Joint Physical Custody and Mothers’ Well-Being. An Analysis of Life Satisfaction, Depressiveness, and Stress

Although research has shown that separation or divorce can have negative consequences for mothers, only a few empirical studies have explored the association between joint physical custody and mothers’ well-being. To close this research gap, this study investigated how child physical custody arrangements (joint physical custody vs. sole physical custody) are related to three dimensions of maternal well-being: life satisfaction, depressiveness, and stress. With data from the Family Models in Germany (FAMOD) survey, OLS regression models were estimated for 996 residential mothers living in post-separation families. The results of the statistical analysis showed that mothers with joint physical custody reported statistically significantly higher levels of life satisfaction as well as lower levels of depressiveness and stress than mothers with sole physical custody. However, when controlling for the mothers’ socio-demographic characteristics and family relationships, the differences between mothers in joint and sole physical custody families disappeared, indicating that mothers’ post-separation well-being cannot be explained by the physical custody arrangement these mothers practiced. Instead, factors like the mother’s partnership status, the mother-child relationship, and the interparental relationship were more strongly related to maternal well-being. When testing interaction effects between the physical custody arrangement and the individual control variables, only one interaction was significant in predicting mothers’ levels of life satisfaction and stress: the interaction between the physical custody arrangement and the age of the child living in this arrangement. This finding suggests that having joint physical custody is only beneficial for mothers with older (i.e., school-aged) children.