A New Look at the Divorce Revolution in Europe: Contrasting Adult and Child Perspectives

Matthijs Kalmijn, University of Amsterdam
Thomas Leopold , University of Amsterdam

This study contrasts adult and child perspectives on divorce and separation. Based on retrospective life history data from six European countries (GGS, GHS), we study the risk of divorce and separation from the perspective of adult unions and from the perspective of children born in these unions. The analysis connects adult and child perspectives, focusing on union and birth cohort changes (1945 – 2005) in the associations between parenthood, education, and (parental) separation. Our findings show that two key trends of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) differ substantially between adult and child perspectives. First, the cohort surge in divorce and separation is larger 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, resulting from increasingly negative associations between parenthood, education, and separation. A striking implication is that in several countries, the divorce surge across the SDT has been almost absent for children of higher educated couples.

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 Presented in Session 96. Union Dissolution 1