How long do inital post-separation parenting arrangements last?

Despite much debate about what kind of physical custody arrangements is in the “best interest of children”, there are still rather few studies examining the dynamics of these arrangements in the years following parental separation. Researchers who do work on the issue of post-separation parenting arrangements' duration usually use divorce court-order samples that are not representative of the general population of separating couples. Moreover, their conclusions often contradict one another; some find that dual residence arrangements are very unstable while some actually find much stability. We argue that these divergences are partly the result of an improper account of the effect of time on living arrangements' stability. We use population-based longitudinal survey data representative of the cohort of children born in the Canadian province of Quebec in 1997-1998. We use continuous-time event-history analysis to identify patterns in the timing of transition from one type of parenting arrangement to another. Cox regression models allow us to measure the association of various characteristics of parents and children with this transition process.