Children at Home, Staying Alone? Paths Towards Repartnering for Men and Women

Eva Beaujouan, University of Southampton

In France, a growing number of people are experiencing the social, familial and economic consequences of union breakdown. This talk addresses individual partnership behaviours after separation, using classical demographic methods in parallel with statistical analyses. More specifically, we look at differences between men and women for repartnering, depending on the presence of children. The work is based primarily on retrospective data, from the French Generation and Gender Survey (2005). First we show that in France, repartnering is more likely to occur at younger ages but also after a long relationship and after a marriage for women. Second, separated mothers are less likely than women without children and than men to repartner, while for men children on the whole don’t make a difference. However, men whose children are at home the year following the separation seem specifically less likely to repartner than other men.