The Lived Experiences of Non-custodial Parents in Canada: A Comparison of Mothers and Fathers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper reviews the literature to provide an overview of what is currently known about the situations and experiences of mothers and fathers who become the non-resident parent post-separation/divorce. It also documents the results of a new qualitative study of similarities and differences between divorced non-custodial mothers and fathers in Canada in their experience of parenthood after divorce; focusing on (a) patterns of attachment, loss and grief related to involuntary child absence, (b) mothers’ and fathers’ perspectives on their children’s needs in the divorce transition, and their responsibilities in relation to those needs, and (c) mothers’ and fathers’ perspectives on the responsibilities of social institutions to support divorced parents. I explore mothers’ and fathers’ views of the salient issues regarding post-divorce parenting, with a focus on the process and outcome of child custody determination. The principal question explored is, “Are the experiences of nonresident parents gender-based, or is their status as non-resident parents a more salient factor in their subsequent relationship with their children?” Findings indicate that there are many similarities in women and men’s experiences regarding the difficulties they each encounter when parenting at a distance. A key finding is that both parents experience the harmful effects of existing child custody law and policy, and speak strongly to the need for child custody law reform in the direction of a joint physical custody presumption. I examine mothers’ and fathers’ own views regarding child custody determination and needed changes in direct service provision to non-custodial parents.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".