Repartnering: the relevance of parenthood and gender to cohabitation and remarriage among the formerly married

This paper is an exploratory analysis of the impact of current and anticipated parenthood on cohabitation and remarriage among those formerly living in marriage-type relationships. The focus on children is embedded within a broader analysis of repartnering which takes account of other factors, including gender. Quantitative and qualitative analyses are used, with a multivariate analysis of repartnering patterns, using data from the General Household Survey, being complementedby in-depth interview data examining the attitudes of the formerly married to future relationships. The paper demonstrates that parenthood has a statistically significant effect on the likelihood of formerly married women repartnering, with a higher number of children being associated with a lower probability of repartnering. The presence of children can work against repartnering in a variety of ways. Children place demands on their parents and can deter or object to potential partners. Parents may see their parental role as more important than, and a barrier to, new relationships. However, mothers are typically looking for partners for themselves rather than fathers for their children. Among formerly married people without children, the desire to become a parent encourages repartnering. The paper concludes that parenthood should be a key consideration in analyses of repartnering

“Swapping” Families: Serial Parenting and Economic Support for Children

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/71408/1/j.1741-3737.2000.00111.x.pd

‘We thought if it’s going to take two years then we need to start that now’: Age, infertility risk and the timing of pregnancy in older first-time mothers

Over the past few decades, the number of women having their first babies over the age of thirty-five in most developed societies has steadily increased. Concerns have been raised over this trend amidst warnings of both the increased risk of fertility problems and health risks to mother and child. Despite this, research into the timing of pregnancy in the context of decreasing fertility has been somewhat neglected, with research typically framed in biomedical rather than social terms. However, this area merits closer attention given the contradictory nature of societal messages that simultaneously encourage women to pursue careers and enhance lifestyle, whilst warning of ‘risks’ of infertility and problems in ‘delaying’ motherhood. This article is based on a small-scale qualitative study that uses data drawn from eleven in-depth interviews with ‘older mothers’ about their transition to motherhood. The data was thematically analysed. We found that the women drew upon risk discourses around decreasing fertility and advancing maternal age, and that these discourses impacted on their decisions about the timing of their pregnancies. Some mothers felt that they started trying to conceive at ‘non-ideal’ times, owing to expectations they held about decreasing fertility. We suggest that the impact of contradictory societal messages around the timing of motherhood need to be more clearly considered for their potential effects on the timing of pregnancy and note how this topic brings the personal, and, by implication, the societal, into conflict with the (narrated) biological