One in seven divorced couples have recourse to joint custody, according to an INSEE study which examines the living conditions of children after a divorce.
What happens to children after their parents divorce? To answer this question, INSEE conducted a survey on the living conditions of children after parental separation. By compiling the data of 60,000 divorces that occurred in 2009, the Institute was able to follow the progress of more than 100,000 minors.
From this work, a lesson emerges: joint custody is no longer a marginal choice. After their divorce, more and more parents decide to cut the pear in half and share the children’s places of residence. The use of joint custody has almost doubled in a decade and the number of children in joint custody has increased from 31,000 in 2003 to 271,000 in 2012. Today, it concerns one in seven divorced couples (15%).
Smaller housing after divorce
The recourse to alternating residence is all the more frequent as the parents have high activity and replacement income before the divorce, according to INSEE. “The need to have two dwellings spacious enough to accommodate children may explain the lesser recourse to this type of care for parents with lower incomes”, note the authors. Thus, joint custody is four times more frequent among high-income parents (last two income deciles).
Despite this, moves after divorce lead children to occupy a home that is on average smaller, in terms of surface area and number of rooms. The new accommodation thus has a reduced surface area of 15 m2 compared to the old one in the case of exclusive residence. The reduction is greater in the event of alternating residence (around 19 m2 for the father’s new home and 24 m2 for the mother’s).
Territorial inequalities
Beyond the differences in income, joint custody is unevenly distributed across the territory. It concerns more than one in five children in the departments of Aveyron, Finistère and Haute-Savoie, but it is much less widespread in Nord – Pas-de-Calais, Ardennes, Meuse or Haute. -Marne, where less than one in ten children is concerned.
“This geographic disparity could partly be due to socio-economic differences as well as to differences in real estate market conditions between departments, but also to possible differentiated practices of departmental courts”, we can read in the report.
A disputed childcare arrangement
While joint custody is becoming commonplace, it is not unanimous among specialists in children. But overall there seems to be a consensus on age. Thus, before the age of three, joint custody could be detrimental to the emotional development of the child, who sets up, in the first months of his life, a process of attachment. This primary social need leads him to seek and maintain closeness to a specific person.
An Australian study carried out on more than 2000 children demonstrated certain imbalances induced by joint custody in children. In question, in particular: the distance between the homes. However, the study was carried out over a territory so vast that the children sometimes had to take the plane to go to the parent …
Generally, child psychiatrists agree on one point. Alternate custody is to be avoided in the event of very long distances between the two homes, or even execrable relationships between parents, because it can be a source of new conflicts. For other situations, the debate remains open.
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