It's a circumstance that changes once. That's not what instability is. Having a revolving door of partners, moving around a lot, and going long bouts without being present before re-entering a kids' life causes instability. If the child has the confidence that they're going to see their parents at regular intervals indefinitely and stay put, that's stable
> I would think spending less time with each parent would also be detrimental, just to a lesser degree (compared with 0 time),
I think even a single change (married->divorced) counts as a form of instability. Of course more changes are worse than 1 change.
>Instability is best described as the experience of abrupt, involuntary, and/or negative change in individual or family circumstances.
>Family Instability
>According to recent estimates, between birth and fourth grade, more than one-third of children see their parents marry, remarry, separate, or start or end a cohabiting union.
This paper[1] says spending more time with kids led to better outcomes for the kids. I think if there are 2 parents in the house the kid will be more likely to be spending time with at least one of them. Although there seem to be studies saying the opposite, or that there's no benefit. So I'm not sure. This paper[2] says the benefit only occurs when both parents spend time with the kid at the same time.
It's a circumstance that changes once. That's not what instability is. Having a revolving door of partners, moving around a lot, and going long bouts without being present before re-entering a kids' life causes instability. If the child has the confidence that they're going to see their parents at regular intervals indefinitely and stay put, that's stable
> I would think spending less time with each parent would also be detrimental, just to a lesser degree (compared with 0 time),
This is conjecture.