In a somewhat predictable fashion, I’d like to write my research paper on the effects of divorce on children, in particular, the tendency for children of divorce to grow up with weak paternal connections. In today’s age of divorce, with many children and adults growing out of single-parent households, what role does sex have on likelihood of retaining a parenting role post-divorce? If households headed by single-mothers are more common than single-fathers, why is this so? What becomes of fathers after divorce? Similarly, how does the experience of family change for children without consistent fathers? For this paper, I do not wish to look at single-parent households from birth, rather, I will focus on households with children, who ,at some point, contained two parents (for this paper, the two parents will be female and male sexes, not same-sex). It would be interesting to look at not only the amount of time awarded to fathers, but also, if possible, to investigate the variation in roles between the two parents to better understand how being a divorced father shapes individual behavior (for example, do divorced fathers adopt more of a care-giving role during the time spent with their children?). What I hope to accomplish is a better understanding of the changes and variations in parenting styles of divorced fathers, and the impacts on children of these individuals. The main difficulty I foresee is in data collection: choosing the correct variables to analyze will be very important (I can’t exactly quantify the happiness or satisfaction of children, can I?). If anyone has suggestions on this topic I would be glad to have them!
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteWhile I think you've done a great job at narrowing the focus of your research, I would perhaps suggest incorporating a legal standpoint as well, such as what effect does the legally-determined custody plan have on father's (and mother's) involvement with their children and their feelings of responbility to certain duties?
In regards to the variables issue, you may be able to break down "child's happiness" into quantifiable parts by perhaps analyzing the child's level of socialability and school grades before and after the divorce, differences the child's in description of each parent (although that places the child in somewhat of an akward position) or analyzing simply the everyday schedule the child encounters at each of the parent's home(measure of care-giving?).
Good luck,
Rebecca
Hi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteIn addition to Rebecca's suggestions, you may be able to more easily find data on markers of "accomplishment", such as whether a child went on to post-secondary education, their socioeconomic class, the jobs they got... While this obviously has problems, it may be another way to represent success, if not "happiness".
Samantha