeness to each of
their parents. Their results indicate that children who grow up in low-conflict marriages
typically feel close to both parents, more rarely close to only one parent, and are unlikely not
to feel close to either parent. Children who have grown up in high-conflict non-divorced
families are as likely to feel alienated from both parents as they are to feel close to both, and
rarely feel close to only one parent. Adult children with divorced parents very rarely feel close
to both parents. They are as likely as children from high-conflict intact families to feel
alienated from both parents, but the most common outcome is to feel close to only one parent.
This supports Daatland’s (2007) suggestion that marital conflict and divorce both tear away at
children’s closeness to parents, but with an important qualification: Very simply put, children
15

from high-conflict families typically either develop close ties to both parents, or they distance
themselves from both of them. Children from divorced families either distance themselves
from both parents, or they develop close ties with one of them – and this one is typically the
mother.
Sobolewski and Amato (2007:1118) explain this latter finding – that children with divorced
parents tend to feel close to only one parent – with patterns of residence after divorce.
Children overwhelmingly reside with their mothers after divorce, fathers and children have
relationships “that are primarily recreational in nature…somewhat superficial… [making it]
difficult for children and non-resident fathers to maintain deep and mutually-satisfying
bonds”. They thus invoke a version of the investment-hypothesis. This hypothesis is put more
carefully to the test in a Dutch study on parents’ degree of involvement in their young
children, and contact between adult children and their parents (de Graaf and Fokkema 2007).
This study indicates that the custody arrangement has a major effect on contact frequency.
The big divide in this study is between parents who had custody and parents who did not. This
factor alone explains about half of the difference between divorced and non-divorced parents.
The study further finds that remarriage has a negative effect on contact frequency, especially
for mothers. Custodial arrangements and remarriage account for about 60 per cent of the
difference between divorced fathers and divorced mothers (de Graaf and Fokkema 2007:275).
These findings are in line with the investment hypothesis.
De Graaf and Fokkema (2007:275) suggest that what is not explained by various aspects of
investment perhaps can be explained by women’s role in the family: “men need their wives to
maintain contact with adult children” (de Graaf and Fokkema 2007: 275). The baton is thus
passed to the marital protection-hypothesis. Kalmijn (2007) sets out to disentangle the effects
of investment in children and marriage protection on patterns of post-divorce contact and
support between divorced parents and their children. Like de Graaf and Fokkema (2007), he
uses data from the Netherlands. He argues that in order to separate the effects of marital
investment and marriage protection we need to differentiate four life course situations: (1) the
parents are married, (2) the parents divorced when the children were young, (3) the parents
divorced when the children were older, and (4) one of the parents died. His results show that
when married, mothers have more contact with their children than fathers. This gender gap
tends to widen in circumstances of widowhood and divorce. Predictably, divorced parents
have less contact with their children than married parents, and the effects are stronger for
16

fathers than for mothers. Late divorces have less negative effects than early divorces.
Widowed mothers have more contact with their children than married mothers, while
divorced mothers have less. Widowed fathers, on the other hand, have less contact with
children than married fathers. Both the investment hypothesis and the marriage protection
hypothesis can contribute to explanations of these findings: both a late divorce and
widowhood enlarge differences between men and women in their contact with children, which
is consistent with the marriage protection hypothesis. At the same time, effects are smaller for
late than for early divorces, and smaller for widowhood than divorce, which is consistent with
the hypothesis that reduced investment in children when they are young leads to less contact
later in life.
Kalmijn (2007) brings up the issue of repartnering as a factor in parent-child contact beyond
divorce. When fathers repartner, they bring in a new potential female kinkeeper – will this
bring relationships with children back to the post-divorce level? His analyses indicate that
they do not, in fact, they do the opposite. There is a negative effect of remarriage, and this is
stronger for fathers than for mothers. Dissolving the second union does not help in this respect
either. “The weakening of the relationship with children that occurs when a parent enters a
new relationship is not reversed when that parent is alone again. The negative effect of
remarriage appears irreversible” (Kalmijn 2007:1097). This is in line with de Graaf and
Fokkema’s (2007:273) findings, and can be interpreted as support for the investmenthypothesis.
All in all, however, Kalmijn (2007:1098) nevertheless highlights the explanatory
power of the marriage protection hypothesis.
Taken together, these recent studies provide support for all the three main hypothesis. High
conflict in the family negatively affects intergenerational relationships over the life course,
although apparently not in quite the same way as divorce (consistent with the marital conflicthypothesis).
Parents who have had custody have more frequent contact than parents who have
not (consistent with the investment hypothesis), and late divorces and widowhood also
negatively affect fathers’ contact with children (consistent with the marriage protectionhypothesis).
It is still too early days to dismiss one hypothesis in favour of another, in any
case, there is no reason why not all three could be true at the same time.
Studies that try to identify determinants for contact between adult children and their fathers
are few and far between. Those reviewed here have relied on data from the US and the
17

Netherlands. Can we assume that similar effects will be found in Norwegian data? In order to
get some idea of similarities and differences between countries, I turn to comparative studies.
Do comparisons of countries in Europe find the same patterns and mechanisms across all
countries, or do these things vary according to, for instance, national/ local culture and
welfare regime?
Contact between adult children and divorced parents in Europe:
comparative evidence
Possibilities for comparing different countries in Europe have been vastly improved lately
with the establishing of the SHARE project (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in
Europe). This is a large-scale survey with 27.500 respondents aged 50 years and older in 11
European countries. The countries included are Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium,
Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Greece. Interviewing took place in
2004. The SHARE survey finds, like most similar surveys, that divorce leads to a weakening
of parent-child bonds in many respects (Fokkema et al., 2008). Divorced parents live at a
greater distance from their children, and they have less frequent contact and weaker feelings
of family care obligations than their continuously married counterparts. The overall results
can be described as quite dramatic, particularly for fathers: as many as 12 per cent of the
divorced fathers in the survey had lost contact with their adult children all-together. The same
was true for two per cent of the divorced mothers, while practically no married mothers and
fathers had entirely lost contact with their children (Fokkema et al., 2008:31). At the other
side of the distribution, more than 80 per cent of married mothers had contact with at least one
of their children at least once a week, compared to 60 per cent of divorced mothers – and 46
per cent of divorced fathers. Also, divorced parents have a weaker sense of family duty
(op.cit.: 42).
Kalmijn (2008) has used SHARE data in order to further investigate the relationship between
parental divorce, other background factors (including country of residence) and proximity and
contact between parents and children. Proximity is measured as physical distance to the child,
while contact is measured by contact frequency. When comparing countries, Kalmijn (2008)
identifies a negative relationship between traditionalism in gender roles and contact between
divorced fathers and their adult children. That is, the more traditional gender roles in a
18

society, the greater the reduction in father-child contact after divorce. In practice, this means
that effects of divorce on father-adult child contact is stronger in countries like Italy and Spain
than in countries like Sweden and the Netherlands. The effects are however visible in all the
countries, including Sweden and Denmark.
Tomassini et al (2004) also compared frequency of contact between parents and adult children
in four European countries: Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and Finland. This article
compares data from four (uncoordinated) national surveys, which limits the value of the
findings because of discrepancies both in the definitions of samples and in the definitions of
key variables. Still, one finding from this article with regard to cross-national differences is
especially worth noting: reduced contact between divorced mothers and their adult children is
not found in any country but Finland. In all the other countries in the study, only fathers are
victims of the “divorce effect” on contact with adult children.
Summing up: what we know, what we don’t
About 40 per cent of children born in Norway since the 1990s are likely to experience
parental break-up at some point during their childhood (Jensen and Clausen, 1997a). Thanks
to a series of independent surveys on the topic, we know quite a lot about what happens to the
contact between parents and children in the years immediately following the break-up, while
the children are young. We have far less information about what happens later in life, when
the children grow up and the parents approach old age.
Children overwhelmingly reside with their mothers after a break-up in Norway, while
maintaining regular contact with their fathers. 80-90 per cent of fathers in various surveys
reported normally seeing their child at least monthly, and those who did not normally
maintained contact through e-mail/ sms, phone-calls, and during the holidays. There is some
evidence to suggest that levels of contact increased somewhat between the mid-1990s and the
mid-2000s. This would be in line with policy intentions; however, the changes are very small.
Travelling distance between the parental homes, the children’s age, the parents’ previous
relationship and either parents’ repartnering all influence patterns and levels of contact, but
the connections are not always simple and straight-forward. Moreover, weekend contact and
holiday contact appear to be two separate forms of contact with different variation patterns.
19

The logic for studying contact between adult children and their parents is different than for
studies of dependent children. Young children are dependent on their parents, adult children
are not. Young children cannot cut ties with both parents simultaneously, thus is can be
assumed that time not spent with the father is spent with the mother. This is not the case with
adult children – for them, contact with both parents must be studied separately. Norwegian
data clearly show that divorced fathers and mothers have less contact with their children than
parents who have stayed married, and that this effect is stronger for fathers than for mothers.
Recent evidence also suggest that the quality of relationships between divorced parents and
their children is lower than between married parents and their children, especially as
described by the children. Relationships between daughters and their divorced fathers are
particularly vulnerable.
That divorced fathers have less contact with their children than married fathers, and also less
than married mothers, is also found in several other European and American studies. There is
some evidence to suggest, however, that the differences between divorced mothers and fathers
is slightly smaller in the Scandinavian countries than in Europe in general. Divorced mothers
lose somewhat more in relation to married mothers regarding contact with their children,
while divorced men lose a little less compared to married fathers. This is in line with
Kalmijn’s (2008) suggestion, that the divorce penalty is harder for men in countries
dominated by traditional gender roles than in countries with a more gender equal sharing of
work. Evidence for such country differences is relatively weak, but all available evidence
point in the same direction.
These findings give reasons to be cautious about importing findings from one national context
to another. For instance, we have seen that evidence from the Netherlands indicates that
custody arrangement and repartnering are important determinants: fathers who have had
custody have more contact than fathers who have not, and fathers who have not repartnered
have more contact than fathers who have. There are many similarities between Norway and
the Netherlands, but also important differences. One very obvious difference is population
density: the Netherlands is a small and very densely populated country, while the opposite is
true in Norway (Tomassini et al 2004 makes this point with regard to Finland). We have seen
that distance between the parental homes is an important determinant for contact between
young children and non-resident parents. Dutch parents are far less likely than Norwegian
20

parents to live far away from each other, simply because there is no “far away” as long as
both remain within the boundaries of the Netherlands. If children however grow up with their
mothers in Tromsø and later set up their own homes in that city, they are unlikely to have
close ongoing contact with a father who lives in Stavanger. This suggests that, if anything, the
impact of custodial arrangements should be stronger in Norway than what it is in the
Netherlands, which would privilege custodial fathers in Norway even more than in the
Netherlands.
On the other hand, if levels of contact are high, “physical custody” becomes a legal term more
than a lived reality. If the parents live in reasonable proximity to each other, and the child
divides her time between the parents 30-70 or 60-40, the child is likely to develop close ties
with both parents regardless of formal custody arrangements. In Norway in 2002, 49 per cent
of non-resident fathers reported that the child spent 8 or more days with them per month
(Kitterød 2004:39), while 17 per cent said the child was with them for more than 13 days per
month. Will fathers with such high levels of contact experience the same divorce penalty as
other fathers? Is there a threshold with respect to contact with dependent children for where
the later-life penalty kicks in? In short, what is the relationship between levels of contact in
the child’s early years, and levels of contact later in life? How crucial is the transition period
made up by the child’s early adult years, say, 18-25? On these issues, we have practically no
information.
Beside custody, the other factor that strongly influences Dutch contact patterns between adult
children and divorced fathers is the fathers’ repartnering. Seen from the investment
perspective, repartnering is an indication of withdrawn investment – the father now invests in
a new partner and possibly her children. From the marriage protection hypothesis,
repartnering might influence positively on contact levels if the new partner claims the role as
kinkeeper in relation to the man’s children. The significance of repartnering can vary between
contexts. For instance, in countries where divorce rates are high and have been so over time,
“serial partnering” may be considered a fact of life. In such contexts, the repartnering of either
or both parents is more likely to be expected by children, and perhaps less seen as a betrayal
to the original family – as a “withdrawal of investment”. Moreover, in such contexts people
get used to separate between parenthood and partnership. Partners can come and go, while
parenthood is for life. In recent years in Norway, there has been a strong emphasis on the
biological principle, and a strong belief in the principle that nothing can alter the fundamental
21

iological bond between parents and children. It is a basic principle in all debates on these
issues that parenthood continues beyond the partnership. On this background, adult children
in Norway are less likely to be threatened by their fathers’ new partner than adult children in
national cultures that lack this clear separation of parenthood and partnerships.
The extent to which new partners take on kinkeeping responsibilities may also vary between
contexts. Perhaps, in countries with traditional family norms, new partners have a distinct role
in relation to children from previous relationships. In less traditional countries, scripts are less
obvious and each person is left to figure out new roles for herself. This could imply more
polarisation: new partners can decide she has a relationship with her new man only, and have
no obligations in relation to his grown children. Alternatively, individualisation may open up
for unique individual relationships between new partners and adult children who are joined in
their affection for the ageing father.
Demographic characteristics and family practices are two of the dimensions along which
countries vary. Another is welfare regime, including family policies. As mentioned,
Norwegian family policies in recent years have aimed explicitly at increasing fathers’
involvement in family life. How will this influence father-child contact over time? Will
fathers who have been more actively involved in their children’s upbringing suffer the divorce
penalty? Will adult sons who are themselves active fathers be more likely to maintain contact
with their own father, and perhaps try to recruit him to active grandfathering 1 ? Will daughters
do the same for their fathers? On these topics, it is particularly crucial to study developments
over time.
All the contributions reviewed in this paper have dealt with divorced fathers and their
children. The analyses of contact between non-resident fathers and young children referred
above however indicates that there may be differences between fathers who have formally
been married to the child’s mother, and those who have lived together as cohabiting parents.
Will we find differences along these lines among adult children and their parents? Again, this
is an area where we have no information.
1 I am indebted to Gunhild Hagestad for this suggestion.
22

Norway, like most other European countries, will experience population ageing in the coming
decades. This greying of the population will take place against a backdrop of rapid family
change. Patterns of intergenerational relationships will have a major impact on the quality of
life for elderly Norwegians, and also – as pointed out in the governmental report on men and
gender equality – on the availability of family care and hence on the demand for public
welfare services. Yet Norwegian research on intergenerational relationships in modern
families is still in its infancy. Indeed, in Europe in general, information is scarce about parentchild
contact in later life. And even when the research situation improves in some countries, it
is still not given that findings and conclusions can be imported from one context to another –
in fact this is another empirical question. There are many reasons for family sociology and
family policy studies to move beyond their traditional myopic emphasis on families with
dependent children, and recognise the importance of family relationships later in life.
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