Changing Families and the Reciprocal Exchange of Living Conditions between Generations
De senaste decennierna har det skett stora förändringar i barns och föräldrars familjeförhållanden i de flesta europeiska länder. Förekomsten och antalet former av icke-traditionella familjetyper har ökat och allt fler föräldrar har gemensam vårdnad efter en skilsmässa. Med longitudinella data från fem europeiska länder studerar vi om konsekvenserna för barn och föräldrar av dessa förändringar i individers familjekonstellationer är desamma i de olika länderna. Vi fokuserar ömsesidiga konsekvenser av boendeförhållanden: hur påverkas barn av att en eller båda föräldrarna inleder nya sammanboenden eller lever som ensamstående och hur påverkar omvårdnadsformen om barnet föräldrars möjligheter att inleda nya sammanboenden efter en skilsmässa eller separation. Ökningen i gemensam vårdnad och växelvis boende, där barnen bor ungefär lika mycket med mamman och pappan, kan innebära att betydelsen av båda föräldrarnas familjekonstellationer har kommit att bli viktigare för barnen. Den ökande graden av gemensam vårdnad och växelvis boende kan också innebära att barnens inverkan på föräldrarnas levnadsbetingelser förändras. För föräldrar kan utjämningen i mammors och pappors tid med (och utan) barnen efter en skilsmässa påverka möjligheterna att hitta en ny partner, vilket i sin tur påverkar barnens familjeförhållanden. Vår studie är den första av hur intergenerationellt utbyte mellan barn och föräldrar genererar olika familjekonstellationer och påverkar barns levnadsvillkor.
Final report
The aim of the project was twofold. First, to study how children fared post-union dissolution in terms of indicators of wellbeing after accounting for selection into experiencing union dissolution and across types of post-dissolution living arrangements. Second, to explore how changing post-union dissolution living arrangements might affect parents’ transition to a new relationship, and more generally how partner markets are developing. The project drew on insights from family demography, family economics, family sociology, and social psychology to consider a) how and why the most common adverse childhood experience (ACE) of a parental union dissolution might substantially affect children’s subsequent life course either temporarily or enduringly; b) if children’s assumed changing roles in parents’ lives altered parents’ opportunities in the (re)partnering market. The project aimed to use administrative data from Denmark and survey data (CILS4EU and DALSC) from five European countries to study these aims. Due to unforeseen challenges posed by the pandemic and other circumstances, the project ended up focusing the bulk of the work on the Danish data.
Key novelties within the project were: a) an initial attempt to establish whether observed differences in children’s wellbeing across post-dissolution living arrangements reflected causal differences or selection issues already present before the parental union dissolution; and b) a population-based measure of how well local dating markets matched the preferences for partners that single parents (as well as other singles) had, and if their opportunities had improved over time as joint-living and co-parenting post-union dissolution became more common.
Two further, and not originally envisioned, novelties of the project were: a) showing that when people face a poorly matched partner market, they are both less likely to form a new relationship and more likely to form a relationship with someone already partnered—what the literature at the time refers to as mate-poaching; b) beginning a more thorough theoretical discussion of how to define the counterfactual state that is compared against when trying to capture a causal effect of a union dissolution.
Results
1. For children, the negative consequences of parental union dissolution are immediate and persistent, measured both in terms of school performance and measures of behavioral and emotional problems, and remain after addressing selection into family types.
2. The negative consequences of union dissolution for children did not differ across post-dissolution living arrangements once selection was accounted for. Thus, children in joint-living/7-7-style arrangements do not experience fewer adverse consequences than children who mainly live with one parent after the dissolution.
3. Single mothers with children are less desired on the dating market than single childless women, with little indication of an improvement over the period 1986-2018. Single fathers have seen an improvement.
Overall, the results from the project provide valuable theoretical insights into the long-ongoing discussion around the extent to which the poorer later life outcomes of children of divorce reflect a negative effect of the union dissolution or instead reflect underlying selection into a family that was both more prone to foster less wellbeing and poorer school outcomes and more prone to ending in a union dissolution.
Second, the empirical observation that children in joint-living arrangements often do better than children mainly living with one parent has fostered both scientific and policy discussions about increasing this type of living arrangement. The findings from this project should temper such policy recommendations, as the joint-living advantage may simply reflect underlying selection already present before parents divorced.
Third, the apparent barriers mothers face on the re-partnering market seem not to have changed, despite the increase in joint living, suggesting that it is likely not only the burden of post-dissolution parenting that leads mothers to have more difficulty re-partnering.
Besides these conclusions, the project has given rise to two new lines of research. First, how to define the counterfactual state when discussing the effect of divorce and union dissolution. All causal effects of events are measured against a counterfactual outcome, but how should we think about the counterfactual in the case of divorce? Should this be envisioned as a state in which people never realize they want a divorce, as people being forced to remain together, or as people still divorcing but at a later point in time? These three different scenarios represent three different counterfactual outcomes that lead to empirically and theoretically different effects but have not received systematic consideration in the literature. Second, following this project, the PI has begun a collaboration with Prof. Gert Martin Hald, University of Copenhagen, who has carried out a randomized controlled trial of an online intervention aimed at getting divorcing couples to cooperate better following a divorce (Cooperation after Divorce™ [CAD]). Whereas CAD has been evaluated using survey measures, in a newly started project, the aim is to examine if the intervention has effects on more hard-grained measures such as employment, income, and anti-depressant usage using Danish administrative data. Without the project funded by RJ, neither of these new lines of inquiry would have come to be.
Dissemination
Academically, the papers from the project have been presented at the Population Association of America’s annual meetings in Austin, Atlanta, and New Orleans, the European Consortium for Sociological Research meeting in Amsterdam, the European Divorce Network meeting in Utrecht, and the Alpine Population Conference. Invited presentations have also been given at the University of Copenhagen and the European University Institute.
Three of the working papers produced under the project have garnered widespread media attention in Denmark. Fallesen et al. (2023) and Holm et al. (2023) made front-page news across several major Danish newspapers, and Peter Fallesen also gave interviews on television, including a live interview on one of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship news programs, Deadline. The results were also disseminated to the broader public through a newsletter and podcast, both published by the ROCKWOOL Foundation. Since the initial coverage in early 2023, Fallesen has given repeated interviews in Danish media into 2024, building upon the results from those two papers. Simonsen and Fallesen (2022) also received front-page coverage in the Danish newspaper Politiken. Fallesen also appeared on the Danish science podcast “24 spørgsmål til professoren” (“24 questions to the professor”) hosted by the weekly newspaper Weekendavisen to present and discuss findings from the project.
Lastly, three of the finalized papers have been co-written with junior scholars: Mathilde Lund Holm, then a PhD student at the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen, Emil Simonsen, currently a PhD student at the Department of Economics at Copenhagen, and Mikkeline Munk Nielsen, who co-authored a paper while being a master’s student at the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen.
Key novelties within the project were: a) an initial attempt to establish whether observed differences in children’s wellbeing across post-dissolution living arrangements reflected causal differences or selection issues already present before the parental union dissolution; and b) a population-based measure of how well local dating markets matched the preferences for partners that single parents (as well as other singles) had, and if their opportunities had improved over time as joint-living and co-parenting post-union dissolution became more common.
Two further, and not originally envisioned, novelties of the project were: a) showing that when people face a poorly matched partner market, they are both less likely to form a new relationship and more likely to form a relationship with someone already partnered—what the literature at the time refers to as mate-poaching; b) beginning a more thorough theoretical discussion of how to define the counterfactual state that is compared against when trying to capture a causal effect of a union dissolution.
Results
1. For children, the negative consequences of parental union dissolution are immediate and persistent, measured both in terms of school performance and measures of behavioral and emotional problems, and remain after addressing selection into family types.
2. The negative consequences of union dissolution for children did not differ across post-dissolution living arrangements once selection was accounted for. Thus, children in joint-living/7-7-style arrangements do not experience fewer adverse consequences than children who mainly live with one parent after the dissolution.
3. Single mothers with children are less desired on the dating market than single childless women, with little indication of an improvement over the period 1986-2018. Single fathers have seen an improvement.
Overall, the results from the project provide valuable theoretical insights into the long-ongoing discussion around the extent to which the poorer later life outcomes of children of divorce reflect a negative effect of the union dissolution or instead reflect underlying selection into a family that was both more prone to foster less wellbeing and poorer school outcomes and more prone to ending in a union dissolution.
Second, the empirical observation that children in joint-living arrangements often do better than children mainly living with one parent has fostered both scientific and policy discussions about increasing this type of living arrangement. The findings from this project should temper such policy recommendations, as the joint-living advantage may simply reflect underlying selection already present before parents divorced.
Third, the apparent barriers mothers face on the re-partnering market seem not to have changed, despite the increase in joint living, suggesting that it is likely not only the burden of post-dissolution parenting that leads mothers to have more difficulty re-partnering.
Besides these conclusions, the project has given rise to two new lines of research. First, how to define the counterfactual state when discussing the effect of divorce and union dissolution. All causal effects of events are measured against a counterfactual outcome, but how should we think about the counterfactual in the case of divorce? Should this be envisioned as a state in which people never realize they want a divorce, as people being forced to remain together, or as people still divorcing but at a later point in time? These three different scenarios represent three different counterfactual outcomes that lead to empirically and theoretically different effects but have not received systematic consideration in the literature. Second, following this project, the PI has begun a collaboration with Prof. Gert Martin Hald, University of Copenhagen, who has carried out a randomized controlled trial of an online intervention aimed at getting divorcing couples to cooperate better following a divorce (Cooperation after Divorce™ [CAD]). Whereas CAD has been evaluated using survey measures, in a newly started project, the aim is to examine if the intervention has effects on more hard-grained measures such as employment, income, and anti-depressant usage using Danish administrative data. Without the project funded by RJ, neither of these new lines of inquiry would have come to be.
Dissemination
Academically, the papers from the project have been presented at the Population Association of America’s annual meetings in Austin, Atlanta, and New Orleans, the European Consortium for Sociological Research meeting in Amsterdam, the European Divorce Network meeting in Utrecht, and the Alpine Population Conference. Invited presentations have also been given at the University of Copenhagen and the European University Institute.
Three of the working papers produced under the project have garnered widespread media attention in Denmark. Fallesen et al. (2023) and Holm et al. (2023) made front-page news across several major Danish newspapers, and Peter Fallesen also gave interviews on television, including a live interview on one of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship news programs, Deadline. The results were also disseminated to the broader public through a newsletter and podcast, both published by the ROCKWOOL Foundation. Since the initial coverage in early 2023, Fallesen has given repeated interviews in Danish media into 2024, building upon the results from those two papers. Simonsen and Fallesen (2022) also received front-page coverage in the Danish newspaper Politiken. Fallesen also appeared on the Danish science podcast “24 spørgsmål til professoren” (“24 questions to the professor”) hosted by the weekly newspaper Weekendavisen to present and discuss findings from the project.
Lastly, three of the finalized papers have been co-written with junior scholars: Mathilde Lund Holm, then a PhD student at the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen, Emil Simonsen, currently a PhD student at the Department of Economics at Copenhagen, and Mikkeline Munk Nielsen, who co-authored a paper while being a master’s student at the Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen.