According to some of the literature, “[a]pproximately eighty percent of children reside with their mothers after divorce,” and the majority of fathers “have little or no contact with their children.”4 Despite changing roles in the last few decades, “mothers are still typically the primary caretakers of children, especially for infants through preschoolers.”5 Statistics in the literature indicate that “[w]ithin three years of divorce, fifty percent of fathers have either ceased contact with their children or see them quite infrequently.”6

Further, “only twenty-five percent of children whose parents are divorced see their fathers at least weekly.”7 It has been reported that six years post-divorce, “as many as 25 percent of children of divorce see their father only once each year.”8 It has also been reported that similar to the findings with mothers:

the quality of fathers’ relationships with their children following divorce is positively related to children’s well-being. The quality of the relationship is conceptualized, similarly as it is for mothers, to include positive involvement in the children’s activities (e.g., homework and school), strength of the emotional tie between parent and child (e.g., feelings of closeness and positive relationships), and authoritative parenting (e.g., effective discipline and positive affective relationships). 9



An illustration of this is the meta-analysis of 63 studies (Amato and Gilbreth (1999)), which found that:

the dimensions of a father-child relationship, which involved feelings of closeness and authoritative parenting, were significantly related to the children’s positive well-being (i.e., better academic success and fewer externalizing and internalizing problems) and that these positive benefits were found across gender and age of the children. 10