Consequences of divorce for children

1

• Consequences of divorce for children
• Emotional distress for children varying by age
• Boys may suffer more than girls
• Importance of identification with gender of
  parent
• Unclear about nature of long-term effects
• Conflicting research results

2

• Consequences of divorce for children
• Difficulty of interpretation
• Worse outcomes for children may result from
• Parental conflict prior to divorce
• Psychological distress created by divorce
• Continuing conflict after divorce
• Parenting difficulties after divorce
• Economic hardship

3

• Consequences of divorce for children
• Children do better with the reestablishment of an
  orderly routine
• Children do better with less conflict between
  parents

4

• Consequences of remarriage
• Remarriages create more complex households
• For example, households containing three sets
  of children are not unreasonable
• Do these more complex households have important
  consequences?

5

• Remarriage relations
• Create uncertainty as to nature of relations
  who is a relative?
• Particularly uncertain because of lack of
  institutionalized nature of remarriages
• e.g. what is the term for a step-father?
• Most common pattern for parents of one set of
  children is disengagement

6

• Remarriage relations
• New members of family must negotiate their roles
  vis-à-vis the entire family
• In first household formation, roles are
  determined for two
• In second household formation, roles may be
  determined for many more than that

7

• Difficulties inherent in remarriage?
• Remarriages have somewhat higher divorce rates
  than first marriages
• Greater strain or selection?

8

• Remarriage intra-familial conflict
• step-parents and step-children may introduce new
  conflicts
• Gendered patterns?
• Boys do better in households with more cohesion
  between mother and step-father
• Girls do worse in these households

9

• Understanding changes in household patterns
• Someone wants divorce
• Lack of knowledge about consequences?
• Long-term benefits for adults

10

• Consequences for children
• May be long-term consequences of divorce
• Psychological might result simply from living in
  conflict-filled home without divorce
• Economic could be dealt with through policy
  changes

11

• Race and Poverty
• Many of the trends are nationwide
• Variation across racial/ethnic groups exists as
  well
• Most research emphasizes SES as causing variation
  in household patterns across groups

12

• Differences
• Timing of marriage
• Earlier age at marriage for blacks until 1950
• After 1950, blacks less likely to marry at any
  given age and to ever marry
• Of those born in the early 1950s, 90 of whites
  married, but only 75 of blacks

13

• Differences
• Dissolution
• blacks more likely to separate and divorce
• Yet less likely to divorce when separated
• 94 of whites divorce within four years of
  separation, only 55 of blacks do so
• Blacks have lower rates of remarriage than whites

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15

• Differences
• Fertility
• Total fertility (number of children) per woman
  similar, but on average black women had children
  much earlier than white women
• In 1950s, black women less likely to have any
  children, but those who did had larger families
• White women began postponing fertility earlier
  than black women

16

• Fertility continued
• Leads to some differences between black and white
  families
• Black children more likely to be living with a
  never-married parent or a separated or divorced
  parent

17

• Causes of divergence
• Changes in the relative status of black and white
  men and women?
• Consider the market for partners
• In 1950s, marriage was an attractive option for
  women to the extent that they traded

18

• Market causes?
• Black womens labor force status has improved
  relative to black mens more than white womens
  has relative to white mens
• Thus, black women have less to gain in a
  traditional notion of exchanging income for
  household services

19

• Market causes?
• Some fundamental differences in marriage markets
• Similar pattern for college education more
  educated black women more likely to marry, while
  more educated white women less likely to marry

20

• Market causes?
• Since employment rates have been much higher for
  black women than white women, goals of creating a
  household may have been different
• Combining incomes rather than trading income for
  housework
• If this is true, black and white patterns should
  converge as white women are more likely to be
  employed

21

• Market causes
• Marriageable men hypothesis
• Given substantial racial matching in marriage
  (still)
• A lack of black men will limit options for black
  women in the marriage market
• 1980 97 men per 100 women for blacks
• 102 men per 100 women for whites

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• Why no men?
• Higher mortality

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• Why no men?
• Expansion of prison population
• Movement of black men into army
• Black men more likely to marry white women than
  vice versa

25

• Marriageable men continued
• Sorting on education and occupation black women
  much more likely to be college educated than
  black men (21 ratio!), white women and men
  roughly equal

26

• A few final notes on households
• Cherlin makes several arguments on the topics of
  poverty family structure
• The main challenge facing families without two
  parents is economic, not social
• The best way to improve marriage rates among
  African-Americans is to strengthen black mens
  connection to labor force.

27

• Poverty and family structure
• The rise in number of children in poverty is
  associated with single-parent households
• Yet this rise has occurred in both single-parent
  and dual-parent households more related to
  economic stagnation than changes in household
  patterns.

28

• Status of marriage
• No longer an economic imperative
• Declined as a cultural imperative
• Remains as an individual preference