Family Complexity in Children’s Lives in Europe: Cohort Change and Inequalities

Julia Mikolai , University of St Andrews

Due to the dramatic rise in non-marital cohabitation and childbearing, separation, repartnering, and multi-partner fertility, complex families have become increasingly common. Although a vast body of evidence is available on these family transitions, surprisingly little research has investigated children’s experiences of family change across Europe. This paper takes an innovative child-centred life course approach and focuses on family complexity across children’s life courses in 20 European countries. Using Kaplan-Meier survival estimates on data from the Harmonised Histories and the Generations and Gender Surveys (Round II), I study children’s propensity to experience family transitions leading to complex families (first and second parental separation, lone parenthood, and first and second parental repartnering) by birth cohort (1960-1979, 1980-1999, and 2000+) and parental education. Preliminary results show that overall European children experience a fair amount of family complexity. Around 10-20% experience a first parental separation of whom 40-50% experience repartnering. Among those whose parents separated, 10-20% experience a second separation and 40-50% of these children experience a second parental repartnering. Studying trends in family complexity by birth cohort and parental education reveals that overall family complexity has increased across cohorts and socio-economic inequalities in these trends have widened across cohorts in many countries.

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 Presented in Session 119. Child Custody and Children's Outcomes