The Role of the Father after Divorce

Abstract

Fathers figure prominently in a child's postdivorce life whether they are involved or disinterested, but concerns about inadequate child support, noncustodial fathers who fail to visit, and the economic plight of single mothers have together raised policy questions about how better to enfranchise fathers with the rights and responsibilities of parenting and ensure them a continuing and meaningful role in the lives of their offspring. This article focuses on obstacles and avenues to ensuring a meaningful postdivorce parenting role for fathers by examining the effects on them of custody standards, visitation policies, child support guidelines and their enforcement, and the other economic arrangements surrounding contemporary divorce. In the end, public policies that foster the child's unconflicted relationships with each parent in the context of reliable and adequate economic support will require new ways of structuring relations between ex-spouses in the interests of offspring (for example, new approaches to custody and visitation), nonadversarial modes of assisted dispute resolution to accommodate postdivorce changes in family life, child support policies which guarantee that a child's economic needs will be met when parents are unable to provide adequately (and that assist parents who are unable to provide), and that recognize and ensure both the relational and the economic contributions of each parent to a child's well-being.

Uncertainty and the Avoidance of the State of One's Family in Stepfamilies, Postdivorce Single-Parent Families, and First-Marriage Families

“…While this avoidance is often indicative of children's grief and anger about their family, it may also simply be a response to change and an inability to predict family members' responses, especially new authority figures (Ferguson & Dickson, 1995;Thompson, McLanahan, & Curtin, 1992). Next to the stepparent-stepchild relationship, the restructuring of familial relationships is particularly pressing for fathers and children, because of fathers' often newfound role as noncustodial parents (Thompson, 1994) and perhaps because fathers in general are deemed to be less responsive to disclosures than mothers (Guerrero & Afifi, 1995a, 1995b. With this information in mind, the first hypotheses are set forth: H1: Children in first-marriage families have the least uncertainty about their family, followed by children in postdivorce single-parent families, and then stepfamilies.…”

Father Involvement and Long‐term Young Adult Outcomes: The Differential Contributions of Divorce and Gender

“…First, in their groundbreaking Stanford Divorce Study, Maccoby and Mnookin (1992) found that in two thirds of cases where the father disagreed with the mother's request for sole custody, the father requesting joint custody was overruled by the judge and the mother was awarded sole custody. Second, as Thompson (1994) notes, “fathers who must negotiate with their wives over custody issues realize that, if their dispute comes to court, their chances of achieving a more generous custody settlement are remote at best” (p. 217). Third, Maccoby and Mnookin (1992) found that, even when mothers and fathers agreed on joint custody or on sole paternal custody, judges overruled these agreements in one‐quarter of such cases.…”

Fathering in intact and divorced families: Ethnic differences in retrospective reports

“…Generally, nonresident fathering has been viewed as an impediment to father‐child relationships (e.g., Amato & Gilbreth; Fabricius & Hall, 2000). Most critically, opportunities for nurturance and involvement in children's lives clearly are fewer for nonresident fathers than for fathers in intact families (Finley; Thompson, 1994).…”