Samenhang woonafstand, contactfrequentie, kwaliteit van coparenting en het welbevinden van adolescenten van gescheiden ouders.

Abstract

While more adolescents grow up in multiple households after divorce, questions arise about how this affects their well-being. In this research three relevant aspects related to a parental divorce were examined to predict adolescent well-being in The Netherlands. These aspects are distance between parental households, parent-adolescent contact frequency and quality of coparenting. The data in this research were used from the project ‘Where do I belong', resulting in data from N = 188 adolescents from divorced parents. Analysis consisted of multiple regression analyses to calculate the association between the separate aspects and well-being, the aspects all together and including interaction effects. The hypothesis was to find a positive association between contact frequency and coparenting and well-being, a negative association for distance between parental households and association with the interaction effects. The results showed quality of coparenting to be the strongest predictor of adolescent well-being after divorce. Distance between the parental households turned out to have the most unexpected outcome. Despite expectations and literature-study, adolescents with greater distance between parental households had higher scores on well-being. The interaction effect of coparenting and distance between parental households showed a trend significant negative association, meaning higher quality of coparenting and a bigger distance between parental household showed association with lower well-being and vice-versa. In conclusion, it can be said that the individual aspects examined in this study have limited meaning in predicting adolescent well-being after divorce. Distance between parental households after divorce and coparenting quality are closely associated. Further research could investigate the role of social economic status from parents, the degree of conflict between parents and quantity of moving between parental households.