Question

*sociology

please answer in 3-5 sentences

b. List the impact of changes in divorce and child custody laws

Answer 1

A major factor in deciding who gets custody of a child after a divorce is the determination of who the primary caretaker is. This is the parent who not only does the majority of child care tasks, such as shuttling to school or cooking meals, but also the one with the closest emotional bond.Marriage rates have been falling over the last thirty years and cohabitation has emerged as an important social institution. A large number of US polices have been designed to increase the incidence of marriage and to stabilise existing marriages.The American family has undergone radical changes over the last decades. Marriage rates have been falling over the last thirty years and cohabitation has emerged as an important social institution. Divorce rates rose sharply starting in the mid-1960s, peaked in the early 1980s, and have been declining since.The allocation of custody, however, is a crucial aspect of every divorce since it governs the actual post-divorce living arrangements and may have important welfare implications. Many states have changed their custody law fundamentally since the 1970s. Traditionally, after divorce one parent (usually the mother) was assigned sole custody and exclusively responsible for the child. The so-called non-custodian parent was restricted to specified visitation rights. In 1973, Indiana was the first US state to introduce a law favouring joint custody (Brinig and Buckley, 1998). It has since spread to nearly all states. There are various forms of joint custody. One typically distinguishes between joint legal custody and joint physical custody. Joint legal custody means that both parents share the right and the obligation of making major decisions about their child’s upbringing (e. g. about schooling, religion, and health care). Joint physical custody means that the child spends a significant amount of time with each parent. In any case, joint custody shares the rights and obligations concerning the child between divorced parents more equally than sole custody.There has been an ongoing debate – across academic disciplines including economics, law, psychology and sociology between proponents and opponents of joint custody. Proponents typically argue that children benefit from ongoing support and resources from both parents, while opponents object that children under joint custody are exposed to ongoing parental conflict. The causal relationship between certain custody arrangements and child outcomes is far from clear, and the empirical evidence is mostly inconclusive.Finally, our results should be of considerable interest to policymakers. For varying reasons, the public worries about the decline in marriage, and policymakers seek to increase marriage rates. A large number of US polices have been designed to increase the incidence of marriage and to stabilise existing marriages. In the case of joint custody, no attention was given to its potential marriage-promoting effect when it was considered. Our findings are also a first step in understanding which polices can be used to promote marriage.