| Summary: | In recent years, Norway has experienced a large increase in the use of shared custody for children among parents living separately. The same trend is seen in many other western countries. The Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs (Bufdir) has asked the Norwegian Institute of Public Health to conduct a systematic review of studies that look at consequences of shared custody for children. We conducted a systematic review of studies that examine the consequences of different living arrangements for children. We included five studies of children aged 0-6 years. Four of the studies were conducted in the USA and one in Australia. They were published between 1999 and 2016. The studies examined outcomes related to attachment, psychological health and relationships between parents and children. Because the studies were too heterogeneous, we could not perform meta-analyses. The studies found quite heterogeneous results. However, there appears to be a pattern in the results, related to the age of the children: for children over three years who have (more) overnights with the other parent, there seem to be more positive results, while for children younger than three years who have (more) overnights with the other parent, the results are more mixed and/or negative. However, our assessment shows that we have very low confidence in all of the results. This is because the studies are observational, most have very few participants, and several of the studies have high risk of bias. We were asked to summarize studies that could say something about the consequences (effect) of shared custody for children. Our assessment is that it is very uncertain what we can conclude about such effects
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