Marriage (in) stability in a nuclear family under different child custody regimes: a theoretical analysis

The paper models a joint family consisting of husband, wife, child and other family members of the husband. Both the parents derive satisfaction from well-being of their child and consumption of a private good. The well-being of child is a household pure public good which is provided by the voluntary contributions of time by the parents and other family members. Starting from a situation where, in spite of frequent parental conflict, each parent is indifferent between divorce and staying together, the paper shows that both parents strictly prefer divorce in nuclear family when wife has the sole custody of child in the post-divorce equilibrium. On the other hand, if husband has the sole custody then, although, he strictly prefers to stay together in nuclear set-up, wife’s attitude towards divorce is ambiguous. Finally when both have joint physical custody then attitude of both towards divorce in nuclear family becomes ambiguous.