Shared physical custody and children’s experience of stress

This paper analyses children’s likelihood of experiencing stress in shared physical custody settings with shared and alternating residence after parental union dissolution. Living in two different households and alternating not just between two geographical locations but also potentially between two different “parental regimes” with different rules and customs may increase children’s feeling of stress.
We use the Swedish Survey of Living Conditions, a high quality cross-sectional data set with information gathered from the parents as well as the children themselves. The sample for this study includes all children living with a single parent or in a stepfamily setting (n=853).
The tentative results show a surprising pattern with children living in a shared physical custody setting with alternating residence between the households of the mother and the father reporting a markedly lower likelihood of feeling stressed. We also see that girls have much higher likelihood of feeling stressed than boys do.