Impact of divorce on non-custodial fathers: psychological and structural factors contributing to disengagement

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to provide clinicians and policymakers with an empirical grounding of their understanding of the impact of divorce on non-custodial fathers and their disengagement from their children, as a contribution to reducing the lacuna in the divorce research literature. It is argued that the complexity of the issue of disengagement is best explained as an interaction between psychological factors and structural phenomena; theories of attachment and loss are employed in the analysis of the psychological, and theories of gender and social inequality of the sociological side of the interface.

The study incorporates a comparative design on two levels: a cross national comparison of patterns and experiences of non-custodial fathers in Scotland and Ontario; and a comparison of the characteristics and experiences of non-custodial fathers remaining in contact with their children with those who have become disengaged. A total of 80 fathers were interviewed; quantitative analysis of the data has been supplemented by qualitative interpretation, and presented as a descriptive and analytical account of fathers' presentations of their experiences.

The study reveals four major findings: (1) the dominant response of non-custodial fathers subsequent to divorce is one of bereavement, linked primarily to their experience of child absence, role loss, and the constraints of the new "visiting" relationship with their children; (2) fathers desire to maintain a meaningful post-divorce relationship with their children, involving at least partial physical custody; they attribute the discouragement and fundamentally adversarial approach of solicitors and the- legal system as primarily responsible for their failure to obtain such an arrangement; (3) there is a striking discontinuity between pre- and post-divorce father-child relationships: rather than post-divorce patterns reflecting the pre-divorce bond there appears to be a strong inverse relationship between the two- (45 in relation to the aetiology of disengagement, non-custodial fathers' loss of contact with their children is a result of a combination of structural constraints and fathers' own psychological response to the loss of the pre-divorce father-child relationship. While divorce represents a loss which deprives fathers of both an attachment figure and a role or identity, in some instances resulting in chronic grief, it also represents a situation where fathers are powerfully disadvantaged with respect to external mediating factors.

The study adopts a critical perspective in relation to legal appropriation of the custody and access decision-making process, revealing fundamental deficiencies both in prevailing modes of custody and access determination and traditional post-divorce family structures. It is argued that existing legal processes penalise those fathers adopting an "androgynous" orientation toward gender role division in the family while not significantl affecting traditional" fathers previously on the periphery of t=r children's lives. In supporting the universal availability of conciliation services, it is sug&ested that conciliators assume a stronger educative stance visa- vis expanding the range of options available to divorcing families; in considering joint custody as a preferred arrangement, it is suggested that the concept be redefined to include a sharing of ? hysical care and control of children, as the maintenance of a meaningul post-divorce relationship between both parents and their has children been associated with positive outcome for all family members.