The Effect Of Divorce Risk On The Labor Force Participation Of Women With And Without Children

This open access book assembles landmark studies on divorce and separation in European countries, and how this affects the life of parents and children. It focuses on four major areas of post-separation lives, namely (1) economic conditions, (2) parent-child relationships, (3) parent and child well-being, and (4) health. Through studies from several European countries, the book showcases how legal regulations and social policies influence parental and child well-being after divorce and separation. It also illustrates how social policies are interwoven with the normative fabric of a country. For example, it is shown that father-child contact after separation is more intense in those countries which have adopted policies that encourage shared parenting. Correspondingly, countries that have adopted these regulations are at the forefront of more egalitarian gender role attitudes. Apart from a strong emphasis on the legal and social policy context, the studies in this volume adopt a longitudinal perspective and situate post-separation behaviour and well-being in the life course. The longitudinal perspective opens up new avenues for research to understand how behaviour and conditions prior or at divorce and separation affect later behaviour and well-being. As such this book is of special appeal to scholars of family research as well as to anyone interested in the role of divorce and separation in Europe in the 21st century.

The U.S. divorce rate experienced a sharp increase between 1960 and 1980. Similarly, an upward trend is observed in the female labor force participation rate. Observing that these rates ran in a similar direction, economists began to probe the relationship between the two events and their research has led to conclusive evidence that a positive relationship exists between female labor force participation and divorce. The goal of this thesis is to determine the extent to which female labor participation during a marriage affects the subsequent likelihood of divorce, and to assess the effects of female income, financial autonomy, and marital bargaining power on the probability of divorce. Using data from waves 1968 to 2007 of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I estimate several fixed effects linear probability models that lead to the conclusion that a woman's employment status, financial independence, and bargaining power are positively correlated with divorce.

This book considers how women cope with the economic hardship which accompanies divorce, using national longitudinal data on a generation of women in the United States. These women came of age at a time when they were expected to give priority to family roles over work roles. Yet by the time many of them were divorced in the 1970s, with the climate of changing perceptions of gender roles, women were expected to work, and were unprepared for the economic disruption caused by divorce. Peterson analyzes the experiences of women drawing upon sociological and economic approaches to the study of labor market outcomes, and of life-cycle events. He shows how over the long term most divorced women can make at least a partial recovery, but divorced women with children have a more difficult time making work adjustments, and experience greater economic deprivation. Given the continuing high rates of divorce, Peterson’s findings highlight the importance of work rather than marriage for women’s economic security.

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.”

Divorce law changes made in the 1970s affected marital formation, dissolution, and bargaining within marriage. By altering the terms of the marital contract these legal changes impacted the incentives for women to enter and remain in the labor force. Whereas earlier work had suggested that the impact of unilateral divorce on female employment depended critically on laws governing property division, I show that these results are not robust to alternative specifications and controls. I find instead that unilateral divorce led to an increase in both married and unmarried female labor force participation, regardless of the pre-existing laws regarding property division.

If married women view participation in the labor force as providing insurance against the negative economic consequences of divorce, then married women with higher expectations of divorce will be more likely to be employed. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 1968-1983, is used to estimate the effect of the expectation of divorce on the labor force participation decision of married women. The longitudinal nature of the data is used to estimate the probability of divorce for each married woman in the sample. Labor force participation is then modelled as dependent on the individual's expectation of future divorce. The empirical results confirm that expectation of divorce increases labor force participation of married women.

Seventy now-adult children of divorce give their candid and often heart-wrenching answers to eight questions (arranged in eight chapters, by question), including: What were the main effects of your parents' divorce on your life? What do you say to those who claim that "children are resilient" and "children are happy when their parents are happy"? What would you like to tell your parents then and now? What do you want adults in our culture to know about divorce? What role has your faith played in your healing? Their simple and poignant responses are difficult to read and yet not without hope. Most of the contributors--women and men, young and old, single and married--have never spoken of the pain and consequences of their parents' divorce until now. They have often never been asked, and they believe that no one really wants to know. Despite vastly different circumstances and details, the similarities in their testimonies are striking; as the reader will discover, the death of a child's family impacts the human heart in universal ways.

Women divorced at midlife without children are a group that is “out of sync” in a society that is still primarily a “married, mothering” world. This book explores the clinical issues, dilemmas, and challenges for women in this role. The book presents a solution focused, relational/constructionist clinical approach and therapeutic techniques for working with these women. Application of clinical techniques and case examples are presented, and new concepts for women’s recovery and development such as role innovation, meaning modification, autonomous competence, and an expanded family life cycle are also suggested in the book.

increases in the labor force participation of married women.