Thursday, December 27, 2007

Divorced Parents Do As Well As Married Parents, Canadian Study Suggests

Thanks to this recent California Divorce and Family Law blog post for pointing me to the following LiveScience article, by Jeanna Bryner, about the results of a recent Canadian study which suggests that divorced parents may be just as good at parenting their kids as married parents are: Study: Divorced Parents Do a Good Job - By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience.

"Divorced parents do just as good a job as married couples in raising kids, a new study claims.

This new research overturns a commonly held belief that families fractured by divorced parents become inferior havens for children compared with stable homes.

'My findings that parenting practices are unrelated to divorce appear to fly in the face of accepted wisdom,' said Lisa Strohschein, a sociologist at the University of Alberta in Canada.

Some divorced couples may overcompensate for a split-up by focusing more attention on their kids, which could partially explain why divorced and married households scored similar child-caring marks.

'Some parents may overcompensate and be extra-conscientious, and there are definitely some parents who do have problems parenting afterwards,' Strohschein told LiveScience. 'But on average, parents don't change their behavior.'

Strohschein examined data collected as part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NSLCY) in 1994 and 1996. The surveys followed about 5,000 Canadian children living in two-parent households as of 1994 and compared changes in parenting practices among the 200 households with subsequent divorces and those that remained intact...."



For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the Divorce & Family Law Page, Law Offices of Steven Ballard.

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