Does separation really lead fathers and mothers to be less involved in their children’s lives?
Parental separation is a disadvantageous life event with many consequences for the children who experience it. This article investigates the influence of parental separation on father and mother involvement in their children’s lives in adolescence using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Stud...
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| Format: | Journal article |
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Oxford University Press
2017
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| Summary: | Parental separation is a disadvantageous life event with many consequences for the children who experience it. This article investigates the influence of parental separation on father and mother involvement in their children’s lives in adolescence using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and employing family fixed-effects models to control for omitted variable bias. The results show that parental separation negatively affects father involvement. Father involvement, however, is only reduced as a result of separation in socio-economically disadvantaged families. In addition, father involvement is more reduced for girls than for boys. Mother involvement is not influenced by parental separation. Taken together, these results demonstrate that changes in parental involvement following parental separation show an important amount of heterogeneity. |
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