The study addressed a relative gap in the research literature by studying the association between custody arrangements following parental divorce and adolescent wellbeing under specific conditions. Adolescent wellbeing was measured in terms of life satisfaction and depressive feelings. The researchers have several indications that adolescents in joint physical custody have lower wellbeing under certain circumstances. The research …show more content…
The first limitation is that there are a small number of children in father custody which is the case with most post-divorce situations. The hypothesis testing was limited to the comparison of children in mother and joint custody. The second limitation was that the researchers did not account for the quality of the relationship with the present stepfamily members. The third limitation was that the information was based on cross-sectional data which means the researchers could not make definitive conclusions between the quality of the parent-child relationship and the type of custody arrangement. Finally, the researchers were limited to the self-reports of adolescents. The children’s reports on parental divorce experience may be less reliable than parent reports, due to factors such as memory bias and social desirability