Parenting Apart: Patterns of ChildrearingAfter Marital Disruption

FRANKF. FURSTENBERG,JR.Universityof Pennsylvania

CHRISTINE WINQUIST NORD.Child Trends, Inc.

Divorce and remarriage have become prominent features of American life. Nowadaysmany parents divide their attention and resources among two or more families, and chil-dren frequently grow up with multiple parents. Using a nationally representative householdsample of children, we describe relations among parents, stepparents, and children afterseparation and divorce. Our results suggest that most children have little contact with theirnonresident parents, and what contact there is tends to be social rather than instrumental.Contrary to popular impressions, however, when the former spouse remains active in thechild's life, stepfamily life-at least in mother-stepfather families-does not seem to suf-fer.

Historians of the 20th century family may lookback on the period from 1965 to 1980 as no les~remarkable than the baby boom era that precededit. Any illusions that the shaping of the modernfamily was completed by the middle of the 20thcentury were utterly shattered by the experience ofthe recent past. The institution of marriage waschanging long before the last decade, but therapid rise in divorce seems to have accelerated thetransformation and ushered into place a new setof marriage practices.

If current rates are maintained, half of thosewho have married recently will eventually divorce.

An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the meet-ings of the American Sociological Association, SanFrancisco, 1982. The research was funded by grantsfrom the Foundation for Child Development and theNational Institute of Mental Health (5 RO~MH34707-02). The National Survey of Children-Wave 2was carried out jointly by Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr. atthe lJnivetsity of. Pennsylvania anddames L. Petersonand Nicholas Zill of Child Trends, Inc.

Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania,3718 Locust Walk CR, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

*Child Trends, Inc., 1990 M Street, N.W., Washington,DC 20036.

Most of these individuals, however, will ultimate-ly remarry. Approximately three out of fourdivorced women and five out of six divorced menmake the transition to second marriages (Glick,1984). Thus, the expectation of conjugal per-manency has given way to a pattern of conjugalsuccession (Furstenberg, 1982a).

Divorce has only minor implications when acouple is childless. In about three out of fivedivorces, however, children are involved (Glick,1979). A sociological proposition, derived fromMalinowski's observations, holds that marriageprovides a social contract for assigning paren-tal-particularly paternal-rights and obliga-tions. Unless provisions are made for dealing with

. the dissolution of that contract, parents andchildren are placed in an anomalous situation.

Remarriage further complicates that predica-ment. It restores the integrity of the family, but italso can add to the complexity of family life.Parents are not supplanted as in previous timeswhen death preceded remarriage. Conjugal suc-cession permits parents to be added onto the ex-isting roster of caretakers. Consequently, a largenumber of families today are facing circumstancesthat are culturally uncharted (Bohannon, 1970;Cherlin, 1978; Furstenberg, 1979; Weiss, 1975).Parents must divide their attention and resources

November 1985 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

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893

between two or more families; and children, inturn, frequently grow up with multiple parents.Our kinship system provides little guidance foradjudicating the conflicting claims of coparentsand stepparents or for assigning priorities tochildren who may have to deal with many parentfigures (Duberman, 1975; Ahrons, 1980; Walkeret al., 1977).

An intriguing question, not fully addressed inprevious research, is how parents and children re-spond when their families are restructured bydivorce and remarriage. Drawing on data from anationally representative household sample ofchildren, this paper describes relations amongparents, stepparents, and children after separa-tion and divorce, with particular attention to howdivorce and remarriage may be altering concep-tions of parenthood and parenting practices.

THE DATA

In 1976 the Foundation for Child Developmentfunded a study on the well-being of children (Zill,in press). Data were collected from a nationallyrepresentative sample of households containingchildren between the ages of 7 and 11. Up to twochildren between these ages in each householdwere interviewed, yielding a total of 2,279children from 1,747 households, or 80070of theidentified households. In 1981, in collaborationwith Nicholas Zill and James L. Peterson whocarried out the initial survey, a follow-up to theoriginal National Survey of Children (NSC) wasdesigned to examine the effects of marital disrup-tion on the development and well-being of chil-dren and on the operation of single and multi-parent families. Because we wanted to concen-trate on the households that had experienced achange in the marital situation of the parents, allchildren whose parents were known (from theearlier survey) to have experienced marital disrup-tion or who were at risk of separating becausethey had reported a high-conflict marriage wereincluded in the follow-up. In addition, we drewfrom the initial sample a randomly selected sub-sample of children living in stable, low-conflictfamilies as a comparison group; these were laterweighted back to represent their true proportionin the original sample.

Nearly 90% of the children identified to bereinterviewed were located. Interviews were ob-tained in over 90% of those found, yielding anoverall response rate of 79.3%. Further discussionof the interview procedure and content is fullydescribed in an"earlier paper (Furstenberg et aI.,1983).

Although occasional reference is made here tothe larger group of children living with bothbiological parents or with adopted parents in in-tact marriages, this paper concentrates on the ex-periences of children in single-parent and step-parent families. Children whose parents have for-mally divorced dominate the group (75%), butchildren whose parents have only separated (16%)and children whose parents have never married(8%) also are included in the discussion thatfollows. Because we are interested in patterns ofparenting by both the resident and nonresidentpar~~! only children whose nonresident parentsareiIive are included in the analysis.

In previous analyses of the NSC, we estimatedthat close to half of all children would not livewith both of their biological parents continuouslyduring childhood. Moreover, most childrenwhose parents separated or divorced would notmaintain regular contact with the parent livingoutside the home. In fact, a near majority ofchildren in our sample (49%) had not seen theirnonresident parent in the preceding year, and onlyone child in six averaged weekly contact or better.

'A sharp attenuation of contact occurred overtime, partly owing to geographical mobility;regular visits were much more likely if the nonresi-dent parent lived nearby. Attrition of contact washigher in families of low socioeconomic status,where the noncustodial parent also was less likelyto pay child support. Although the payment ofchild support was an important correlate of con-tinued contact, we did not find that the currentmarital status of the parents (either the custodialor noncustodial) had much effect on the amountof contact between nonresident parents and theirchildren or the amount of support that they pro-vided. (For further details see Furstenberg et al.,1983; Furstenberg, 1982b.)

This paper picks up where the previous analyseshave left off, exploring in greater detail the quali-ty of family relations after divorce and particularconsequences of continued contact for familyfunctioning. We begin by characterizing thenature of contact, when there is any, betweenchildren and their outside parent, taking into ac-count the interval of time that has elapsed since"separation. This leads us to a discussion of the ex-tent of childrearing responsibilities assumed byoutside parents, relations between former spousesand, finally, a brief examination of the implica-tions of continued contact for the children's ad-justment to life in single-parent or stepfamilyhouseholds.

894 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY November 1985

November 1985 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMIL Y 895

TABLE 1. CHILDREN'S RELATIONS WITH THEIR OUTSIDE BIOLOGICAL PARENTS BY DURATIONSINCE SEPARATION AND GENDER OF PARENT (pERCENTAGES, U.S. CHILDREN AGED 11-16, 1981)

Duration Since Separation(in Years) Total of Total of

Relation Items < 2 2-9 10+ Outside Fathers Outside Mothers

When child last saw outsideparent

1-30 days ago 74 53 28 40 6431-365 days ago 24 IS 19 18 291-4 years ago 2 12 5 7 45 + years ago - 20 49 35 3

p < .Ola p < .01b

In a Typical Month:Number of times child sees

outside parentNever 31 55 74 64 421-3 days 20 21 13 16 394 + days 49 25 13 20 18

Mean number of days 7.4 2.0 2.2 2.5 4.5P < .01 P < .05

Number of times child sleepsover at outside parent's

Never 60 71 89 80 421-3 days 22 19 7 12 404+ days 18 10 5 8 18

Mean number of days 1.6 0.8 0.5 0.7 2.9P < .01 P < .01

Child talks with outsideparent on telephone

6Never 41 70 55 181-3 times 48 28 17 23 394+ times 46 31 13 22 43

Mean number of times 8.1 4.3 1.8 3.1 4.1P < .01 P < .01

Child receives a letter fromthe outside parent

Never 92 92 93 93 65I + times 8 8 7 8 35

Mean number of times 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.8p> .1 p < .01

Child spends a week or moreat a time at theoutside parent's 28 31 16 22 57

p < .01 p < .01

Child thinks outside parent'shome is

Like own home 35 27 18 22 74Like someone else's home 23 28 13 19 16Child was never in it 42 44 69 58 10

p < .01 P < .01

Child has a place to keepthings at the outsideparent's 14 . .25 14 18 56

j;==<!.;..0 I P < .01Unweighted JIIC (25) (131) (239) (395) (28)

t-Iote Rstricted to children living with one biological parent and whose other biological parent is presumed alive.Length-of-separation figures are calculated only when outside"parent is the biological father.

aRepresents significant chi-squares comparing outside biological parents with varying degrees of duration since

( selbaration.Represents significant chi-squares comparing outside father and outside mother.cNs vary slightly by question because of nonresponses.

RESULTS

The Nature of Contact Between OutsideParents and Their Children

Each .child's interview contained a series ofquestions about the nature of contact with theoutside parent and the respondent's subjective im-pression of the quality of that contact. The datapresented in Table I point to the limited role thatoutside parents play in the day-to-day lives oftheir children. According to the adult informants,three out of five children had not seen their out-side biological fathers in the past month. Childrenwere much more likely to have had contact, how-ever, if their parents had separated recently. Theparents' accounts square rather well with thechildren's reports of the amount of contact occur-ring in a typical month. Except for the period im-mediately after separation, children typicallyreport infrequent contact with their parents,averaging only about two visits per month.

Visits only rarely involved sleeping over at theoutside parent's house. Four out of five childrensaid that they never slept over at the nonresiden-tial fathers' houses in a typical month, and half ofthose who did sleep over at least occasionally didso only once or twice a month. Again, there areclear differences by length of time since separa-tion. Conceivably these figures understate theamount of intimate, intensive contact becausesome families cluster their overnight stays duringvacations or in the summer months. About oneout of five children reported staying at their out-side fathers' houses for a week or more, indicatingthat in the course of a year some children managemore contact than is reflected by the typical pat-tern. Although there are still differences by lengthof time since separation, they are not as sharplydelineated. This could mean that there is a transi-tional stage for some outside parents between aperiod of intense involvement and a greater degreeof disengagement, perhaps occasioned by a geo-graphical move or a remarriage. Thus, child-carepractices are something like patterns of interactonwith extended kin. Fewer than one out of fivechildren stated that they had space in theirnonresidential fathers' homes to keep clothing orpersonal effects, and the majority of childrenreported that their outside fathers' homes werelike "visiting in someone else's home" (19070)orthat they never visited their outside parents at all(58%).

Furthermore, outside fathers tended to havelittle contact with their children by telephone.Overall, children averaged fewer than one conver-sation per week with their noncustodial fathers.Phoning, too, declines sharply as duration since

separation increases. Letter writing was even moreuncommon. Thus, it would seem that indirectforms of communication do not make up for thelack of direct contact that characterizes relationsbetween outside fathers and their children.

As for mothers living outside the home, Table Ireveals that they tend to maintain a much moreactive role in childrearing. Although few innumber, nonresident mothers are distinctly morelikely to visit with their child on a regular basis,have.overnight visits, and have more indirect con-tact by phone and letter. Accordingly, childrenliving apart from their mothers are more likely tosay that':they have places to store their thin.gs atthe mothers' houses and that they feel like theirown homes. There are not enough cases to ex-amine the pattern of contact between children andtheir noncustodial mothers by duration sinceseparation, but our impression is that the level ofcontact does not drop off so sharply for mothersover time. Nonetheless, even most mothers livingoutside the home do not have frequent and con-tinuous contact with their children.

Extent of Chi/drearing ResponsibilityTaken by the Outside Parent

Contact with the outside parent, if it occurs atall, is usually social or recreational (Table 2).Among the minority of children who had seentheir parents during the past week, only a tenthhad been given assistance with schoolwork; slight-ly more than a fifth had worked on projectstogether, such as making something, cooking, orsewing; about a fourth had played some game orsport. These figures are overstated owing to theexclusion of children who have not seen their out-side parents in the past year. Were we to includethese cases, it would turn out that only a minisculepercentage of the sample had received help withhomework; and a small fraction of thesample-less than one child in ten-had workedon projects together or played some game or sportwith their outside parents. While this list ofbehavior hardly represents a complete inventoryof childrearing activities, it is clear that the out-side parent normally plays a very limited role.

We get a clearer impression of the extent ofchildrearing by outside parents when theirbehavior is contrasted to parental practices ofparents living inside the home. Table 2 displaysthe activities and family practices of resident andnonresident parents in single-parent and step-families as reported by the children. For purposesof comparison, the reports of children living withtwo biological parents also are included. Thus, therelative influence of family structure and of theparent's residential status can be assessed on pat-

896 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY November 1985

TABLE 2. CHILD-CARE ACTIVITIES AND EXPECTATIONS BY FAMILY FORM (pERCENTAGE OFCHILDREN ANSWERING IN THE AFFIRMATIVE-U.S. CHILDREN AGED 11-16, 1981)

Household expectationsClean your roomClean rest of houseDo dishesCook

Household rulesWatching TVTelling your whereaboutsDoing homeworkDating

Rule makingReport parents discuss decisionsReport parents listen to their

arguments 42 34 59 39 44 49Unweighted M1 (785) (136) (55) (298) (110) (165)

Note: Restricted to children who are living with at least one biological parent. All of the above information aboutoutside parents are coUected from children who had at least 14 days of contact with their outside biological parentsin the past year.

aFamily type refers to living situation of the resident parent.bRepresents significant chi-squares comparing resident parents in intact, reconstituted, and single-parent

families: .p < .05;up < .01.cRepresents significant chi-squares comparing aU resident and outside parents regardless of family type: .p <

.05' ..p < .01.dNs vary slightly by question because of nonresponses.

96826132

33957770

39

terns of family interaction. Keep in mind thatmost of the data on the outside parent were col-lected only if the child reported at least 14days ofcontact during the preceding year.

Children generally have significantly lowerlevels of contact with outside parents than withparents living inside the home, even when com-parisons are confined to the more active.g~oup ofoutside parents. Differences in patterns oTparent-ing are generally much greater between residentand-nonresident parents than between any of thefamily forms. The disparity in social and recrea-tional activities is not quite as large as task-oriented activities ~ch as homework. Again, thiswould seem to suggest that the role of the outsideparent is generally confmed to entertainment andexcludes most of routine caretaking respon-

November 1985

96806943

73554622

97917241

60484522

u65514622

u..

37937665

22783759

25937661

.4783952

11783854.

28 3149 38 37

sibilities of household management. Partlybecause their contact frequently occurs outsidethe home, nonresident parents are less likely to ex-pect their children to straighten up around thehouse or help prepare meals or to have definiterules about their children's day-to-day routines.Although the relative differences are quite sizable,a minority of outside parents who see theirchildren at least 14days a year do manage to exer-cise parental responsibilities.

As an interesting aside, Table 2 also shows thatinstrumental exchanges between parents andchildren do not vary greatly by family type.Children in reconstituted and single-parentfamilies are as likely as children in unbrokenfamilies to say that their parents make demandson them for helping out. Indeed, if anything,

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

uu....

uuu..

u

u

897

Family TypeaIntact Reconstituted Single-parent Total

(Biological (Resident (Outside (Resident (Outside (OutsideActivities and Expectations Parents) Parent) Parent) Parent) Parent) pb Parent) pc

Parent-child Interaction

Activities with parents in pastmonth

Gone to the movies 23 22 5 27 20 15 .Gone out to dinner 66 56 49 50 44 .. 45 u

Gone shopping for you 70 60 37 68 41 41 u

Taken trip to museum orsports event 41 29 22 26 18 u 19 ..

Activities with parents in past weekDid a project together 49 52 15 42 24 21 u

Worked on schoolwork together 34 22 9 23 12 .. 11 u

Played game or sport 42 41 34 27 27 .. 29 u

Family Rules and Expectations

more seems to be expected of children in single-parent households. Rules are not more lax forchildren of disrupted marriages, with the possibleexception of dating restrictions. Family structurealso appears not to affect significantly the degreeto which children are included in the process ofrule making.

The Quality of Children's Relationswith Their Outside Parents

A clearer picture of how children in differentfamily circumstances feel about the time spentwith parents is gained from their own reports onthe quality of relations with parents living insideand outside the home. Because each biologicalparent was assessed separately, we can learn fromTable 3 whether the quality of the parent-childrelationships varies more by family structure or byresidential arrangement. Unfortunately, there aretoo few single fathers to appear as a separatesubgroup in the table. Remember also that mostentries in Table 3 exclude children who had littleor no contact with their outside parents.

In general, children in all family situations aredisinclined to report serious disturbances in theirrelationships with their outside parents. A majori-ty say that they do not often argue with their out-

side parents; that they feel loved, appreciated andtrusted; and that they spend enough time withtheir outside parents. Close to half say that theywant to be like their outside parents when theygrow up.

In comparing children's perceptions of residen-tial and nonresidential parents, however, some in-teresting differencesj emerge. A strong similarityexists in children's feelings towards their mothersregardless of the latter's marital or residentialsituation. Childn,n from nonintact families,'Aaresomewhat less likely to say that they want to belike their mothers when they grow up, but they areothe~W-isesimilar in their relations with theirmothers. By contrast, children with fathers livingoutside the home are decidedly more discontentwith their paternal relationship than thoseresiding with their father. More than half say thatthey do not get all the affection they need, andnearly as many say they are only fairly close or notclose at all to their fathers. Outside fathers arealso faulted for not making clear and consistentrules and for not being firm enough.

A possible reason for the differences in the waythat children regard mothers and fathers livingoutside the home was suggested in the findingspresented earlier, namely that children have more

TABLE 3. CHILDREN'S REPORTS OF THE QUALITY OF PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS BY FAMILYTYPE (PERCENTAGE ANSWERING IN AFFIRMATIVE-U.S. CHILDREN AGED 11-16,1981)

Children's Reports

Often argue with parentaSpends enough time with youbGives enough affection to youbFrequently do things togetherCFeel very Iextremely close t9 parentbWould be like when grownbParent:a

Makes clear, consistent rules 45 61 v 53 45Trusts you 77 80 78 84

Is firm with you 49 ,/ 59,,' 48 58Wants to know your whereabouts 80 70 78 63Encourages you to do your best 87 J 80 82 85Appreciates your accomplishments 76 < 70 71 74Loves and is interested in you 87 / 83 87 93Changes expectations 19 20 27 13

Unweighted N (785) (785) (118) (70)d

Note: Restricted to children living with at least one biological parent.aQuestions were asked only if children had 14 or more days of contact with outside parents in past year.bQuestions were asked of all children with outside parents, regardless of their amount of contact.cQuestion was asked only of children who saw their outside parents three or more days in past year.dThe unweighted Ns for outside fathers are the Ns for the largest category-Le., children with outside parents

regardless of amount of contact. No N falls below 40.

Intact

Child Living withMother Father

68078348772

898

ChildLivingwith

Mother

FamilyType S\ (',jReconstituted

(~I \ ChildOutsIde LivingParent withFather Father

OutsideParentMother

76074358284

7994529079638612

(20)

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY November 1985

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71438173

117176378667

275

;44/40544!J-

-~Single-parent

ChildLivingwith

Mother

5397587986779119

(17)

5376488685798825

(287)

OutsideParentFather

127772328259

37348)4545>40\

3673477376677620

(l60)d

-,

"

contact with outside mothers than with outsidefathers. Conceivably, the lesser degree of con-tact-rather than parent's gender-explains chil-dren's lower assessment of their fathers. While thenumber of cases precludes a definitive test of thishypothesis, greater paternal contact does havesome effect on the children's assessment of thequality of relations with their fathers (not shown).However, the effect is not as large as might be ex-pected. Only at the extreme, when contact had nottaken place in the past year, were childrennoticeably more critical of their fathers. It ap-pears, then, that children who see more of theirfathers do not generally enjoy much closer rela-tion than those with occasional contact.

Mothers with infrequent contact were accordedeven more importance. These rather extravagantevaluations may be nothing more than poignantreminders of the symbolic importance to the childof maintaining links to the biological parent, butit also appears that children are prepared to adoptsomething like a sliding scale when they judgetheir relations with nonresident parents. Less isexpected and, therefore, whatever attentions aregiven are gratefully received. These findings close-ly parallel the results of previous research amonglow-income blacks, focusing on relations betweenunmarried fathers and their children: what seemlike tenuous or nonexistent ties to outsideobservers are experienced by participants as im-portant and meaningful relations (Furstenbergand Talvitie, 1979).

A mark of the significance of the outside parentis indicated by children's responses to the ques-tion, "When you think about your family, whospecifically do you include?" Virtually allchildren included the biological parents withwhom they were residing, and more than two outof three (72070)mentioned stepfathers, if theirbiological mothers were remarried. By contrast,only half of the children with outside fathers in-cluded them in their family list. Nonetheless, thislatter proportion is impressive in view of whatlittle contact many have with these individuals.Children who saw their parents only occasionally,3 to 13days a year, were only slightly less likely toregard their outside parents as members of theirfamilies, compared with children who saw theirparents on a weekly basis. When visits occtriredless often than three days a year, the outsidefath~L wa,s only rarely regard~d as a "familymember" by the child.

Are children more likely to omit their outsideparents from their lists of family members if tqeyare living with stepparents? The data for childrenliving apart from their fathers clearly shows thathaving a stepparent has no effect on the likeli-

hood of the child listing the father as a familymember. Children' appear to accumulate ratherthan replace fathers, particularly when the fatheroutside the home maintains an active presence inthe child's life. The fact that many children ex-pand the boundaries of their family to includeboth their biological and stepfathers does notmean, of course, that parents do the same. In-deed, when asked to list the people they con-sidered to be family members, about 1 in 20 adultrespondents included their former mates. Whilehardly surprising, this finding alerts us to thepotential complications in the socialization pro-cess when parents and children define themselvesin family systems that only partially overlap.

Relations Among Resident andNonresident Parents

This brings us to a pair of critical questionsabout which previous research has had little tosay: How do resident and nonresident parentsshare the responsibilities of child care, and howare these arrangements altered when stepparentsbecome invoved as well? A few previous studieshave addressed these questions in small-scaleresearch (Keshet, 1980; Goldsmith, 1980; Goet-ting, 1979; Spanier and Thompson, 1984). Thedata presented in the remainder of this paper pro-vide only an introduction to these topics.

Table 4 includes only families-about half ofthe disrupted ones-in which the outside parentshave remained involved at least to some degree inthe past five years. Key indicators of the relation-ship of the outside parent to the parent in thehousehold are cross-tabulated by the gender ofthe outside parent and, for outside fathers, theamount of contact with the child. Because thenumber of children who are not living with theirmothers is small, caution should be used ingeneralizing the results for outside mothers.

Looking first at the total figures for outsidemothers and fathers, it is striking how little com-munication about the child there is betweenformerly married couples. These responses are inpart a reflection of the limited contact that out-side parents have with their children. Still, thislack of communication indicates that the patternof cooperative coparenting, so widely portrayedin popular media, is, in fact, rather rare. Close tohalf of the resident mothers and nearly two out offive (38%) of the resident fathers say they hardlyever br never talk with their children about theirrelationship to the outside parents, and a substan-tial minority (38% of the mothers and 31% of thefathers) report that they sometimes or often com-municate with the outside parents through theirchildren. It would appear that children often pro-

November 1985 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY 899

TABLE 4. LEVEL AND QUALITY OF ADULT RESPONDENT'S INTERACTION WITH OUTSIDE PARENT(pERCENTAGES-U.S. CHILDREN AGED 11-16, 1981)

Child ResponsesOutside parent and resident parents sometimes

or often fight over child's timeIn matters concerning child, outside and

resident parents do not get along 7 13 16 14 * 14 13Unweighted JIIC (45) (65) (65) (55) (238) (28)

aRepresents significant chi-squares comparing outside fathers with varying degrees of contact with their children,

in~uding those with no contact in the past year, as long as outside parent is presumed alive: *p < .05;**p < .01.There are no significant chi-squares when comparing outside fathers and outside mothers who had some contactwith their children in the last year.

cNs vary slightly by question because of nonresponses.

vide a key communicaiton link between the bio-logical parents, who are reluctant partners in thechildrearing process.

Given the low level of communication, it is notsurprising that, when asked how much input thenonresident parents have in the decision-makingprocess, about three-fourths of the respondentsreplied that they had little or no influence andtwo-fifths stated that the biological parents nevermade decisions together. This low level of col-laboration led most parents to complain about thelevel of childrearing responsibility assumed by thenonresident parent.

As involvement by the outside parent increases,the proportion of residential mothers who statethat they rarely or never discuss childrearing mat-ters with the outside father, that he has little in-fluence on their decisions, and that he takes toolittle child-care responsibility drops. The propor-tion of residential mothers who use the child tocommunicate with the outside father, however,increases significantly. The increase in indirect

900

3 9 207 10 14

communication with the outside parent indicatesa strategy for reducing potential strain-minimizepersonal contact.

This explanation seems plausible for tworeasons. First, as the level of contact increases, sodoes the proportion of residential mothers whoreport that they rarely or never agree with the out-side parent in raising the child. Second, even whencontact averages once a week, many residentialmothers do not discuss child-care matters with theoutside fathers or admit their influence on child-care decisions. This suggests that parents oftencontrive to stay away from one another in order tominimize the potential for open hostility. Even infamilies where the couple is presumably coparent-ing, child-care decisions often are made withoutthe benefit of direct consultation and delibera-tion.

Incidentally, the negative feelings expressed arein sharp contrast to reports by remarried respon-dents about their current spouses. An overwhelm-ing majority of remarried parents express a high

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY November 1985

Amount of Contact with Outside Father Outside Parents

Last Contact Number. of Days of Total for Total for1-5 Years Contact In Last Year Outside Outside

pbInteraction Reports Ago 1-13 14-51 52+ pa Father Mother

Residential Parent ResponsesRarely or never discuss matters concerl)lng

child with the outside parent 81 77 57 44 ** 67 59Rarely or never agree with outside parent in

rearing child , 22 26 32 ,.48 ** 32 -20_,., ,.Outside parent takes too little responsibility

in rearing child 87 73 74 61 75 71Outside parent has very little or no influence

-c:::1!7on decisions about child 91 68 45 .. 73 77Outside parent often breaks plans to see child 12 15 4 5 .. 9 12Outside parent often meddles in the way you

bring up child 3 3 6 10 5 0Outside parent often tries to undermine

your rules for child 0 4 8 16 8 0Child sometimes or often takes advantage of

differences between you and outside parent 2 9 31 43 .. 23 17Sometimes or often use child to communicate

with outside parent 30 28 40 53 ** 38 31Hardly ever or never talk with child about

your relationship with outside parent 98 91 69 57 .. 46 38

degree of contentment with the level of the child-care support provided by spouses living inside thehome, indicating that the negative reports aboutthe outside parents are not merely the inevitableexpressions that the other parent is not doingenough (not shown).

The above interpretation gains more supportwhen we examine a set of questions, asked of theresident parents, about tensions that could arisethrough direct dealings between the outsideparents and the children. The resident parentswere asked if the outside parent broke plans to seethe child, meddled in the raising of the child, ortried to undermine rules for the child. Very fewparents complained of any of these problems.Although the amount of strain evidenced by twoof these questions (meddling and underminingrules) increased with increasing levels of contactbetween the outside parent and the child, the pro-portion who complained about interference wasremarkably low even at high levels of contact. Itappears that formerly married couples try tominimize the effect of any tension between them-selves for their children. Indeed, even though resi-dent parents indicate that they rarely or neveragree with the outside parents, very few childrenreport that their biological parents often fight ordo not get along well.

From the above discussion, it is apparent thatresident fathers are about as likely as residentmothers to report that the parent living outsidethe home does not assume a fair share of child-care. Gender appears to be of less importancethan custodial position in shaping perspectives onchildrearing and evaluations of coparenting ar-rangements (cf. Furstenberg and Spanier,1984).

Contact with the Outside Parentand Family Relations

Remarriage can either alleviate or complicatetensions between parents. Virtually no differencesturned up when the patterns of communication,the assessments of involvement, and the problemsof relating to the outside parent were cross-tabulated by the current marital status of eachparent. Remarried respondents also were askeddirectly whether their contact with the outsideparent put a strain on their marriage. Only .30/0said this happened often, and another 9% 'saIdthat it sometimes occurred. The respondents whowere.in more active coparenting relationshipswere actually less likely to report that dealingswith the outside parents introduced tensions intotheir marriages (not shown).

Similarly, stepfamily relations were notadversely affected by contact with the outsideparent. Only 8OJoof the sample said that the

nonresident parent sometimes interfered with therelationship of the child and stepparent, and 3%said such instances of interference occurred often.Again, no relationship existed between theamount of contact by the outside parent and com-plaints of intrusion.

In addition to these subjective appraisals by theadults, the children's interview provided furtherconfirmation that the outside parent was not com-plicating parent-child relations inside thehousehold or making family life more difficult.This conclusion was reached after examining theimpact of contact with the outside parent using awide range of indicators of family functioningdrawn from the children's interview. Themeasures included reports of the quality of rela-tions with custodial parents and stepparents,when present in the household, as well aschildren's descriptions of their family life duringthe months immediately preceding the survey.

The consistency of the results is impressive.Children in regular contact with the parents out-side the home were no more likely than thosewhose contact was sporadic or nonexistent toreport relational problems with either theircustodial parents or their stepparents. This is notto say that family disruption had no consequencesfor relations with parents or views of family life.Children from broken marriages were not as hap-py with the quality of family relationships andwere more critical of how their families func-tioned (Furstenberg and Seltzer, 1983). However,the displeasure of children living in single-parenthouseholds or in stepfarnilies cannot be traced tothe level of involvement by the biological parentsliving outside the home.

Before completely dismissing the possibilitythat contact with the outside parent disturbs rela-tions in the child's household, a separate analysiswas undertaken of children living in three dif-ferent family types: stepfamilies with biologicalmothers, stepfamilies with biological fathers, andchildren living only with mothers. Not enoughcases exist to permit a separate examination ofchildren living with fathers only. Even in the threesubgroups mentioned above, the number of casesis small-particularly ih households where thechildren are living with stepmothers-requiringthat caution be exercised in interpreting theresults.

Contact with the outside father clearly does notimpair relations with resident parents. In fact, thedata hint that .satisfaction with family relationsmay be ever Igreater when children maintainregular contact with fathers living outside thehome. Moreover, relations with stepfathers showno evidence of disturbance when biological

November 1985 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY 901

---

fathers outside the home play an active role. Ourdata suggest that children are usually able to ex-pand their families to include more than onefather and perhaps even benefit from doing so inthe event of divorce.

The situation looks somewhat different for chil-dren living with stepmothers. These children aregenerally Jess content with the quality of familylife, and they specifically experience difficultieswith their stepmothers. Although the number ofcases are few, the results imply that regular 'con-tact with the outside mother may complicate rela-tions with the stepmother. Children seem to findit harder to incorporate new mothers than newfathers.

Before drawing any policy implications aboutthe advisabilty of different custody practices fromthis particular result, several possible interpreta-tions must be considered. Children living withtheir biological fathers and stepmothers may bedifferent to begin with, because they represent ex-ceptions to the ordinary practice of assigningcustody of the children to the biological mothers.Therefore, it seems likely that children living withtheir fathers may have been exposed to a difficultcustody negotiation or may have a special historyof troubled family relations. Furthermore, thechildren in our study are in late childhood andearly adolescence; they were all born in the periodwhen divorce rates were just beginning to ac-celerate. Many, therefore, experienced familydisruption a decade ago, when divorce was lesscommon and custody practices more uniformlyprescribed. How children would respond to par-ticular custody arrangements today requires acomparable study of children whose parents havedivorced more recently.

CONCLUSION

Despite inevitable qualifications about thelimitations of the data, the National Survey ofChildren yields some surprising results on the waythat marital disruption is altering parenting prac-tices. Our major findings can be summarized asfollows.

1. Marital disruption effectively destroys theongoing relationship between children and thebiological parents living outside the home in a ma-jority of families. Nearly half of all children havenot seen their nonresident fathers in the past year.Only a minority have ever slept over at thefather's house; among those who have, overnightvisits are a special treat (or perhaps in some casesa special obligation) rather than a regular routine.Children of divorce rarely have two homes as iscommonly suggested in the mass media. Many-probably a majority-have never set foot inside

the houses of their nonresident fathers, which un-doubtedly are less familiar to them than thehomes of many relatives or friends.

2. Contact with the outside parent, when thereis any, normally takes the form of a social ratherthan an instrumental exchange. Parents occa-sionally go out to dinner with their children, takethem on trips, or play with them; but they rarelyhelp them with schoolwork or carry out some !project together. Outside fathers who socialize 'their children at ,all usually do so from a distance !and with a great deal of laxity. There seems to be !m9f~ than a grain of truth to the stereotype thatparents outside the home behave more like palsthan parents.

3. Most children who see their outside parentson a more or less regular basis do not complainabout the amount of love or attention theyreceive. Children with fathers living outside thehome are not as content with their relationship aschildren with mothers living outside the home;but regardless of who is the custodial parent,children seem to apply a sliding scale in assessingrelations with the outside parents, a scale that is .far more generousthan objectivestandardsmight '

permit.4. Residential parents disproportionately

assume the responsibility of child care. Accord-ingly, they commonly complain about low level ofinvolvement of outside parents in childrearingtasks. They credit them with little decision-making authority and indicate that direct discus-sions about the child rarely if ever take place.Over half report that they rarely or never discusschildrearing matters with the outside parents,even when they are in fairly regular contact withthe children; the absence of communicationdampens the possibility of conflict between theparents. "Parallel parenting" might be a betterway of characterizing the pattern of childrearingbetween formerly married couples, comparedwith "coparenting," a term that is widely usedbut rarely practiced.

5. Our data do not seem to support thespeculations of a number of researchers and clini-cians that stepfamily life is frequently afflictedwith problems created by the presence of amultitude of parents. Typically, as we have seen,no more than two parents, if that many, are ac-tively involved after a marriage breaks up. Whenthe residential parent remarries and the outsideparent remains on the scene, we find littleevidence from either parent or child of difficultiesthat can be directly traced to the participation ofmultiple parents. At least in stepfamilies con-sisting of the children's mothers and stepfathers,which are the majority of cases, active participa-

902 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY November 1985

tion by the outside parents does not generallyelevate level of tension in the family or complicatethe relationship of children and stepfathers.

In the rarer cases of families with stepmothers,there was some evidence that regular contact withthe outside mothers created tensions in thefamilies and complicated the children's relationswith their stepmothers. Children seem to find itmore difficult to replace mothers than fathers,though the circumstances in families with step-mothers are so different and the number of casesso small that this interpretation must be con-sidered only conjecture.

In general, the ability of children to deal withcomplexity was impressive. Children seemed to bedoing as well if not better in expanded familysituations than in arrangements that involve theloss or replacement of a parent. Partly, this mayreflect the fact that outside parents who are com-mitted to maintaining a relationship are a specialbreed and their children recognize it. They alsomay have experienced a less traumatic divorce, afact that contributes to the well-being of theirchildren and the relatively low level of conflictwith their former spouse.

Finally, we must reiterate that the datapresented in this paper do not address the criticalquestion of how divorce and remarriage affect theadjustment of children and their level of function-ing with peers, in school, or in the larger society.This is the subject of a separate analysis(Furstenberg and Allison, 1984). All that we haveshown here is that the ability of children tomanage the trauma of separation and divorceseems to be reasonably high when we considertheir relations with their biological parents. Thosewho encounter family disruption usually retainreasonably close ties to their resident parents andcontinue to make what they can of their relationswith their nonresident parents. In most instances,they are obviously making do with very little.

Stepping back from the data, what do theseparticular findings tell us about how the growingpattern of conjugal succession is likely to affectthe socialization process and the operation of theAmerican kinship system? It is clear that at thepresent time coparenting among formerly marriedcouples is more of a myth than a reality in altbut atiny fraction of families. Even among th~-=fiighlyeducated, the extent to which parental respon-sibilities. are shared after separation or divorce isminimal. As a rule divorce implies not only thedissolution of marital bonds but a partial if nottotal withdrawal from parenting as well. Whennoncustodial parents move out, parenting-if itcontinues at all-usually is reduced to a ritualrelationship. Parents outside the home retain cer-

tain symbolic rights, but they relinquish most oftheir actual responsibilities. Thus, while they con-tinue to be their children's "real parents" and aregenerally accorded a place in the immediate fami-ly even when they have little contact with theiroffspring, they typically give up decision-makingauthority and exercise little direct influence overtheir children's upbringing.

How and why outside parents withdraw fromtheir children is a question of vital importance tounderstanding the impact of divorce on parent-ing. Clearly, part of the explanation stems froman unwillingness to provide child support, partfrom the difficulty of maintaining relations withthe former spouse who retains custody of thechild. The withdrawal from parenting also may betraced to the pattern of conjugal succession itself.Over time, many fathers assume caretakingresponsibilities in second families (Furstenbergand Spanier, 1984). One way of portraying oursystem, then, is to visualize it as a form ofchildswapping. Parents, fathers in particular, ex-change one set of children for another as theymove from one household to the next. They are atleast as conscientious in the role of resident sur-rogate parent as they are in their role as nonresi-dent biological parent. On the basis of behavioralone, it might seem that sociological parenthoodis more salient than biological parenthood.

There are several grounds for objecting to thisconclusion. In the first place, it does not accurate-ly describe all cases. Some outside parents main-tain a high degree of involvement in childrearing.Second, our system is currently in a state of fluxas custody practices are being reconsidered inresponse to the changing roles of fathers and thegrowing involvement of women in the market-place. Admittedly, the picture we have provided isa static one that does not take account of changesthat may be under way. Current practices asdescribed in this paper are not inevitable, and theymay indeed be changing. Finally, it is importantto recognize that the perspective presented herenot only is historically cross-sectional but alsofocuses on the family at a single point in itsdevelopment. Noncustodial parents sometimesbecome more involved in late adolescence or earlyadulthood when the child is emancipated from thehousehold.

These objections notwithstanding, our datasuggest that the significance of biological parent-hood may be waning in response to the emergingpattern of conjugal succession. Biological ties tothe child seem to count for less, sOfiological tiesfor more. This observation is consistent withanother more general trend that may be takingplace in family relations. Like marriage, child-

November 1985 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY 903

bearing and childrearing are processes that havebecome dictated less by constraint and obligationand determined more by voluntary participation.Increasingly it seems that parenthood is no lessimpermanent than marriage.

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