High rates of stability in post-separation care arrangements: examining prevalence and predictors in Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACT Profiling the German case, we examine stability and change in shared physical custody (SPC) compared to sole custody (SC) and its correlates. Changing legal and cultural conditions led to a higher rate of separated parents sharing childcare. Because most prior studies relied on cross-sectional data or analyses, there is only sparse information on the stability of care arrangements in Europe more generally and in Germany specifically. Drawing on the representative panel ‘Growing up in Germany’ collected in 2019 and 2021, our analyses were based on parents’ reports on 558 minors in post-separation families. Employing multinomial logit models, we regressed a categorical change score indicating fluctuations in care arrangements on a variety of measures, including socio-demographic and separation-specific indicators. The share of children in both SPC and SC was highly stable. A shorter distance between parental homes and higher parental education was linked to stable SPC arrangements. Fewer interparental conflicts, but also more coparenting problems at baseline, were associated with a higher chance to switch to arrangements with increasing shared care, whereas parental employment at baseline was linked to decreasing care. Results are further discussed in light of the timing of data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic and potential underlying mechanisms.