Separated Fathers Struggle to Maintain Contact with Children, Especially Daughters, Study Finds
Source: https://www.psypost.org/
A study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that fathers in Italy have significantly less contact with their children after parental separation, especially with daughters. Despite the availability of digital communication tools, separated fathers still struggle to maintain consistent relationships. While previous research has shown that fathers generally lose more contact with their children than mothers after separation, less is known about how these patterns differ by the child’s gender or the communication methods used.
Marco Tosi, an associate professor at the University of Padua, is interested in how evolving family structures, particularly those arising from parental divorce and stepfamilies, impact family dynamics, especially gender differences between parents and children. He is also intrigued by how digital communication allows separated parents and children to stay in touch without emotional investment or direct confrontation, offering a new dynamic to explore.
The researchers used data from the 2014 Families, Social Subjects and Life Cycle survey by the Italian National Statistical Office, which provided detailed demographic and relationship information from over 24,000 households. The study focused on adult children aged 30–55 who no longer lived with their parents, aiming to explore parent-child relationships in families where children had become independent, while excluding older generations where parental separation was less common.
The researchers analyzed data from 6,770 adult children, representing 11,041 parent-child pairs, focusing on families where parental separation occurred during the child’s formative years. They found significant gender differences in parent-child contact after separation. Fathers were much less likely than mothers to have frequent contact, especially through face-to-face and phone interactions.
The gap was more pronounced in father-daughter relationships, with fathers being 29 percentage points less likely to have frequent face-to-face contact and 35 percentage points less likely to maintain frequent phone contact with daughters. Sons showed less variation in their contact patterns, resulting in a smaller gender gap.
Marco Tosi explained that separated fathers, particularly those with daughters, face greater challenges in maintaining contact after separation, potentially leading to less support for both older fathers and young adult daughters. The study found that fathers who had less frequent in-person contact were also less likely to communicate regularly through phone or digital means, supporting the “accumulation hypothesis” that reduced face-to-face contact makes other forms of interaction more difficult. Tosi had initially believed that digital devices like WhatsApp could help compensate for the lack of physical contact, but the findings did not support this idea.
The study found that while digital communication is less affected by parental separation, it cannot fully compensate for the reduced contact between separated fathers and their daughters. In fact, separated fathers often have less in-person, phone, and digital contact with their children, suggesting a form of estrangement. The child’s age at the time of separation was significant, especially for daughters.
Gender disparities in contact were more pronounced when daughters were younger (ages 0–7), but decreased during adolescence (ages 8–17), likely because older children have more opportunities to develop balanced relationships with both parents before separation. The study had limitations, including its focus on older parents, who may be less familiar with digital tools, and its reliance on cross-sectional data, which could be influenced by pre-existing family dynamics.
Future research could examine how changes in digital communication technologies and family policies affect parent-child contact in separated families. Longitudinal studies may provide better insights into how relationships evolve over time and the impact of interventions like joint custody on father-child relationships. Marco Tosi plans to expand his research on kinship relationships, exploring both nuclear and extended family ties and their effects on the health and wellbeing of younger and older generations.
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