This study contrasts adult and child perspectives on divorce and separation. Based on harmonized retrospective life history data from eight European countries, we study the risk of divorce and separation from the perspective of adult unions and the perspective of children born into these unions. The analysis connects adult and child perspectives, focusing on union cohort changes (1945 to 2005) in the associations between parenthood, education, and (parental) separation. Our findings show that trends differ substantially between adult and child perspectives. First, the cohort surge in divorce and separation is stronger in adults than in children. Second, inequality in the risk of divorce and separation grows faster in children than in adults. For both trends, disparities between adult and child perspectives grow across cohorts due to increasingly negative associations between parenthood, education, and separation. In several countries, the separation surge has been trivial for children of higher-educated couples.
Several studies have examined the impact of earlier children on fertility decisions in second unions. These studies are guided by two hypotheses: the parenthood hypothesis, which argues that people want to have children to become a parent, and the commitment hypothesis, which argues that people want to have children to confirm the union. Because people often enter a second union while already having a prior child, recohabitation— which refers here to both unmarried and married new unions—is an ideal case for testing these hypotheses. Using data from the survey Divorce in The Netherlands, we test the validity of these two hypotheses. In addition, we extend comparisons from second unions to first marriages and we develop hypotheses about the effect of divorce on subsequent fertility. The findings support the argument that attaining parenthood in recohabitation is more important than having a child to cement the new union. Women who are recohabiting with a prior child are less likely of having a first birth in the new union than women who are recohabiting without a prior child. This applies less clearly to men and effects differ depending on the number, age, and residence status of the children. We also find evidence for our hypothesis about the effect of divorce. More specifically, recohabiting women without a child are more likely to have a child than first married women. For men, no such effect could be found. Our interpretation is that recohabiting women are catching up missed fertility opportunities in their first marriage, even though their total fertility remains lower as a result of age restrictions.
This study goes beyond a purely financial perspective to explain why single older workers prefer to retire later than their partnered counterparts. We aim to show how the work (i.e., its social meaning) and home domain (i.e., spousal influence) contribute to differences in retirement preferences by relationship status. Analyses were based on multiactor data collected in 2015 among older workers in the Netherlands ( N = 6,357) and (where applicable) their spouses. Results revealed that the social meaning of work differed by relationship status but not always as expected. In a mediation analysis, we found that the social meaning of work partically explained differences in retirement preferences by relationship status. We also show that single workers preferred to retire later than workers with a “pulling” spouse, earlier than workers with a “pushing” spouse, and at about the same time as workers with a neutral spouse.
Objectives: The life course perspective suggests that the retirement process cannot be understood thoroughly without paying attention to distal life experiences. In empirical studies on predictors of retirement, however, mid-life experiences often have remained implicit or have been neglected. This study aims to improve our understanding of retirement, by studying the impact of mid-life experiences in the educational, work, health, and family life spheres on retirement intentions and behavior.
Abstract Guilt is believed to be a common emotion in personal relationships. Few studies, however, have examined if guilt plays a role in the divorce process. The present chapter uses unique nationally representative survey data which included questions on the extent to which parents have feelings of guilt toward their (young or adult) children (N = 3,203). By comparing married and divorced parents while controlling for an elaborate set of control variables, we describe the effect of divorce on guilt. By testing a series of variables that may moderate the divorce effect, we subsequently try to explain why divorce affects guilt. Our findings show that there are significant effects of divorce on the feelings of guilt that parents have toward their children. These effects are stronger when parents have more traditional attitudes toward family issues, in line with moral explanations of guilt. The effects are also stronger when the relationship between the child and parent is stronger, in line with explanations of guilt in terms of altruism.
Why do adult children support their parents and how can we explain differences among children in this respect? Similarly, why do people support their adult children and why are some parents more supportive than others? In this paper, an overview is given of three explanations of intergenerational support: a theory about exchange, a theory about altruism, and a theory about social norms. Because these theories have different underlying models of behavior, they have been competing with each other in past research. I discuss the mechanisms and problems behind these general theories and how they have been applied to the theme of intergenerational support. Next, I give an overview of different fields of research in which these theories (or parts of them) have been tested. The focus is on three different research traditions which have had different ways of testing the theories: demographic and sociological research which has emphasized the life course concept, economic research which has emphasized financial transfers, and psychological research which has focused on wellbeing. Assorted findings from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study, a large-scale panel study of family relations in the Netherlands, serve as empirical illustrations.
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