News&Buzz: Coparenting arrangements

Research from the Australian Institute of Family Studies breaks down co-parenting arrangements there as follows:

--34 percent: Weekends or alternate weekends with non-custodial parent
--26 percent: Sees non-resident parent less than once a year
--6 percent: Equal time with both parents

That leaves 36 percent of children in other arrangements. If you're among those with other coparenting arrangements, how do you handle it, and how does it work?

Research based on interviews with 500 Australian families.

We're Boomerang-Proofing Our Kids

Junior's far less likely to return to the roost if he's raised by a single parent or has lots of education, a recent study by Statistics Canada says.

Men raised by single parents are 43 percent less likely to boomerang — move back home after moving out as young adults — than men reared in two-parent families. Women raised by single parents had a 23 percent lower risk of returning. (Growing up in a step-family didn't affect men, but women raised in step-families were 26 percent less likely to return home as grownups.)

Children from affluent two-parent families were most likely to return home as grownups.

The study doesn't say why single parent and step families are more resilient to boomeranging, but its authors speculate that lacking resources in lone-parent families or tensions in stepfamilies may be at play.

That could be. But there's got to be more going on here—maybe single parents are role modeling independence and self-sufficiency, day in, day out?

Anyone care to speculate?