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Essay on Comparison Between Residential and Non-residential Fathers and Children Involvement
The non-residential fathers’ experience of family life is one of the least known and researched outcomes of the divorce and custody process. Anecdotal evidence from professionals working in a range of helping agencies would suggest that non residential fathers often suffer considerably as they attempt to continue their parenting role with the added difficulties imposed by limited access time, geographic isolation, ongoing parental conflict and often unstable parental emotional states. This paper presents the outcomes from and exploratory study involving 48 non-residential fathers conducted to gain insight into the non-residential fathers’ experiences of family life. Father-child and parental interactions were studied using a multi-method approach, incorporating qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
The Circumplex Model for Marital and Family Systems provided the theoretical base for the research and analysis of results. Specifically, Cohesion and Adaptability, two aspects of family functioning measured by the Circumplex Model were examined to explore the relationship between parental interactions and father-child interactions. The quality of father child interactions did predict Cohesion in the non-residential father-child family but not Adaptability. Parental interaction quality did not predict Cohesion or Adaptability. Qualitative data gave insights into the nature of these interactions and in particular highlighted various factors that impacted on the interactions. Insights gained from the research for professionals working with divorced families will be presented. In particular, the importance of identifying attitudes that prevent non-residential parents from fulfilling their parental roles and the importance of early intervention for working with disrupted families will be discussed.
The prevalence of divorce in U.S.A has resulted in thousands of children being denied the opportunity of having normal family lives with both parents living in the same home. Consequently, the ability to maintain quality relationships with both parents is often problematic. Family life in the residential family and the non-residential family need to be restructured.....
