Studying Post-Divorce Living Arrangements with the Residential Calendar: Testing a New Method to Map Custodial Arrangements

An Katrien Sodermans, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Sofie Vanassche, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Gray Swicewood, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Koen Matthijs, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

In this paper the post-divorce living arrangements of more than 300 Flemish adolescents were examined by using a residential calendar. Respondents were asked to indicate their residential situation on a four-week-calendar by telling by which parent they generally stayed during the day and by which parent they spent the night. First, the calendar was evaluated by comparing it to a more traditional measurement of the residential situation. Subsequently, we derived different characteristics of the residential situation from the calendar, which formed the base for developing a typology of five residential arrangements: sole custody, near sole custody, weekend arrangements, joint physical custody and father arrangement. A next purpose was to test how these residential types were associated with child and family characteristics. Finally, we conducted OLS-regression analyses to test how the residential arrangements were related to the emotional well-being of the adolescents in our sample.