Parental breakup and children’s development: the role of time and of post-separation conditions

In recent years, the relationship between parental separation and child outcomes has received massive attention. This extraordinary level of interest stems from the rise in divorce rates in almost all developed countries. The aim of the paper is to identify the effect of parental separation on child cognitive and behavioural outcomes. It uses data on a sample of around 9000 children up to age 11, drawn from five waves of the United Kingdom Millennium Cohort Study. We use fixed-effects models to control for unobservable characteristics that do not vary over time, and explore the role of time and of post-separation conditions in mitigating these effects. We find that parental separation has detrimental but small effects on children’s behaviours, and that these effects appear stronger after a couple of years from separation. An intimate relationship between the child and the non-resident father, the presence of a new mother’s partner and of other relatives also play a role. No effect is found on cognitive development.