There is extensive research supporting a 50/50 custody arrangement is best for the child. One of the most in-depth studies was done by Warshak, “[who] received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 1978 where he stayed to eventually become Clinical Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry. He is best known for his research and advocacy in the areas of child custody, shared parenting, and claims of parental alienation. Warshak’s research has focused on issues relating to child custody. His doctoral dissertation, The Effects of Father Custody and Mother Custody on Children’s Personality Development, was the first study to directly compare children growing up in father-custody homes to children growing up in mother-custody homes. He later collaborated with John Santrock on the Texas Custody Research Project on a series of studies on the effects of different custody dispositions and stepfamilies.
Warshak’s subsequent research in this area has focused on remarriage, relocation, parenting plans for young children, the American Law Institute’s approximation rule and children’s preferences in custody disputes. His child custody studies have been cited in case law and legislation. Warshak writes:
Fathers benefit from on-the-job experience just as mothers do. They learn to read their baby’s signals and respond sensitively. Fathers may even have a greater impact than mothers in some areas such as language development and persistence in facing challenging obstacles — the “can do” attitude that is essential to success.
Linda Nielsen, a professor of educational and adolescent psychology at Wake Forest University, drilled into the research to test these ideas. She found that children whose parents share physical custody have better outcomes even when one parent initially opposed the arrangement and even when conflict between the parents was high. And the benefits of shared parenting were independent of the parents’ income. The lesson from her work? To ensure better outcomes for children of divorced parents, focus on improving the quality of their relationships with each parent by maximizing the time spent with each of them.
In additon, Linda Nielsen has conducted research on the effects of shared parenting and on father–daughter relationships. Nielsen has shown that shared parenting, where a child of divorced parents spends approximately equal time with the father and the mother, generates better health, mental and social outcomes; and that a daughters’ academic and career achievements are closely related to the quality of her childhood relationships with her father.