Noncustodial Fathers Following Divorce

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Noncustodial fathers are men whose parental rights and obligations have been altered through judicial action, usually accompanying marital separation and divorce. In the majority of divorces, physical and legal custody of children is taken from fathers and reassigned to mothers only. Despite the curtailment of their decision-making authority and despite the limitations imposed on their day-to-day presence in their children’s lives, in the majority of divorces fathers retain the duty to provide economic support for their minor children. The bulk of quantitative research on the post-divorce involvement of men as noncustodial fathers is structured by explora- tion of the interrelationships among these parameters: child custody awards, visitation privileges and performance, child support awards and compliance, and child well-being. The documentation of important linkages between child support compliance and child outcome have focused both social science and legislative attention on means to foster greater paternal acceptance of responsibility for children. Research using open-ended interviews and smaller surveys of limited samples have been of great importance in providing a richer understanding of the noncustodial father-child relationship. To retain(or for some, to build for the first time) a meaningful paternal relationship, men are challenged to find new ways to confront issues of autonomy, connectedness and power. However, societal supports for moving beyond the traditional polarization of genders and roles through which families have been organized are sorely lacking. The ways in which men respond to the changes precipitated by divorce are influenced by a number of factors related to their own self-definition as well as to the broader social context in which they operate. In order to design psychoeducational or therapeutic interventions that allow noncustodial fathers to adapt in ways that are beneficial to themselves and ultimately to their children, an awareness of these factors is imperative.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: