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Repartnering and Childbearing After Divorce: Differences According to Parental Status and Custodial Arrangements

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Abstract

We use a stepfamily formation perspective to study two dimensions of the family life course following the dissolution of a first marriage. First, we examine how the presence of children from a prior union and the custody arrangements of those children influence the process of repartnering. In doing so, we extend the traditional explanations of union formation in terms of needs, attractiveness, and opportunities by taking into account the parental status of the new partners and a detailed classification of the custody arrangement of the children. Next, we investigate the likelihood of childbearing within those post-separation unions with a particular emphasis on the prior parental status of both partners. By studying post-separation union formation and fertility behavior together, we get a more complete depiction of stepfamily formation especially in their more complex forms. Our analyses are based on survey data for 2077 divorced men and 2384 divorced women collected in the Divorce in Flanders study. The results show that compared with other divorcees, full-time residential parents are the least likely to start a new union following separation and that parents are more likely to start a union with another parent than with a childless partner. Several of our results suggest that parenthood may not be a particularly attractive status on the partner market. Potential partners without children themselves appear especially reluctant to assume a (residential) step parental role. In contrast with the results for union formation, it is not the custody arrangement of the child(ren) but parental status itself that predicts childbearing within higher order unions. Our findings are important from a policy perspective as they stress the consequences of gender-neutral childrearing patterns following divorce for the repartnering of women after separation.

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Notes

  1. Parents with whom the children are co-residing some portion of the time are referred to as residential parents. If children reside exclusively with one parent, as was frequently the case for mothers in the past, then the parent has full-time residential status. Parents with who the child stays in frequently or not at all are termed non-residential parents. The exact classification scheme that we use is laid out in detail in the methods section below.

  2. It is important to note that the complete history of the custody arrangement following separation is only known for the selected target child (see data section). The distinction between full-time, part-time, and non-residential (minor) child(ren) is hence based upon the information of the target child and does not allow for differences in custody arrangement among siblings, if any. To have an idea about the impact of this limited operationalization, we compared the rough information on the custody arrangement of brothers and sisters born within the same dissolved marriage at the time of the interview (for children still residing in the parental home at that time) or before leaving the parental home (for children who had already left the parental home at that time). This comparison indicates that 14 % of the common children of ex-partners have a different custody arrangement.

  3. Additional analyses in which the overall likelihood of union formation was modeled (independent of the parental status of the new partner) showed indeed that only full-time residential parents have a lower likelihood of union formation compared to childless divorcees. This finding holds for men and women.

  4. The profile of post-divorce families with children in sole and joint custody has changed over time in Flanders. Therefore, we tested for interaction effects between the year of divorce and the parental status of the divorcees to see if the relationship between specific custody arrangements of the child(ren) and post-divorce union formation has changed over time. The inclusion of this interaction term did not significantly improve the model nor was the estimated coefficient for the interaction term statistically significant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Sociological Research (Family and Population Studies), KU Leuven, Parkstraat 45, Post Box 3601, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Sofie Vanassche, Koen Matthijs & Gray Swicegood

  2. Research Center of the Flemish Government, Boudewijnlaan 30, 1000, Brussels, Belgium

    Martine Corijn

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  1. Sofie Vanassche
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  2. Martine Corijn
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  3. Koen Matthijs
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  4. Gray Swicegood
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Correspondence to Sofie Vanassche.

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Sofie vanassche—post-doctoral researcher Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO).

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Vanassche, S., Corijn, M., Matthijs, K. et al. Repartnering and Childbearing After Divorce: Differences According to Parental Status and Custodial Arrangements. Popul Res Policy Rev 34, 761–784 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-015-9366-9

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