Almost one-in-eight children live with one parent, CSO survey finds

Irish Times

a day ago

Almost one-in-eight children in Ireland live with one
parent
, new data from a
Central Statistics Office
(CSO) survey of 10,000 households shows.
The study draws on findings from the longitudinal Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) survey, which followed a group of children born in 2008 – known as 'cohort '08″ – who will be turning 17 this year.
Data analysed in this report was collected when the children were three years old.
Almost 10,000 households with a three-year-old child were interviewed as part of the survey. Of the 9,793 interviewed, 12 per cent of 'primary-resident' parents reported that their child had another parent who was not living with them, or a 'non-resident parent'.
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A 'non-resident parent' refers to a parent of a child who did not live at the child's primary address at the time of data collection, while 'primary-resident parent' refers to the parent living with the child at the time of the interview who provided most care to the child.
Contact details were provided for almost 400 non-resident parents, with responses obtained from 137 of them. All of them were men.
Non-resident parents whose contact details were not provided lived further away from their child and had reduced daily contact with their child.
They also had decreased rates of providing financial support to the primary-resident parent and reduced frequency of contact with that parent.
They had less positive relationships with primary parent than those for whom the primary parent did provide contact details, according to that parent.
Half of non-resident parents reported living with the mother of the three-year-old when she became pregnant with the child, while four-in-10 said they spoke about the child with the primary parent every day.
Of the 137 non-resident parents who responded, 60.6 per cent said they paid nothing towards the rent or mortgage due on the home where their child was primarily resident.
Three-quarters said they provided regular financial support (other than direct mortgage or rent payments) to the primary-resident parent.
Three-in-10 primary-resident parents who provided contact details for the non-resident parent reported that the non-resident parent never provided any financial contribution towards the household and maintenance of the child.
That figure doubled for those who did not provide contact details.
Some 35 per cent of non-resident parents felt they had a lot of influence on big decisions concerning their three-year-old, such as decisions regarding healthcare.
Some 51.8 per cent of non-resident parents reported spending more than seven nights with the three-year-old in a typical month, while 47.4 per cent reported that the length of a typical contact occasion with the child was 24 hours or more.
Of the primary-resident parents who provided contact details, almost four-in-10 reported that the other parent had daily contact with the child.