Home Is Where the Child Is: Has Dual-Caring Decreased Mobility among Separated Fathers and Mothers?

Helen Eriksson , Stockholm University
Maria Branden, Stockholm University and Linköping University
Jani Turunen, Stockholm University

‘Family ties’ to relatives living outside the household have been largely neglected in studies on internal migration and mobility. In this paper, we examine a new and emerging family form that, as we shall argue, has the potentially largest effects yet on mobility decisions: joint physical custody (JPC) of children following parental separation. Indeed, JPC, a family form in which children share their weekdays between the homes of their father and mother, has exploded in some contexts over the last decade, leading to an estimate of almost two-thirds of Swedish 0-4 year olds with separated parents living in both their parents’ homes. Because JPC creates residential ties from the child to each of its parents, we hypothesize that JPC reduces mobility of fathers as well as mothers. We use administrative register data including all cohorts of children born in Sweden 1968-2013. We follow the mobility of parents, both local moves and moves across labor market regions, from the separation and up until age 18 of the child.

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 Presented in Session 59. Family and Life Course Perspective on Internal Migration