Moving Closer for the Grandchild? Fertility and the Geographical Proximity of a Mother and Her Adult Daughter in a Dynamic Perspective.

Recent research has analyzed how the geographical distance between mothers and adult daughters influenced the daughters' fertility transitions. The inverse relationship has received less attention: that is, whether a daughter's fertility-her pregnancies and the ages and number of her children-is affected by her geographical proximity to her mother. The current study helps to close this gap by considering moves by either adult daughters or mothers that lead them to live nearby again. We use Belgian register data on a cohort of 16,742 firstborn girls aged 15 at the beginning of 1991 and their mothers who lived apart at least once during the observed period (1991-2015). Estimating event-history models for recurrent events, we analyzed whether an adult daughter's pregnancies and the ages and number of her children affected the likelihood that she was again living close to her mother and, if so, whether the daughter's or the mother's move enabled this close living arrangement. The results show that daughters were more likely to move closer to their mothers during their first pregnancy and that mothers were more likely to move closer to their daughters when the daughters' children were older than 2.5 years. This study contributes to the growing literature investigating how family ties shape (im)mobility.

His and Her Education and Marital Dissolution: Adding a Contextual Dimension.

Educationally hypogamous marriages, where the wife is more educated than the husband, have been expected to be less stable than other educational pairings, in part because they do not conform to social norms. With the reversal of the gender gap in education, such marriages have become more common than in the past. Recent research suggests that this new context might be beneficial for the stability of hypogamous unions compared to other educational pairings. Here, we investigate how educational matches in married couples are associated with divorce risks taking into account the local prevalence of hypogamy. Using Belgian census and register data for 458,499 marriages contracted between 1986 and 2001, we show that hypogamy was not associated with higher divorce rates than homogamy in communities where hypogamy was common. Against expectations, marriages in which the husband was more educated than the wife tend to exhibit the highest divorce rates. More detailed analysis of the different types of educational matches revealed that marriages with at least one highly educated partner, male or female, were less divorce prone compared to otherwise similar couple types.

The reversal of the gender gap in education and relative divorce risks: A matter of alternatives in partner choice?

Recent evidence from the United States suggests that the reversal of the gender gap in education was associated with changes in relative divorce risks: hypogamous marriages, where the wife was more educated than the husband, used to have a higher divorce risk than hypergamous marriages, where the husband was more educated, but this difference has disappeared. One interpretation holds that this may result from cultural change, involving increasing social acceptance of hypogamy. We propose an alternative mechanism that need not presuppose cultural change: the gender-gap reversal in education has changed the availability of alternatives from which highly educated women and men can choose new partners. This may have lowered the likelihood of women leaving husbands with less education and encouraged men to leave less educated spouses. We applied an agent-based model to twelve European national marriage markets to illustrate that this could be sufficient to create a convergence in divorce risks.

Trends in Distance Between Non-resident Parents and Minor Children Following Separation: Analysis of the Belgian Case, 1992-2018.

Geographic distance between a child and their non-resident parent is a key aspect of the reorganization of the family following parental separation. The increasingly equal involvement of both parents in the upbringing of their children is expected to translate into increasing geographic proximity between children and non-resident parents. So far, there has been no evidence about the time trends in geographical distances between minor children and non-resident parents outside of the Swedish context. In this study, we investigate these trends across Belgian separation cohorts from 1992 to 2018 and the extent to which they differ according to parental socioeconomic status and child's age at separation. Overall, we observed a very small decrease in distance between children and their non-resident fathers and a somewhat larger decrease for non-resident mothers. The distance increased for very young children (0-2 years) and children with low-educated fathers. These findings point to inequalities in certain parent-child dyads.

What makes a good mother? Two decades of research reflecting social norms of motherhood.

Over the past two decades, scholars have investigated a multitude of different aspects of motherhood. This article provides a scoping review of research published from 2001 to 2021, covering 115 Social Science Citation Index-referenced papers from WEIRD countries, with the aim of reconstructing social norms around motherhood and mothers' responses to them. The analysis is theoretically based on normological and praxeological concepts. The findings reveal five contemporary norms of motherhood that reflect both stability and increasing differentiation, and are related to five types of mothers: the norms of being attentive to the child (present mother), of securing the child's successful development (future-oriented mother), of integrating employment into mothering (working mother), of being in control (public mother), and of being contented (happy mother). Relying on an intersectional lens, we analyze mothers' heterogeneous responses to these norms of motherhood, and examine how neoliberal demands build on and perpetuate inequalities.

Separation and Elevated Residential Mobility: A Cross-Country Comparison.

This study investigates the magnitude and persistence of elevated post-separation residential mobility (i.e. residential instability) in five countries (Australia, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK) with similar levels of economic development, but different welfare provisions and housing markets. While many studies examine residential changes related to separation in selected individual countries, only very few have compared patterns across countries. Using longitudinal data and applying Poisson regression models, we study the risk of a move of separated men and women compared with cohabiting and married individuals. We use time since separation to distinguish between moves due to separation and moves of separated individuals. Our analysis shows that separated men and women are significantly more likely to move than cohabiting and married individuals. The risk of a residential change is the highest shortly after separation, and it decreases with duration since separation. However, the magnitude of this decline varies by country. In Belgium, mobility rates remain elevated for a long period after separation, whereas in the Netherlands, post-separation residential instability appears brief, with mobility rates declining rapidly. The results suggest that housing markets are likely to shape the residential mobility of separated individuals. In countries, where mortgages are easy to access and affordable rental properties are widespread, separated individuals can rapidly adjust their housing to new family circumstances; in contrast, in countries with limited access to homeownership and small social rental markets, separated individuals experience a prolonged period of residential instability.

The Effect of Union Status at First Childbirth on Union Stability: Evidence from Eastern and Western Germany.

It is often assumed that cohabitation is much less stable than marriage. If cohabitation becomes more common among parents, children may be increasingly exposed to separation. However, little is known about how the proportion of cohabiting parents relates to their separation behavior. Higher shares of childbearing within cohabitation might reduce the proportion of negatively selected couples among cohabiting parents, which could in turn improve their union stability. This study focuses on parents who were cohabiting when they had their first child. It compares their union stability within a context in which they represent the majority or the minority. The German case is well-suited to this research goal because non-marital childbearing is common in eastern Germany (60 %) but not in western Germany (27 %). The data came from the German Family Panel (pairfam), and include 1,844 married and cohabiting mothers born in 1971-1973 and 1981-1983. The empirical results suggest that the union stability of cohabiting mothers is positively related to their prevalence: survival curves showed that eastern German cohabiting mothers had a greater degree of union stability than their western German counterparts. This difference increased in the event-history model, which accounted for the particular composition of eastern German society, including the relatively low level of religious affiliation among the population. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity did not change this result. In sum, these findings indicate that context plays an important role in the union stability of cohabiting parents.