Children have a right to participate in decision-making after parents separate or divorce. This human right reflects a growing recognition of children as competent young social agents. Still, the right to be heard is not granted all children, and little is known about how children exercise their right and how children who are granted this right fare in the period after separation. Building on an understanding about children’s agency as a relational capacity and drawing on concepts from Emotional Security Theory, Family Systems theory and developmental theories of the self, this thesis seeks to deepen our knowledge about which children, from what kinds of families, are given and choose to use their voice, and to longitudinally investigate the psychological outcomes associated with participation.
The thesis used data from the FamC study (in Norwegian: FamilieForSK). The FamC study is a longitudinal survey-based study with 2871 participating families recruited from Norwegian family counselling centers. The use of mandatory divorce mediation for all separating parents with a child below 16 years of age enabled data collection from the normal divorcing population right around the time of separation. This thesis used data from 554 children aged between 7 and 15 and their parents, collected between 2017 and 2021.
Paper 1 investigated the associations between attachment, interparental conflict and child characteristics on the one hand, and whether children were invited to participate in mediation and/or asked about their divorce-related views by their parents. Results showed that younger children were less likely than their older peers to be invited to participate in decision-making after parental separation, both in mediation and at home. Children who were invited to participate in mediation were also more likely to report that their parents had consulted them at home, and vice versa. More child content in interparental conflicts statistically predicted that children reported that they did not know or remember whether they were asked about their views. Children with a more secure attachment relationship to their mother were more likely to have been invited to participate in mediation.
Paper 2 investigated the associations between several dimensions of interparental conflict strategies and whether children expressed their divorce-related views to their parents and/or friends. Older children were more likely to have told both their parents and their peers about their divorce-related views. Children were less likely to have expressed their views to their parents if their parents engaged in more verbally aggressive conflicts.
Lastly, Paper 3 investigated the longitudinal associations between whether children were asked about their divorce-related views and their depressive symptoms, health-related quality of life and attachment security to both parents one to two years later. Children who were consulted by their parents were predicted to fare slightly better with regards to all investigated outcomes, compared to their peers who were not consulted by their parents.
Overall, the findings point to a potentially empowering aspect of children’s participation. This reflects that authentic participation requires parents to engage in many of the same processes thought to promote emotional and social development, namely, to be attuned to their children’s inner world and engage them in conversation about it. However, the thesis also suggests that society is not quite there yet when it comes to granting its youngest members their right to be heard during family transition. Strengthening families’ ability to see and talk to each other in transition is essential both from the perspective of human rights and from the perspective of children’s post-separation adjustment and development.