Intermittent Absentees: Children in Shared Physical Custody

Shared physical custody is a post-separation configuration in which children share their residential time between the homes of their two parents. They are intermittent absentees. Based on a quantitative and qualitative survey of parents’ experiences of shared physical custody, the paper focuses on this specific type of absentee. It shows that, even when the children are absent, they are present, and that over time these absentees are less associated with negative emotions, as their relative distancing enables the parents to invest new spaces.