Reasons for Separation and Divorce, Coparenting, and Child Behavioral and Emotional Difficulties: A Common Fate Analysis

Despite reasons for separation and divorce being critical to understanding coparenting and children's adjustment, they are often overlooked risk factors. Additionally, by incorporating both partners' perspectives, dyadic data help us fully understand the interplay between reasons for separation/divorce, coparenting, and child adjustment. Using data from 926 separating or divorcing heterosexual couples in a coparenting educational program, we explore the indirect effects from partners' shared perceptions of two common reasons for divorce (family violence and parenting differences) to children's behavioral and emotional problems via coparenting, utilizing the common fate mediation model. Results indicated that the indirect effects from shared perceptions of both family violence and parenting differences as reasons for divorce on both children's behavioral and emotional problems were significant. Extra-dyadic analyses indicate that women's unique perceptions of both reasons for divorce were indirectly connected to their perceptions of children's behavioral and emotional problems via their perceptions of coparenting.