BACKGROUND
Little is known about how the negative effect of parental divorce on father–child relations has changed over time. Existing cohort studies do not contain questions on father–child relationships after divorce and the investigated time period is often short.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study is to describe long-term changes in the association between parental divorce and father–child contact.

METHODS
We used pooled cross-sectional surveys from the Netherlands (N = 24,172) containing retrospective questions about respondents’ relations with parents during childhood. We compared divorce cohorts to examine trends. We used interaction effects of cohort and education to compare trends across educational groups.

RESULTS
The results show that father–child relations after divorce improved across cohorts. There was a spectacular decline in the share of children who did not see their father after divorce, and if they did maintain contact there was also an increase – albeit more modest – in the perceived quality of the tie. Ironically, because the share of non-existent relationships declined so quickly, there was also an increase in the overall share of poor relationships with fathers. We further observe strong educational differences in post-divorce relationships with fathers, but these differences declined across divorce cohorts.

CONCLUSIONS
The quality of father–child relations after divorce improved considerably across cohorts. This trend is interpreted in terms of the institutionalization of divorce (less stigma and better legal arrangements for fathers) and changing gender roles.



中文翻译：

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离婚后父子关系的长期改善：来自荷兰的描述性调查结果（Frederique Van Spijker、Matthijs Kalmijn、Ruben van Gaalen）

背景
关于父母离婚对父子关系的负面影响如何随时间发生变化，人们知之甚少。现有的队列研究不包含关于离婚后父子关系的问题，而且调查的时间通常很短。

目的
本研究的目的是描述父母离婚与父子接触之间关联的长期变化。

方法
我们使用来自荷兰 (N = 24,172) 的汇总横断面调查，其中包含有关受访者童年时期与父母关系的回顾性问题。我们比较了离婚人群以检查趋势。我们使用队列和教育的交互效应来比较不同教育群体的趋势。

结果
结果表明，离婚后的父子关系在各个群体中都有所改善。离婚后没有见到父亲的孩子的比例急剧下降，如果他们确实保持联系，那么对领带的感知质量也会有所提高——尽管幅度较小。具有讽刺意味的是，由于不存在关系的比例下降如此之快，与父亲关系不佳的总体比例也有所增加。我们进一步观察到离婚后与父亲的关系存在很大的教育差异，但这些差异在离婚人群中有所下降。

结论
离婚后父子关系的质量在各个群体中都有显着改善。这一趋势被解释为离婚制度化（更少的耻辱和更好的父亲法律安排）和不断变化的性别角色。