Parents’ relationship quality, parental divorce and children’s well-being

Anna Garriga, University Abat Oliba CEU Barcelona

One of the most important topics in the literature on divorce is the relationship between parental divorce, parents’ relationship quality and children’s well-being. Some American and Canadian studies have shown that the effect of parental divorce on children’s well-being is higher for children from low conflict families than for children from high conflict families. Despite the importance of this finding, to our knowledge no European study has addressed this issue. This paper aims to address this gap using two waves of the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), a nationally representative, longitudinal study of a British birth cohort. Preliminary results show that the interaction between parental divorce and parents’ relationship quality is significant for externalizing problems and cognitive development.