JFS Baxter Et Al25july2011

Family structure, quality of the co-parental relationship, post-separation parenting and children’s emotional wellbeing
Family structure, co-parental relationship

quality, post-separation paternal involvement
and children’s emotional wellbeing
JENNIFER BAXTER PhD*

Senior Research Fellow, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne, Australia
RUTH WESTON M.A.

Principal Research Fellow, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne, Australia
LIXIA QU PhD
Senior Research Fellow, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne, Australia
ABSTRACT
It is well documented that children who experience parental divorce are more likely than those in intact families to
experience a range of emotional and behavioural adjustment problems, and to perform less well academically.
However, few studies of the impact of divorce have exclusively considered young children. This paper takes
advantage of a recent Australian child cohort study to examine links between young children’s emotional wellbeing,
the quality of the co-parental relationship, and post-separation paternal involvement. We found that while children
aged 6-7 years living with both parents generally had better emotional wellbeing than similar aged children living
with one parent, inter-parental hostility was an important factor in explaining young children’s emotional
wellbeing. But regardless of family type, children whose parents had a hostile inter-parental relationship tended to
have poorer emotional wellbeing than children whose parents did not have a non-hostile relationship, as reported by
children and their parents.
Keywords: children, divorce, wellbeing, parental conflict, family structure, family transitions,
* Correspondence to: Dr Jennifer Baxter, Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne, Australia 3000; Tel: +61 3
9214 7888; e-mail: Jennifer.Baxter@aifs.gov.au
Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 1

As in other western countries, Australia has experienced striking changes in many aspects of
family life, including increases in the proportions of couples who are cohabiting outside marriage,
in the fragility of relationships, and in the number of children born outside marriage (Hayes et al.,
2010). It is not surprising, then, that among all Australian families with dependent children, the
proportion headed by a sole parent has increased (e.g., from 15% in 1986 to 22% in 2006)
(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001, 2007). Most of these families arise from the separation of
parents who had been married to each other (Hayes et al., 2010).
Each year over the past few decades, around 50,000 children under age 18 years have
experienced parental divorce, However, given that separating parents include those who were
married to each other and do not seek divorce (at least for several years and possibly not at all),
as well as those who had been living together outside marriage the number of children
experiencing parental separation is likely to be considerably greater than this figure. Overall, one
in five children aged under age 18 years have a natural parent living elsewhere (Australian Bureau
of Statistics, 2011).
Prior research has shown that children who experience parental divorce are more likely
than those in intact families to experience a range of emotional and behavioural adjustment
problems, and to perform less well academically. As adults, they are also more likely to divorce
and become single parents themselves than those who grew up in intact families (see reviews by
Amato, 2000; Cherlin et al., 1998). While differences in emotional and behavioural problems
between children in divorced and intact families are typically modest, with much overlap
apparent, the absolute number of children adversely affected by divorce is substantial (Amato,
2000).
Assessments of links between parental separation and children’s wellbeing need to take
into account the fact that relationship breakdown does not occur randomly. That is, factors that
predispose parental separation may also be associated with children’s elevated risk of
experiencing emotional or behavioural problems. Without taking some of these background
characteristics into account, the impact of parental separation on children will be overstated
(Furstenberg Jr & Kiernan, 2001). For instance, parents’ problematic personality traits or mental
health problems that contribute to separation may be inherited by children, increasing their
chance of displaying various psycho-social problems (Amato, 2010; see Pryor & Rodgers, 2001).
Regardless of whether separation takes place, processes associated with deteriorating
relationships between parents are also likely to impact negatively on the children. Thus studies of
intact and separated families suggest that high levels of overt inter-parental conflict increase the
risk of children experiencing socio-emotional problems. These problems that can be long-lasting

(see Amato & Booth, 1997; Sarrazin & Cyr, 2007). It is therefore not surprising that the elevated
risk of adjustment problems apparent for children whose parents have separated are frequently
linked to their experiences of significant pre-separation conflict (Amato & Booth, 1997; Ambert,
1997). At the same time, there is some evidence to suggest that of children exposed to high levels
of inter-parental conflict, those whose parents remain together tend to indicate poorer
adjustment than those whose parents separate (e.g., Jekielek, 1997), while divorce between
parents who displayed low conflict prior to separation tends to be associated with poorer
wellbeing for these children (Morrison & Coiro, 1999). In his review of this literature, Amato
(2010) concluded: “Taken together, these studies suggest that the consequences of divorce
depend on whether children are removed from an aversive or a supportive family environment”
(p.657).
While parental separation may bring about relief from exposure to very frequent and
intense conflict between parents, it also tends to create a range of other disruptions. Immediate
upheavals may include substantial increases in financial difficulties and associated deprivations,
changes in housing and school, enhanced parental distress and/or diminished quality of
parenting, and substantially reduced time or even total loss of contact with one parent. Such
disruptions can be very distressing for the children (see Amato, 2010; Carlson & Corcoran, 2001;
Furstenberg Jr et al, 1987; Kelly & Emery, 2003). In forging new lives, parents may re-partner,
perhaps more than once They may find themselves leading very complex lives which include
having to take responsibility for additional step children or additional children resulting from the
new relationship (Amato, 2010; Cherlin, 2008). Parental separation may therefore be best seen as
a step in the process of relationship breakdown and readjustment, with the outcomes for children
linked to their experiences of the entire process. This process is likely to entail multiple
transitions such as sequential changes in family structure, which may in turn adversely affect the
children (Amato, 2010).i
When questioned about their feelings about their parents’ separation, many children
express sadness about spending diminished or no time with one parent (usually the father)
(Lodge & Alexander, 2010; Pryor & Rodgers, 2001). Yet previous research into the links between
frequency or duration of post-separation parent–child contact and children’s wellbeing has
yielded mixed results.ii On the basis of a meta-analysis of 12 studies, Whiteside and Becker (2000)
concluded that the amount of time with the father was part of the complex model explaining
children’s outcomes, with the link between fathers’ time with children and children’s outcomes
being mediated by the quality of the father-child involvement. Based on another meta-analysis of
63 studies, Amato and Gilbreth (1999) concluded that children’s frequency of contact with their

non-resident parent does not necessarily benefit children. Rather, the quality of parenting
displayed during this time together affects child wellbeing. These authors also found that the
relationship between paternal contact and child wellbeing was stronger for recent than earlier
studies. They considered this to be a tentative finding which, if true, may arise from greater
commitment and parenting skills among more recent cohorts of non-resident fathers.
Kaspiew et al. (2009) examined the link between child wellbeing (as reported by one
parent – the mother or the father) and different care-time arrangements of Australian children
whose parents had been separated for an average of 15 months. Mothers’ assessments of child
wellbeing were not linked with care-time arrangements, once their views of the quality of the
inter-parental relationship and parent and child characteristics were taken into account. On the
other hand, fathers with shared care time provided more favourable assessments of their child’s
well-being than fathers with a minority of care time, while those who never saw their child
provided the least favourable assessments.
Findings such as those reported above need to be qualified by the fact that research has
consistently shown that different informants are quite often not in close agreement when
assessing children’s psycho-social wellbeing (Achenbach et al., 1987; De Los Reyes & Kazdin,
2005; Loeber et al., 1991). This is particularly the case when informants are reporting on
internalising problems, such as anxiety and depression (Achenbach et al., 1987; Choudhury et al.,
2003; Comer & Kendall, 2004; Duhig et al., 2000; Karver, 2006).
In addition, individual informants’ assessments can be affected by “situation specificity”.
For example, children may be unhappy or anxious at school but not at home or vice versa,
leading teachers and parents to provide quite different views of the child’s psycho-social
wellbeing. Smart et al., (2008) provide an analyses of child outcomes using teachers’ responses.
Parents may better reflect how children are at home. For example children at home are likely to
be more directly exposed to any parental difficulties that exist or to the realities of a parental
separation (Emery, 1982; Karver, 2006). But parents’ reports of their children’s emotional
wellbeing may be more directly coloured by their own sense of wellbeing (i.e., ‘shared method
bias’). Being linked to parents’ own coping mechanisms and emotional states, parental
perceptions of the impact of family problems on their children may be positively or negatively
skewed. For example, there is evidence that mothers with anxiety problems report more anxiety
problems in their children (Briggs-Gowan et al., 1996; Chi & Hinshaw, 2002; Richters, 1992). On
the other hand, dealing with and being distracted by their own problems, some parents may
overlook the emotional and behavioural difficulties experienced by their children during and after
parental separation. Or regardless of the home situation, parents may wish to present their

children in the most positive light possible (Karver, 2006; Riley, 2004; Silverman & Rabian,
1995). On the other hand, teachers are unlikely know a child as well as the child’s parents.
Gathering information from young children about their own wellbeing is difficult within
the context of large-scale surveys. More commonly, such research, is conducted in clinical
settings. Such assessments are based on the premise that children are reliable informants of their
own feelings and behaviours. While children lack the sophistication and experience that adults
can bring to judgements of particular emotions and, like adults, may be influenced by social
desirability in the responses they give (Cole et al., 2000; Karver, 2006; Riley, 2004; Silverman &
Rabian, 1995), their feelings can nevertheless be captured with age-appropriate instruments
(Measelle et al., 1998).
In the study reported on below, we explore the links between the emotional wellbeing of
children aged 6-7 years, the quality of their parents’ co-parental relationship and post-separation
paternal involvement.
DATA AND METHOD

The present analyses are based on data from the Growing up in Australia: the Longitudinal
Study of Australian Children (LSAC), an ongoing longitudinal study of children’s growth and
development. The sampling frame for LSAC was the Health Insurance Commission’s (HIC)
Medicare database, a comprehensive database of Australia’s population. The LSAC study is based
on two birth cohorts of children and their families: the younger cohort was born between March
2003 and February 2004, and the elder between March 1999 and February 2000. A random
sample of children was selected by the HIC and their families were invited to participate in the
study. The final sample, comprising 54% of those selected, was broadly representative of all
Australian children, with the LSAC sample distribution similar to the population distribution
(based on the Australian Census) on a number of characteristics (Australian Institute of Family
Studies, 2005).
In this article we focus on the elder of these two cohorts (aged 4–5 years in the first
survey wave). The first survey wave was held in 2004 (N=4,976 for the 4-5 year cohort) and the
second in 2006, when the elder cohort of children was 6–7 years old (N=4,464, 90% of those
interviewed at Wave 1). Wave 2 data have been used in this analysis because the children were
also interviewed at this time. (For a detailed description of the LSAC study design, see Gray and
Smart, 2008 and Soloff et al., 2005).
The following analyses are based on a sample of 4,303 children. Of these children, 3,640
(85%) were living with both biological parents, and 663 (15%) were living with their mother,
while their father lived elsewhere. In total, 560 were living with their single mother (i.e., 13% of

all children represented in the present study), and the remaining 103 (2%) were living with their
mother and step-father.iii Final numbers for some analyses vary from these because of missing
data for the measures of emotional wellbeing or the explanatory variables.
Several variables were derived to characterise the co-parental relationship. In the present
analyses, a measure of whether or not the parents believed that the relationship entailed hostility
at least some of the time was derived. Where the father lived elsewhere, this measure was based
on a single question asked of mothers only: “How often is there anger or hostility between you?”.
Mothers who indicated that anger or hostility “sometimes”, “often”, or “always/almost always”
prevailed were deemed to have a “hostile” inter-parental relationship, while those who said that
anger or hostility was “never/almost never” or “rarely” were considered to have a “non-hostile”
relationship. For intact couples, the co-parental relationship was classified as hostile or not on the
basis of parents’ answers to the following two questions: (a) “How often is there anger or
hostility between you?” (b) “How often do you have arguments with your partner that end up
with people pushing, hitting, kicking or shoving?” Response options were: “never”, “rarely”,
“sometimes”, “often”, or “always”. Relationships were classified as “hostile” if a parent reported
that either one of these experiences occurred at least “sometimes”.iv This approach was based on
the assumption that parents would be inclined to minimise, or feel reluctant to disclose,
relationship difficulties.
All other measures in this set of analyses were based on mothers’ reports (a) because very
little information was derived from parents who lived elsewhere (all of whom were fathers in the
present analyses), and (b) because not all fathers in intact families provided information.v
A unique feature of the LSAC study is the availability of multiple perspectives on
children’s wellbeing: parents’ reports (usually the mother), teachers’ reports and the reports of
children themselves. Three measures of children’s experience of emotional wellbeing were thus
developed, two of which were based on mothers’ and teachers’ answers to the multi-item
“emotional symptoms” subscale of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ:
Goodman, 2001). This subscale captures, for example, the extent to which the child has worries
or fears, is unhappy, and/or is nervous or clingy. Assessments by mothers were available for
4,189 children (97% of the in-scope sample). Teacher assessments were provided for 3,487
children (81% of the sample). The emotional symptoms scale ranges from 0 to 10, with a higher
number corresponding to a greater number of negative emotional symptoms.
In Wave 2, the children were asked a set of questions about their enjoyment of school,
their relationships with teachers and other students, and also about their feelings. The latter
questions were used in this analysis and constitute the third measure of emotional wellbeing used

in our analysis. Specifically, the children were asked to indicate how often they felt (a) happy, (b)
scared or worried, (c) sad or (d) angry or mad. Possible response categories were: “lots of times”
(=1), “sometimes” (=2) and “hardly ever” (=3). They were also shown prompt cards with these
categories written on them, and with each category paired with a simple drawing of a face
showing a smile, apparent indifference, or a frown. In analysing these data, the coding for last
three items was reversed. The scores for each item were summated (range = 4 to 12) and then
rescaled so that, as for the SDQ Emotional Difficulties scale, total scores ranged from 0 to 10,
with a higher score depicting greater evidence of distress. Cronbach’s alpha was quite low for the
scale derived from these items (=0.42). Accordingly, multivariate analyses were also conducted
separately on each of the underlying items to determine whether results reflected certain items
(results not shown). The associations presented in this paper, for the overall scale, usually reflect
associations apparent for each of the underlying items, although in the separate analyses the
effect sizes tended to be greatest for “angry or mad”. These questions were answered by 4,220
children (98% of children).
It is important to note that while the three measures described above are actually
measures of emotional difficulties, we refer to the findings throughout from the perspective of
wellbeing. We do this for two reasons: (a) we seek to avoid a negative focus in relation to
children;vi and (b) focusing on “emotional wellbeing” in the broad sense is more consistent with
prior work than an idiosyncratic focus on ‘compromised’ emotional wellbeing. For these reasons,
our findings use the language of children’s wellbeing being better or poorer in certain
circumstances. (The distribution of emotional difficulties scores is shown in Appendix Table 1.
Correlations between the three measures of children’s emotional wellbeing are reported in
Appendix Table 2.vii)
The main variables of interest in the following analyses are family type (whether child has
a father living elsewhere), the inter-parental hostility (hostility vs no hostility), and father–child
contact (no face-to-face contact vs some contact). Five groups of children are the focus of our
analyses:
1. children who were living with both parents, where parents had a hostile relationship with
each other;
2. children who were living with both parents, where parents were not hostile with each
other;
3. children who were living with one parent, where mothers reported a hostile relationship
with the father;

4. children who were living with one parent, where mothers did not report a hostile
relationship with the father; and
5. children who were living with one parent, and never spent any time with their father
In the final analyses, for children of separated parents, we also incorporate information
on the frequency with which they spent time with their father who lived elsewhere.
Analytic approach and background variables

Bi-variate analyses were first conducted to explore the extent to which each of the three
assessments of children’s emotional wellbeing differed. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression
was then applied to the data to assess the extent to which the three sets of assessments differed
according to the main variables of interest when various background factors were controlled.viii
The background variables used in this analysis represent a selection of those that have
already been shown to explain differences in the LSAC children’s socio–emotional outcomes at
age 4–5 and 6–7 years (Smart et al., 2008). The contribution of these variables to children’s
emotional wellbeing was assessed using a stepwise approach, with child characteristics (age and
sex) considered first. This was followed by an assessment of the additional contribution of the
following information provided by the mother:ix her assessment of financial circumstances
(whether “just getting along” or “poor”, versus better financial wellbeing), her age (up to 30 years
versus older), her education level (incomplete secondary education and no post-school
qualifications; completion of secondary education and/or achievement of post-secondary
qualifications other than a degree; achievement of a bachelor degree or higher qualification) and
an indicator of the mother’s self-reported level of distress.x
Four measures of maternal parenting style were also included, again based on self-report:
“parental warmth”, “angry parenting”, “inductive reasoning”, and “consistent parenting”. The
“Parental Warmth” measure focused on such issues as how often the respondents expressed
affection, and how often they had a warm and close time together with their children. The
“Angry Parenting” scale gauged such matters as how often they praised their children, how often
they expressed disapproval of their children’s behaviour, and how often they felt angry when they
punished their children. The “Inductive Reasoning” measure tapped, among other behaviour, the
frequency with which mothers provided an explanation when they corrected their children’s
behaviour, and how often they reasoned with their children when children misbehaved. Finally,
the “Consistency Parenting” scale assessed such issues as how often mothers made sure that the
children obeyed directions, and how often their children ignored any punishment they received.
For each question, mothers rated their behaviour on a scale ranging from 1 ‘never/almost never’

to 5 ‘all the time’. Ratings for some items on the various parenting style measures were
subsequently reversed, so that high ratings on all items within a scale consistently reflected the
parenting style suggested by the scale’s name. xi
The distribution of these scales was used to create a dummy variable for each scale that
discriminated between mothers who indicated that their style of parenting was more negative (in
relation to “angry” parenting) or less positive (in relation to warmth, reasoning and consistency)
than most other mothers. Specifically, mothers with scores in the bottom 20% of the
distributions for warmth, inductive reasoning and consistency were respectively treated as
engaging in low parental warmth, inductive reasoning and consistency (taken separately) relative
to other mothers. Likewise, those with scores in the top 20% for the Angry Parenting scale were
treated as adopting a parenting style that entailed relatively high levels of anger.
We also examined the extent to which children’s scores regarding emotional wellbeing
were related to their living with a step-father, net of the other background factors described
above. This variable was included because of the likely complexity of children’s experiences
leading up to, and including, life in a stepfamily,xii and the fairly consistent research findings that
children raised in step-families tend to fare less well in terms of several aspects of wellbeing than
those who are raised in intact families. (For a review of this literature, including alternative
explanations for such findings, see Sweeney, 2010; Wu et al., 2008.) Much of the relevant
literature, however, focuses on wellbeing by the time the children had reached adolescence or
young adulthood.
RESULTS
Background characteristics of the five groups of children

Table 1 shows the extent to which the background factors (including parenting style) varied for
five key groups of children. Separated mothers were more likely than those who lived with their
child’s father to see themselves as either “just getting along”, “poor” or “very poor” (reported by
44–59% of these respondents), with mothers whose child never saw the father being the most
likely to provide this assessment. In addition, mothers with an apparently hostile inter-parental
relationship were more likely than mothers in non-hostile relationships to report difficult
financial circumstances (intact families: 25% vs 18%; separated families entailing at least monthly
contact: 52% vs 44%).
Further, compared with mothers in intact families with a non-hostile inter-parental
relationship, mothers in a hostile inter-parental relationship were more likely to report high
distress, low parental warmth, high angry parenting, low parental consistency and low inductive

reasoning. Three of these trends were also apparent among separated mothers in a hostile inter-
parental relationship, compared with mothers in a non-hostile relationship: separated mothers in
a hostile relationship were more likely than other separated mothers to indicate that they
displayed a parenting style entailing anger and low consistency as well as a high level of distress.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that reports of negative parental styles and distress were
uncommon across all groups assessed.
– Insert Table 1 here –
Family type
Figure 1 shows the mean scores for children’s emotional wellbeing according to the relationship
status of the informant and family type. (Background characteristics have not been taken into
account here.). According to all informants, children with a father living elsewhere had poorer
emotional wellbeing, compared with children who lived with both biological parents.
– Insert Figure 1 here –
Table 2 shows that when the selection of background factors are controlled, the emotional
wellbeing of children of separated parents continued to be lower (i.e. children’s Emotional
Difficulties scores are higher) than those whose parents had not separated. This was apparent in
the reports of all the informants. At this broad level, then, the results suggest that young children
of separated parents fared worse in terms of emotional wellbeing than those who lived with both
parents.
Hostility in inter-parental relationship

Figure 2 shows the average scores (derived from the three informant sources) of children
represented in these five key analytic groups before the effects of the selected background factors
were controlled. Table 3 shows the extent to which these results held when the selected child-
related factors were controlled (see column of results with heading “(1)”), and then when all
selected background factors were controlled (see column of results with heading “(2)”).
Both before and after these controls were introduced, the assessments provided by
mothers and children suggest that, among children in intact families, those whose parents had a
hostile inter-parental relationship tended to have poorer emotional wellbeing than those whose
parents did not have a hostile relationship. No such variation emerged when scores concerning
emotional wellbeing were based on teachers’ assessments.

Before the controls were introduced (Figure 2), the results based on teachers’ reports
suggest that the children with separated parents were more likely to display poorer emotional
wellbeing than other children, regardless of whether or not the parents’ held a hostile relationship
with each other. However, the difference between the teachers’ assessments of children in intact
families and of children who never saw their father was not statistically significant.xiii This pattern
of results also emerged when the selected child-related characteristics were controlled, but the
difference for intact versus separated parents was no longer significant when all background
factors were controlled. In other words, the differences in the teachers’ assessments of children
in intact and separated families could be explained in terms of systematic differences between
these groups in the family background factors examined.
Again, before the various controls were introduced, the assessments of all three
informants suggested that, for most comparisons, the children who lived with both parents who
had a non-hostile relationship had better emotional wellbeing than the three groups of children
whose fathers were living elsewhere. The only two exceptions to this finding related to teachers’
assessments for children who never saw their father and to the reports of children whose parents
had separated but held a non-hostile relationship.
Much the same pattern of results emerged when all the selected controls were introduced,
although trends based on all three informant groups suggested that children of separated parents
who did not have a hostile relationship did not exhibit significantly poorer emotional wellbeing
than their counterparts in intact families (i.e., whose parents did not have a hostile relationship).
In addition, according to children’s reports, the emotional wellbeing of children who never saw
their father was not significantly different to that of children who lived in an intact family
entailing a non-hostile inter-parental relationship. A statistically significant difference between
these groups was apparent according to mothers’ reports, with those having no face-to-face
contact with their father having poorer emotional wellbeing than those who had contact.
Before the controls were introduced, the only significant difference between the mean
scores of the three groups of children whose father lived elsewhere emerged in the children’s
reports: of the children who had some contact with their father, those whose parents had a
hostile relationship with each other appeared to experience poorer emotional wellbeing than
those whose parents had a non-hostile relationship (p<.001). This difference remained significant
when the controls were introduced (p=0.004). As evident in Figure 3, child emotional wellbeing
appears somewhat poorer for those children who never see their father, according to mothers’
reports, however, the mean emotional difficulties score for this group did not differ significantly
from that of other children with a father living elsewhere. In fact, regardless of the informant

(mother, teacher or child), the mean scores for children who never saw their father did not differ
significantly from the mean scores for the other two groups of children whose father lived
elsewhere. This was apparent before and after the controls were introduced.
The analyses also allow other comparisons regarding the extent to which children in
different circumstances examined were judged to have different levels of emotional wellbeing. Of
the children whose parents had a hostile relationship, those whose parents had separated had
poorer wellbeing than those whose parents were living together, according to teachers’ reports,
(p=0.004 before controls and p=0.02 after controls) and children’s reports (p<0.001 before
controls, p=0.001 after controls), but not according to mothers’ reports.
Hostility and frequency of contact

Here we expand on the above analyses to incorporate, for children of separated parents, the
frequency with which they spent time with their father who lived elsewhere. Those who saw their
father at least weekly and those who saw him at least monthly (including at least fortnightly) were
sub-divided according to whether or not the relationship between the parents was hostile. Those
who saw their father less frequently were included in the analyses but not classified according to
the inter-parental hostility measure. This approach yields six groups of children with fathers
living elsewhere. Figure 3 provides the bi-variate results regarding the six groups of children whose
father lived elsewhere. Table 4, which summarises the multivariate results, examines these six groups,
but also includes the two groups of children whose parents had not separated: those whose
parents’ relationship was hostile or non-hostile.
When based on parents’ and teachers’ assessments of children’s emotional wellbeing,
none of the differences (depicted in Figure 3) in average scores of the six groups of children
(with separated parents) was statistically significant. However, one significant difference emerged
in the children’s assessments: of those who saw their father at least weekly, children whose
parents had a hostile relationship reported poorer emotional wellbeing than those whose parents
did not have a hostile relationship. This difference remained significant in the multivariate
analyses, even when the controls were introduced (Table 4, p<0.002). Children’s reports of their
experience of different parenting arrangements deserve careful attention – especially given that
most Australian research of patterns of parenting after separation is based on parents’ reports,
not children’s reports.

According to the bi-variate analyses of mothers’ and teachers’ assessments, no significant

differences emerged in the emotional wellbeing scores of the six groups of children with
separated parents. However, in the multivariate analyses (summarised in Table 4), which included
children in intact families, significant differences emerged for some groups. For example, based
on mothers’ reports: (a) among children in intact families, those whose parents had a hostile
relationship tended to have poorer emotional wellbeing than those whose parents did not have a
hostile relationship, and (b) the latter group of children seemed to fare better emotionally than
one group of children whose separated parents held a hostile relationship: those who saw their
father at least monthly. As with the other analyses, teachers’ reports yielded fewer differences in
emotional wellbeing than children’s or parents’ reports – none of which was significant after the
inclusion of control variables.
Other parental and family characteristics

Before concluding, we briefly summarise the results for the control variables (presented in detail
in Appendix Tables 3 to 5) because some of these help explain the less favourable results that
emerged for children of separated parents. Many of the other factors in these tables were
stronger predictors of children’s emotional wellbeing than inter-parental hostility and frequency
of father–child contact.
We found that, according to parents’ and teachers’ assessments, the children of mothers
whose saw themselves in difficult financial circumstances (i.e., “just getting along”, “poor” or
“very poor”) experienced poorer emotional wellbeing. Interestingly, this trend was not evident in
children’s reports. Of course, it is unclear to what extent young children understand family
finances. Separated mothers (single or repartnered) were more likely to indicate such financial
difficulties—a trend that would have contributed to, but did not fully explain, poorer emotional
wellbeing of children in such separated families.
Compared with other mothers, those who indicated relatively high emotional distress also
assessed their child’s emotional wellbeing more negatively. However, children of somewhat
distressed mothers did not appear to have significantly poorer emotional wellbeing according to
teachers’ assessments or according to the children themselves. This is consistent with findings
reported by Richters (1992) and suggests that mothers who experience relatively high distress
either over-report the emotional difficulties experienced by their children or are better able than
other people, including their young child, to detect such problems in their child. This raises the
question of whether mothers are likely to have a better handle on their children’s emotional
wellbeing than the children themselves, and the corollary of this question, whether children aged

6–7 years are able to interpret their emotions accurately and are willing to disclose them. It is
important to note in this regard that the children’s self-report measure was quite crude. Had a
more sophisticated self-report measure been used with children, a greater consistency between
children’s and mothers’ reports may have emerged. Not surprisingly, separated mothers were
likely to indicate higher levels of distress than non-separated mothers (see Table 1). Such
systematic differences may have contributed to the more negative assessments of the child’s
emotional wellbeing provided by separated than non-separated mothers.xiv
Children’s wellbeing was also significantly associated with two aspects of mothers’
parenting style. Firstly, mothers who reported that they engaged in relatively high “angry
parenting” tended to provide less favourable assessments of their child’s emotional wellbeing,
compared with other mothers. However, this effect was not apparent when the children’s
emotional wellbeing was based on reports of either the children themselves or their teacher.
Secondly, the children of mothers who indicated relatively high inconsistency in their parenting
tended to fare worse in terms of emotional wellbeing, when the latter measure was based on
assessments of mothers and children, but not when it was based on teachers’ assessments.
In addition, children of mothers with a degree or higher qualification appeared to have
better emotional wellbeing when measured by children’s and teacher’s reports but not mothers’
reports. Further, boys had poorer emotional wellbeing than girls, although this difference was
very slight and may not translate to meaningful differences in everyday life. This effect was not
apparent when the emotional wellbeing measure was based on parents’ or teachers’ assessments.
There was no evidence that children’s emotional wellbeing differed for those living with a
step-father, compared with those living with a single mother or with both biological parents.
Nevertheless, as already noted, previous research has suggested that, compared with children in
intact families, those in step-families are at a higher risk of poor psycho-social adjustment and
poor academic performance, among other problems (see Sweeney, 2010; Wu et al., 2008). This
issue is worthy of ongoing investigation as the child grows older and as, potentially, more
children enter step-parent families.
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES

As with any analyses into the relative importance of different factors in explaining children’s
emotional wellbeing, there are a number of limitations in this work. One important limitation is
that this study could not explore the extent to which parenting arrangements or hostility caused
emotional difficulties in children. Our analysis is based on cross-sectional data and correlation
does not mean causation. Differences in parenting arrangements, for example, might affect child

wellbeing but the converse is also possible: children’s emotional difficulties might influence
parental relationships.
Further, while our analysis included a number of family characteristics, we have not taken
account of all aspects of family functioning, and so the associations with emotional wellbeing that
we have observed may be due to the unobserved differences in families that explain the parenting
and family structure measures as well as the child outcomes. While some studies have been able
to take account of “unobserved heterogeneity” in exploring links between family structure and
children wellbeing, the results from these studies are quite mixed and some find an association
persists after the unobserved heterogeneity is taken into account (see Björklund et al., 2007).
Mothers’ parenting style was explored to shed light on the typical quality of the time they
spend with their child. For reasons noted above, fathers’ parenting style was not examined, nor
were more direct measures made of the quality of time that parents spend with their child.
Analyses of associations between fathering and children’s outcomes using the LSAC data by
Baxter and Smart (2010) showed that fathers’ parenting styles and the quality of the co-parental
relationship helped explain variation in children’s social emotional outcomes, after taking account
of the variation explained by various child and family characteristics. This suggests that it will be
worthwhile exploring such factors further in future analyses.
For separated parents, the measure of inter-parental hostility we used is quite crude and
based entirely on mothers’ assessments. Fathers may hold quite different views. Furthermore, it
was not possible to identify the extent to which parents attempted to shield the child from
exposure to inter-parental hostility.
A key limitation of this set of analyses is that we were unable to report fathers’
evaluations of their child’s wellbeing, since only one parent (the primary care-giver) provided
such assessments in Waves 1 and 2.xv Whether or not this matters is unclear. Previous research
has shown that mothers’ and fathers’ reports on children’s wellbeing tend to be somewhat
discordant (e.g., Moreno et al., 2008), and we could expect that this discordance may be even
higher when the parents do not live together, since they tend to observe their child in different
settings. In later waves of the study (in Wave 4xvi and subsequently) it will be possible to compare
mothers’ and fathers’ reports on child wellbeing in intact families, and also to compare the
reports of parents who live elsewhere. Ex-couple dyadic perspectives are likely to provide a richer
understanding of children’s emotional wellbeing, especially when children’s self-reports are also
taken into account.
The preceding analyses can be developed further in a number of ways. The logical next
step is to extend the work to take advantage of the longitudinal study design by incorporating

information about these 6–7 year old children in Waves 1 and 3—that is when the children were
4–5 years old and 8–9 years old—and taking into account changes that occurred in the inter-
parental relationship and family type. Making use of the longitudinal data would enable us to
determine the extent to which children exhibited emotional problems before their parents
separated, or even before the parents’ relationship became somewhat hostile. Further,
longitudinal analysis would enable us to begin to examine to the nature and strength of longer
term effects of parental separation. Previous research (Cherlin et al., 1998) has shown that
separation often has many ripple effects, with some effects not becoming apparent until
adulthood (e.g., increased risk of early partnering and relationship breakdown).
Finally, these analyses can – and should – be repeated for different dimensions of
children’s developmental progress, including cognitive development, physical health and other
aspects of socio-emotional development.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

It is well known that children who experience parental divorce are more likely than those in intact
families to experience a range of emotional and behavioural adjustment problems. Yet few
studies have focussed on young children, despite an increasing awareness of the importance of
developmental considerations in research on children (see, for example, Magnuson and Berger
2009; Cashmore and Parkinson 2011; Smyth, McIntosh and Kelaher 2011). We used LSAC data
to explore the links between young children’s emotional wellbeing, the quality of the co-parental
relationship, and post-separation paternal involvement. We found that while children aged 6-7
years living with both parents generally had better emotional wellbeing than similar aged children
living with one parent, inter-parental hostility was significantly associated with (and an important
factor explaining) young children’s emotional wellbeing. Specifically, regardless of family type,
children whose parents had a hostile inter-parental relationship tended to have poorer emotional
wellbeing than children whose parents did not have a hostile relationship, as reported by children
and their parents.
Amato (2000) found considerable overlap in the wellbeing of children in intact and
separated families. This is consistent with the findings of this paper, suggesting that most
children are quite resilient, and appear to cope well when confronted with major changes to their
lives (Amato, 2001; Amato & Rezac, 1994; Furstenberg Jr & Kiernan, 2001; Hetherington, 1999;
Kelly & Emery, 2003). And, of course, some children in intact families exhibit quite marked
psycho-emotional difficulties.
One interesting finding concerned children from separated families who saw their father
on at least a weekly basis. Differences in emotional wellbeing, reported by these children, were

significantly linked to the level of inter-parental hostility. This suggests (perhaps not surprisingly)
that more frequent time spent with fathers whose former partners report hostile relationships
exposes the child to this hostility more often. At the same time, however, children who never
saw their father also had poorer emotional wellbeing than those in intact families in which the
parents did not have a hostile relationship with each other. This is consistent with recent
Australian analyses of children’s wellbeing in separated families (Kaspiew et al., 2009; Qu &
Weston, 2010). It suggests that we need to know more about the “absent father” group. In some
situations, such as cases when the father engages in systemic violence or other dysfunctional
behaviours, children’s interests may be better served by father absence until and unless the father
is willing to change his behaviour. But father absence may nonetheless leave mothers more
vulnerable. And regardless of the reasons, father absence may be perceived by the child as
abandonment.
There was clear evidence that, on average, children with separated parents have poorer
emotional wellbeing than those in intact families. Some of this difference is likely to reflect
systematic differences in other characteristics of separated and intact families – for example,
separated families were more likely to experience difficult financial circumstances and a higher
proportion of mothers reported the adoption of negative parenting styles. But associations
between variables such as these and children’s wellbeing apply also in intact families, such that
these variables have a significant association with children’s wellbeing even when the different
measures of co-parenting and post-separation paternal involvement are included in the analyses.
For instance, mothers’ self-reported inconsistent approaches to parenting were a significant
predictor of negative emotional wellbeing in children, where the latter was reported by the child
or assessed by the mothers.
An important contribution of this paper is the use of data from three different
informants. Of the three assessments of children’s emotional wellbeing, those provided by
teachers seemed to have the weakest associations with the characteristics explored here. This
suggests that children’s emotional wellbeing may be less apparent in the classroom. In addition,
perhaps teachers are not sufficiently familiar with each individual child to detect signs of
internalised emotional problems.
It needs to also be acknowledged that measuring psychological domains is a complex
pursuit. Indeed, variables predicting mothers’ and children’s assessments were not always
consistent: for example financial difficulties, and mothers’ heightened level of distress (both of
which were reported by mothers) were associated with children displaying poorer emotional
wellbeing according to mothers, but not according to children. Having a mother with a degree or

higher qualification was associated with better emotional wellbeing according to children’s
assessments, but not according to mothers’ assessments. On the other hand, wellbeing appeared
to be more compromised from both the perspective of mothers and children where the mother
engaged in a more inconsistent parenting style, and as noted above, where the parents had a
hostile relationship with each other.
It is possible that different views of informants are all picking up some valid differences
in aspects of emotional wellbeing of children in different settings. The different findings based
on the assessments of mothers, teachers and children have implications for identifying children
with emotional difficulties. Importantly, to the extent that the children’s self-report measure
concerning emotional experiences has an acceptable level of validity, it would seem that some
children are likely to miss out on the emotional help they need, where such needs are based
exclusively on the assessments of mothers or teachers. The measure based on children’s
assessments was crude and the validity of this measure needs further testing. Clearly however,
children’s own assessments have the potential to provide important insights into their internal
worlds that may otherwise go unnoticed.
Finally, we note the emerging evidence (Cashmore & Parkinson 2011) that a sizeable
proportion of recently separated families involve young children (ie children under 5). Some of
these separations will serve to relieve the conflict between the parents. But many will not – and
indeed some will entail an intensification of conflict. Traditionally, parents often stayed together
for the sake of the children. But the devastating impact of conflict on children was not well
recognised. In Australia, a raft of new family relationship services was introduced in 2006 and
some existing services were expanded. A key aim of many of these services has been to assist
both “intact” and separated families to manage conflict within families, including that between
the parents. From the point of view of some children, separation may often be seen as an
undesirable outcome of inter-parental conflict. At the same time, our analysis of LSAC data
suggests that efforts by family relationship services such as Family Relationship Centres to assist
parents to reduce or overcome their hostility towards each other are likely to benefit young
children irrespective of whether those parents remain together or separate.

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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the reviewers for their constructive comments. An earlier version of this paper
was presented at the XXVI International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP)
International Population Conference, Marrakech Morocco. This paper uses unit record data from
Growing Up in Australia, the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The study is conducted
in partnership between the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and
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the authors and should not be attributed to FaHCSIA, AIFS or the ABS.

i At the same time, parental separation is by no means an inevitable consequence of relationship breakdown.
It is unusual for studies to examine both the frequency of time spent with the children and typical duration of such
ii
episodes. Smyth (2004) represents an exception.

A total of 169 children were excluded from analyses for the following reasons: key data about the child’s living
iii
arrangements were missing; the child’s was not living with the mother (there were too few children living with their
single or re-partnered fathers to derive reliable estimates of the children’s wellbeing); the child had a parent who had
either died, was in jail, or living elsewhere because of an apparent “temporary” separation.
ivIf hostility is instead grouped such that “often” and “always” are compared to “sometimes”, “rarely” or “never”,
then many significant differences according to this variable are no longer apparent. This may be due to the treatment
of “sometimes” as the same as those with less possible exposure to conflict, or it may be due to the smaller number
classified as hostile, reducing the ability to detect significant differences. Using this definition, across all single and
couple families, 202 are classified as having some hostility compared to 1,021 using the more inclusive definition.
v A questionnaire designed for parents who lived elsewhere was available in Wave 2, but attracted a very low
response rate.
Psychometrically, scores had positively skewed distributions suggesting that the experience of poor emotional
vi
wellbeing was fairly unusual.

vii
All these correlations were fairly low, but significantly greater than zero. The highest correlation was derived for
scores provided by parents and teachers (r=0.24), while the correlation between scores provided by children and
parents was somewhat higher than that between the scores provided by the children and teachers (r=0.13 vs 0.09).
These fairly low correlations suggest that there is considerable merit in exploring the views of these three different
informants. This divergence in reports is consistent with prior work (see, for example, Achenbach et al., 1987; De
Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005; Loeber et al., 1991).
viiiWe treated the SDQ as a continuous measure in multivariate analyses for two reasons. First, other researchers
treat the SDQ as a continuous measure in multivariate analyses (see, for example, Maynard and Harding (2010) and
Edwards and Bromfield (2009). Second, we re-estimated the models using logistic regression (separating the
outcomes into those with high levels of emotional difficulties, and the rest) and found that the pattern of results was
consistent with the results using OLS. Goodman and Goodman (2009) recently noted that it is appropriate to use
the SDQ to identify gradations of child wellbeing, as opposed to identifying children with clinical levels of
difficulties.
ix As noted above, many fathers, including almost all who lived elsewhere, did not provide personal information.
x The six-item Kessler-6 screening scale for psychological distress was used. The K6 questions ask the respondent to
ask how often in the last four weeks they felt (a) “Nervous”; (b) “Hopeless”; (c) “Restless or fidgety”; (d) “So
depressed that nothing could cheer you up”; (e) “That everything was an effort”; and (f) “Worthless”. There were
five response categories, from “None of the time” (“0”) to “All the time” (“4”). These values were summed and
those with a sum of 13 or higher (out of a possible maximim of 24) were considerted to be of serious risk of mental
health problems. These respondents are identifed as “distressed” in these analyses.
xiFor instance, mothers’ ratings of the frequency with which they praised their child were reversed scored, given that
this item formed part of the “angry parenting” scale (see Baxter and Smart (2010) for details on these measures).
In many cases, children in step-families would have been spent time adjusting to life in a single parent families
xii
before the mother re-partnered. Such experiences, along with possibly improved financial circumstances, and the
quality of their relationships with all three parent-figures (mother, father and stepfather) may well affect their
emotional wellbeing.
This non-significant result could be explained by the fact that teachers’ assessments of children who never saw
xiii
their father varied greatly (as reflected in the long vertical bar).
While it also seems reasonable to suggest that the negative emotional impact of parental separation on children
xiv
may heighten mothers’ distress, it has already been shown that a significant relationship between maternal distress
and the child’s emotional wellbeing only emerged when the latter measure was based on mothers’ assessments.
xv Given that mothers were usually the primary caregivers, we omitted cases where fathers had assumed this role.

xvi In Wave 4, conducted in 2010, the children were 10–11 years old.

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Family structure, quality of the co-parental relationship, post-separation parenting and children’s emotional wellbeing

Family structure, co-parental relationship

JENNIFER BAXTER PhD*

RUTH WESTON M.A.

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 1

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 2

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 3

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 4

DATA AND METHOD

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Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 6

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Analytic approach and background variables

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 8

Background characteristics of the five groups of children

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 9

Hostility in inter-parental relationship

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Hostility and frequency of contact

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According to the bi-variate analyses of mothers’ and teachers’ assessments, no significant

Other parental and family characteristics

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 13

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 14

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 15

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 16

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Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 18

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 19

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 20

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episodes. Smyth (2004) represents an exception.

wellbeing was fairly unusual.

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 22

Volume 17, Issue 2, August 2011 JOURNAL OF FAMILY STUDIES 23

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