The post-divorce arrangement which sees children take turns staying with each of their parents may seem overly complicated, but it has rapidly gained ground in Belgium, and there's a reason for that.
This co-parenting arrangement, also known as residence co-parenting, is for most parents the ideal response to the question of who gets custody after a divorce, as it allows both parents to spend an equal amount of time with their children. In Belgium, the system has rapidly gained traction, a recent study by the University of Antwerp (UA) showed.
This co-parenting system accounted for just 6.5% of post-divorce arrangements before 1995, but the number now sits at 30.4% – much higher than the current European average of 21.1%. This can largely be explained by the fact that Belgium made residential co-parenting legal before the rest of Europe.
"When it comes to the residence arrangement of the child, Belgium is a remarkable case," UA professor Dimitri Mortelmans said. "Since 2006, it has been one of the only European countries where judges are obliged to consider evenly divided residence as the first option if the parents do not reach a consensus among themselves on the residence arrangement."
Sweden is the European country where most children from divorced households reside alternately with each parent (56.2%), followed by Denmark and France (37.9% and 31.4% respectively).
Equal division is key
The arrangement was somewhat controversial when it first gained in popularity, however many studies have since highlighted the benefits of residence co-parenting for both children and parents alike.
"On the one hand, you get a better relationship between the child and parent because the bond is maintained with both the mother and father. On the other hand, you get a more gender-equal division of care responsibilities between the parents," Mortelmans noted.
However, while it has become more common in recent years, this co-parenting arrangement is still not the norm in Belgium: almost 40% of children with divorced parents stay exclusively with their mother, while 13.9% predominantly reside with their father.
"We are seeing that 6.3% stay exclusively and 10.3% mainly with the father. These figures are strikingly lower than the European average," Mortelmans added.
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This is because the arrangement does not work for every demographic group. "Parents in residence co-parenting are often highly educated and in work. Generally, they have a lower risk of poverty," explains sociologist Elke Claessens, who helped conduct the study.
"Despite the legal framing, the phenomenon is therefore not completely disconnected from a stronger educational position or economic standing."
