Child Custody Preferences in Light of Attitudes Toward the Couple's Division of Labor in Portugal

Abstract

ObjectiveExamine and compare the attitudes of women and men in different age groups toward types of children's residence after divorce/separation, considering their attitudes toward the division of labor in the family (DLF).BackgroundThis study draws on a multidimensional approach to attitudinal change in DLF and in the division of parental involvement after divorce/separation. Empirically, it benefits from new measures on fatherhood and motherhood and population‐based data.MethodThe authors draw on the 2012 Portuguese ISSP module by focusing on three dimensions: types of children's residence; men's involvement in parenting and homemaking; and women's employment and primacy as caregivers. They examine the interplay between attitudinal, family, and sociodemographic variables through regression, multiple correspondence, and cluster analyzes.ResultsThe attitudes to DLF strongly shape the attitudes toward the type of children's residence, which contribute to polarization between preferences for sole residence and shared residence. Also, three attitudinal profiles—unilateral egalitarian familism, egalitarian familism, and mother‐centered familism—revealed attitudinal hybridization through the complex combination of egalitarianism, essentialism and familism, and their embeddedness in social contexts.ConclusionBy moving beyond the nuclear family and by combining standard and innovative attitudinal indicators of DLF, the findings shed light on the social processes that are creating complexity and plurality in the attitudes toward cultural models of motherhood and fatherhood.