5. Discussion
An important finding of this paper has been that the vast majority of Canadian children are resilient to change and are free of emotional and behavioural problems, whether they live in intact families with both parents or whether they live in post-divorce/separation custody.
The results of the logistic regression models suggest that the outcome of emotional or behavioural problems in children is likely a consequence of a more complicated set of processes than can be causally attributed by custody arrangements or the other variables in the analysis. The magnitude of the R square coefficient for both logistic regression models further corroborates this assertion. The R square for the first model and the second model are .025 and .035 respectively, suggesting that only 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent of the variance in each model is accounted for by the independent variables we considered. The results generated by the logistic regression analyses also suggest that the other factors examined are more important to the development of emotional or behavioural problems in children than living in a post-divorce/separation custody arrangement.
The findings of this analysis put into question the widely held myth that children living in sole custody arrangements, especially with their mothers, are "problem kids." Children, similar to many adults, generally do not take well to sudden and dramatic changes in their lives. The disruption of their parents' marriage more often than not leads to the disruption of their own lives and the lifestyle that they learned to accept as permanent. This may partly explain why children are more likely to experience problems when they live in post-divorce/separation custody arrangements in general, and why the odds of experiencing a problem are not different if they live in a specific type of post-divorce/separation custody arrangement.
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