Exploring living arrangements of divorced families in the Netherlands

We aim to gain more insight into the characteristics of divorced families with different types of post-divorce living arrangements, and in particular with co-parenting arrangements in which the child alternates between the parents’ residences. Empirical evidence comes from a mixed- method research, based on survey data from The Netherlands Kinship Panel Study and from Divorce in the Netherlands 1998 and on in-depth interviews with divorced parents. We find that the distance between the places of residence of both ex-partners is particularly important to the type of living arrangement. Parents who have dual careers, are highly educated and have high incomes are more likely to be in a co-parenting arrangement than others. Findings on gender differences are in line with the idea that co-parenting is a sign of increased father involvement but decreased mother involvement compared with the most common arrangement: a weekend-father arrangement. For men, time constraints seem to lead to a smaller likelihood of co-parenting, whereas the opposite is true for women.