Divorce in Europe

This open access book collects the major discussions in divorce research in Europe. It starts with an understanding of divorce trends. Why was divorce increasing so rapidly throughout the US and Europe and do we see signs of a turn? Do cohabitation breakups influence divorce trends or is there a renewed stability on the partner market? In terms of divorce risks, the book contains new insights on Eastern European countries. These post socialist countries have evolved dramatically since the fall of the Wall and at present they show the highest divorce figures in Europe. Also the influence of gender, and more specifically women’s education as a risk in divorce is examined cross nationally. The book also provides explanations for the negative gradient in female education effects on divorce. It devotes three separate parts to new insights in the post-divorce effects of the life course event by among others looking at consequences for adults and children but also taking the larger family network into account. As such the book is of interest to demographers, sociologists, psychologists, family therapists, NGOs, and politicians. “This wide-ranging volume details important trends in divorce in Europe that hold implications for understanding family dissolution causes and consequences throughout the world. Highly recommended for researchers and students everywhere.

Transgender families

This chapter focuses on a specific type of transgender family, where one of the parents has come out as being transgender. It discusses the characteristics of these families, as well as some of the difficulties transgender families encounter following the coming out and social gender role transition of a partner and/or parent. The importance of involving partners, family members and the wider community in securing social support while transitioning is emphasized, as well as the value of peer support in various forms (individual and group, as well as face-to-face and on-line). It also highlights the lack of family support within transgender healthcare services and the need for professionals, coming into contact with members of transgender families, to be educated in this area

Lone Parenthood in the Life Course

Lone parenthood is an increasing reality in the 21st century, reinforced by the diffusion of divorce and separation. This volume provides a comprehensive portrait of lone parenthood at the beginning of the XXI century from a life course perspective. The contributions included in this volume examine the dynamics of lone parenthood in the life course and explore the trajectories of lone parents in terms of income, poverty, labour, market behaviour, wellbeing, and health. Throughout, comparative analyses of data from countries as France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary, and Australia help portray how lone parenthood varies between regions, cultures, generations, and institutional settings. The findings show that one-parent households are inhabited by a rather heterogeneous world of mothers and fathers facing different challenges. Readers will not only discover the demographics and diversity of lone parents, but also the variety of social representations and discourses about the changing phenomenon of lone parenthood. The book provides a mixture of qualitative and quantitative studies on lone parenthood. Using large scale and longitudinal panel and register data, the reader will gain insight in complex processes across time. More qualitative case studies on the other hand discuss the definition of lone parenthood, the public debate around it, and the social and subjective representations of lone parents themselves. This book aims at sociologists, demographers, psychologists, political scientists, family therapists, and policy makers who want to gain new insights into one of the most striking changes in family forms over the last 50 years

The age-dependent influence of self-reported health and job characteristics on retirement

OBJECTIVES: Social scientists and economists doubt the usefulness of self-reported health status as an indicator of overall health status. Self-reported health acts as a justification for retirement when this decision is in reality driven by other reasons. In this study, we looked at income, job satisfaction, and job status. METHODS: We introduce a survival model (Cox model) that simultaneously includes both health and job characteristics as independent variables. We also take the age-dependent character of these effects into account. RESULTS: An analysis of the European Community Household Panel data did not validate the justification bias with respect to these variables. The addition of job characteristics had no influence on the effect estimates of self-reported health. CONCLUSIONS: We found significant effects for self-reported health as well as for objective health measures. The addition of job characteristics did not contribute to the explanation of the effect of self-reported health falsifying the justification bias hypothesis

The consequences of work-family conflict in families on the behavior of the child

The balancing act between work and family life can be a challenge that affects both the parents and other members of a family. This study investigates the effect of a parent's experience of work-family conflict on the behavior of the child. Parental well-being and parenting act as mediators, as previous studies have suggested that this relationship does not run directly. Data from 969 children in the Pairfam database were analyzed using structural equation modelling. The results reveal that both directions of work-family conflict (WIF and FIW) have a negative impact on parental well-being, and only the specific negative spillover from family to work (FIW) influencing parenting performance. In addition, although good levels of well-being and adequate parenting have a positive influence on the behavior of children, the specific spillover effects from work responsibilities to the family (WIF) are apparently unrelated to parenting.Der Spagat zwischen Beruf und Familie kann eine Herausforderung sein, die sowohl die Eltern als auch andere Familienmitglieder betrifft. In dieser Studie wird untersucht, wie sich die Erfahrung eines Elternteils mit Konflikten zwischen Arbeit und Familie auf das Verhalten des Kindes auswirkt. Das elterliche Wohlbefinden und deren Erziehung der Kinder fungieren als Vermittler, da frühere Studien gezeigt haben, dass diese Beziehung nicht direkt verläuft. Es wurden Daten von 969 Kindern aus der Pairfam-Datenbank mithilfe von Strukturgleichungsmodellen analysiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sich beide Richtungen des Konflikts zwischen Arbeit und Familie (WIF und FIW) negativ auf das Wohlergehen der Eltern auswirken und dass nur die spezifischen negativen Auswirkungen von Familie auf Arbeit (FIW) die Erziehung der Eltern beeinflussen. Darüber hinaus haben ein hohes Wohlbefinden und eine angemessene Erziehung zwar einen positiven Einfluss auf das Verhalten von Kindern, die spezifischen Auswirkungen der Verantwortlichkeiten, die sich aus der Arbeit ergeben, auf die Familie (WIF) stehen jedoch offensichtlich in keinem Zusammenhang mit der Erziehung

Does the relationship between personality and divorce change over time? A cross-country comparison of marriage cohorts

In this paper, we investigate how associations between personality traits and divorce have changed over time. Competing hypotheses are derived based on social exchange theory, crisis theory, and changing selection into marriage. A combination of retrospective and prospective data on marriages contracted between 1972 and 2009 is used from the British Household Survey (n = 4169), the Divorce in Flanders study (n = 4377), and the German Socio-Economic Panel (n = 8155). Discrete-time event history models are estimated to look at changes over time in the associations between the 'Big Five' personality traits and divorce. The results show generally similar associations between divorce and personality traits across Britain, Flanders and Germany, and display relatively little change over time. Divorce seems, in general, to have become characterized less by people who behave in unconventional ways (high openness to experience) and, to some extent, more by people that do not keep up social relations as much as others (low conscientiousness). These results are congruent with predictions derived from a social exchange perspective, where traits related to external barriers to divorce are expected to become less important as divorce becomes more common and less costly in social, legal and economic terms

Drug use: overview of general population surveys in Europe

In many European countries, one or more general population surveys have been carried out to get an impression of the characteristics of illicit drug use at national level. Despite valuable efforts to standardise national drug surveys among the general populations in European Member States and to enhance cross-national comparability, national drug surveys still use different instruments, reporting formats and methodologies. To facilitate the comparison of survey practices in EU countries and to provide a tool for everyone planning, organising or executing a survey about drug use among the general population, a meta-analysis of 25 population surveys on drug use in Europe was carried out, including intrinsic and methodological discussions and a description of financial sources, timetables and accessibility of the fieldwork and data documentation. The analysis presented here is part of a larger feasibility study of a repetitive drug survey among the general population in Belgium

Unemployment and separation: Evidence from five European countries

Since the 1970s, several European countries have experienced high union dissolution risk as well as high unemployment rates. The extent to which adverse economic conditions are associated with union instability is still unknown. This study explores the relationship between both individual and aggregate unemployment and union dissolution risk in five European countries before the recent economic crisis. Using rich longitudinal data from Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, and Italy, the empirical analysis, based on discrete-time event history models, shows that male unemployment consistently increases the risk of union dissolution. While a strong association is observed between male unemployment and separation at the micro level, no association is found between male unemployment and union dissolution at the macro level. The results for female unemployment are mixed, and the size of the impact of female unemployment is smaller in magnitude than that of male unemployment. In Germany and Italy, where until very recently work has been less compatible with family life than in other countries, female unemployment is not significantly associated with union dissolution