Divorced parents and social contact: a study on the effect of social contact on the subjective well-being of divorced parents

Abstract

Previous research repeatedly found the positive effect of social contact on persons’ subjective well-being. Divorced parents report lower subjective well-being and lose a great amount of social contact which puts them at risk for mental health issues. This research aimed to find out to what extent increased social contact influences divorced parents’ subjective well-being and whether the type of social contact or gender matter in the effect. Using the NFN data from 2601 respondents, multiple analyses were done to test the hypotheses. The results show a strong effect between having frequent social contact and divorced parents’ subjective well-being. Specifically, frequent contact with friends was found to relate to higher subjective well-being and no moderating effect was found from gender.