Recent policy changes in the area of family law have promoted changes in the organisation of the post-divorce family. These shifts place emphasis on consensual joint parenting after divorce and emphasise agreement rather than conflict between parents. In addition, these policy changes have given a new status to fatherhood and seek to maintain relationships between men and children. These policy shifts, as well as the social changes that underlie them, have been the focus of work by Beck (1992). Here we consider (1) how parents are actually negotiating parenthood in the light of this policy experiment; and (2) how pertinent Beck's thesis appears to be by drawing on the results of a qualitative research project which has interviewed sixty parents who have divorced or separated since the new legislation came into effect.
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Neale et al. (1997) studied this question.
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