Repartnering of women in the United States: The interplay between motherhood and socio-economic status

Abstract

We examine the socio-economic differentials in mothers’ and non-mothers’ repartnering behaviours following the dissolution of a co-residential (marital or cohabiting) union. Based on five waves of the National Survey of Family Growth (N = 11,479), we use discrete-time event history models, jointly modelling exit from a partnership and entry into a new union. Few differences are found for entry into direct marriage, which is a rarely observed event. However, when we examine women’s entry into cohabitation (a possible stepping stone to marriage), we observe: (1) a motherhood gap, where mothers are less likely to repartner than non-mothers; (2) a negative association between educational attainment and repartnering probability; and (3) the motherhood gap existing only for low-educated women. Supplementary analyses on the impact of the Great Recession demonstrate that whereas the economic cycle mattered for the repartnering of low-educated women, it made no difference for more highly educated women.

Keywords:

• educational attainment
• motherhood
• repartnering
• separation
• socio-economic inequalities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Please direct all correspondence to Alessandro Di Nallo, Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy, Università Bocconi, Via Roentgen 1, 20136, Milan, Italy; or by E-mail: [email protected].

2 The authors acknowledge funding from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (H2020 Excellent Science, H2020 European Research Council, grant agreement no. 694262, project DisCont–Disc), from the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, and from NORFACE (CRITEVENTS project).

3 The authors can be found on Twitter at @aledinal, @katyaoivanova, and @sissinicobalbo, respectively.