Work keeps separated parents from spending as much time with their children as they would like: is joint physical custody of children a solution?

Objective: We provide the first empirical evidence on the relationship between joint physical custody (JPC) and the extent to which work limits time for caregiving among separated parents across 10 European countries. Background: Many single parents report significant conflicts between paid work and the amount of time they would like to spend with their children. One recent arrangement that may help is JPC, in which children of separated parents live with both parents, rather than one parent with sole physical custody (SPC). Method: We used logistic regressions on data from 2,980 separated working parents in 10 countries in the 2021 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey (EU-SILC). Results: Our results for the full sample suggested limited difference between JPC and SPC parents in work-family conflict. However, our results suggested fathers with JPC and French parents with JPC have less work-family conflict than SPC parents. Conclusion: Based on our results, we argue that JPC is likely to have a gendered ‘effect’ on parents’ work-family conflict. Our research adds new information on a potential benefit of JPC using a large sample across multiple countries and controlling for other characteristics.