Repartnering Following Divorce: Implications for Older Fathers' Relations With Their Adult Children
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12034 |
CLAIRE M. NO¨
EL-MILLER University of Wisconsin – Madison
Repartnering Following Divorce: Implications for
Older Fathers’ Relations With Their Adult Children
This study examined the implications of post-
divorce fathers’ new unions and additional
(step)children for two aspects of older fathers’
relations with adult children born from a prior
relationship: frequency of social contact and
fathers’ financial transfers. Data from multi-
ple waves of the Health and Retirement Study
(N=13,017 observations on 4,997 adult chil-
dren belonging to 1,917 ever-divorced fathers)
were used to estimate multilevel models. The
results indicated that divorced fathers who go on
to form a new union have weaker relations with
adult children from a prior union than their post-
divorce counterparts who remain single. This
finding partly reflects the detrimental effects of
repartnered older fathers’ new biological chil-
dren and stepchildren. There is no difference
between older remarried and cohabiting fathers’
intergenerational ties. Moreover, fathers’ addi-
tional biological children and stepchildren have
similarly negative effects on fathers’ relations
with adult children from a previous union.
The weakening effects of parental divorce for
older fathers’ ties to their adult children are well
documented. Relative to their continuously mar-
ried counterparts, older divorced fathers have
less intergenerational contact (Aquilino, 1994b;
Cooney & Uhlenberg, 1990; Kalmijn, 2007;
Center for Demography of Health and Aging, University of
Wisconsin – Madison, 1180 Observatory Dr., Madison,
WI 53706 (cnoel@ssc.wisc.edu).
Key Words: aging, cohabitation, divorce, financial transfer,
intergenerational contact, remarriage.
Lye, Klepinger, Hyle, & Nelson, 1995; Shapiro,
2003) and are less likely to engage in transfers of
both time and money with their adult offspring
(Amato, Rezac, & Booth, 1995; Furstenberg,
Hoffman, & Shrestha, 1995; Kalmijn, 2007; Lin,
2008; Pezzin & Schone, 1999; White, 1992).
Largely overlooked in studies of older postdi-
vorce fathers’ intergenerational relations is the
role of fathers’ new unions in shaping their ties
with adult children (Kalmijn, 2007). Yet, recent
estimates indicate that well over three fourths
of all men who experience a divorce go on
to remarry (Kreider & Fields, 2001; Schoen &
Standish). Relative to more recent cohorts, the
generations of men who are currently poised
to enter later life were exposed to even higher
remarriage rates (Schoen & Standish, 2001).
Therefore, a notable proportion of divorced
fathers’ children will have experienced their
father’s remarriage by the time they reach adult-
hood (Ahrons & Tanner, 2003; M. Coleman,
Ganong, & Fine, 2000; Juby, Billette, Laplante,
& Le Bourdais, 2007). Moreover, although
most repartnered postdivorce older adults are
remarried, the prevalence of cohabitation among
older divorced individuals is rapidly increasing
(Brown, Bulanda, & Lee, 2005; Brown, Lee,
& Bulanda, 2006). The numbers of later life
postdivorce cohabiting relationships and remar-
riages are likely to grow substantially in the next
few decades with the aging of the large Baby
Boom generation, who experienced unprece-
dented high levels of divorce (Brown et al.,
2005, 2006; M. Coleman et al.). These trends
have raised concern among researchers and
policymakers that ever-divorced older fathers
Journal of Marriage and Family 75 (June 2013): 697 –712 697
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12034
698 Journal of Marriage and Family
and their adult children may cumulate both the
negative implications of union dissolution and
detrimental effects of postdivorce fathers’ new
partnerships (Aquilino, 1994a; Clark & Ken-
ney, 2010; Kalmijn, 2007; Lye et al., 1995;
Wallerstein & Lewis, 2009).
This study addresses this concern by using
four waves (2000, 2002, 2004, and 2008)
of nationally representative longitudinal data
from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS).
I contrast single divorced fathers’ intergener-
ational ties with adult children from a prior
union to those of divorced fathers who went
on to form a new union. A second purpose
of this research is to investigate the role of
new unions in older fathers’ intergenerational
relations in combination with the role of fathers’
additional (step)children (Kalmijn, 2007). The
study focuses on two measures of father –
adult child relations: social contact and fathers’
financial assistance to their adult children.
Intergenerational contact has been associated
with exchanges of support and information
between older adults and their children (Mancini
& Blieszner, 1989). There is also some evidence
that frequency of intergenerational contact con-
stitutes an indirect measure of intergenerational
solidarity (Bengtson & Roberts, 1991; Kalmijn,
2006) and an overall measure of the strength
of the older parent – child tie (Cooney &
Uhlenberg, 1990; Lye et al., 1995). Intervivos
financial transfers are particularly important
because children often remain partially reliant
on their parents’ financial assistance well into
adulthood. Unlike bequests, which are typically
divided equally between children, intervivos
transfers are more likely to be intentional and
are therefore a reasonably good indicator of
differential intergenerational exchanges (Kohli
& Kunemund, 2003; Rossi & Rossi, 1990).
Most of the research on the implications of
repartnering for postdivorce father – child rela-
tions is concentrated in the literature on multiple
partner fertility and focuses on the short-term
implications of fathers’ new unions for ties to
their young children (see Smock & Greenland,
2010, for a review). This body of work sug-
gests that divorced fathers’ new partnerships
have negative consequences for father – child
relations, particularly when fathers go on to
have new biological children. In contrast, the
small number of studies that have investigated
the implications of remarriage for older fathers’
relations with their adult offspring (Amato et al.,
1995; Aquilino, 1994a; Cooney & Uhlenberg,
1990; Furstenberg et al., 1995; Kalmijn, 2007;
Lye et al., 1995; White, 1992, 1994) generally
do not uncover detrimental effects of divorced
fathers’ new unions on relations with their adult
children (but see Clark & Kenney, 2010, for an
exception). Past research shows that postdivorce
remarried fathers and their single divorced coun-
terparts have comparable contact frequency with
their adult children (Cooney & Uhlenberg) and
provide similar levels of social and financial sup-
port to their adult offspring (Amato et al.; White,
1992). With few exceptions, however (e.g.,
Clark & Kenney, 2010), an important limitation
of previous studies is their inability to distinguish
between adult children of a prior union who were
exposed to divorce and remarriage and adult chil-
dren from a current union who were not (Amato
et al.; Cooney & Uhlenberg; White, 1992).
THE CURRENT STUDY
This study contributes to the literature on
the implications of postdivorce fathers’ new
unions for older fathers’ relations with their
adult children. The analysis presented here
differs from previous research in three important
respects. First, it focuses on postdivorce
fathers’ relations with each one of their adult
children born from an earlier union, thereby
adding specificity to the association between
postdivorce fathers’ new unions and fathers’
relations with their adult offspring. By focusing
on dyads of ever-divorced older fathers and
their adult children from a former union, this
study captures the independent effect of fathers’
new unions within the subset of fathers’ adult
children who experienced parental divorce.
Second, I investigate the role of postdivorce
fathers’ additional children obtained from their
current union in shaping fathers’ relations
with adult children from a prior union. The
analysis contrasts the effect of fathers’ additional
biological children (i.e., half-siblings to fathers’
children from a prior union) and stepchildren
(i.e., stepsiblings to fathers’ children from a
prior union) on fathers’ relations with their
children from a prior union. Third, in light
of the rapid rise in nonmarital partnerships
later in the life course, this study examines the
effects of both postdivorce fathers’ remarriages
and cohabiting unions. Unlike prior research
that has exclusively examined divorced fathers’
new marriages, I am able to assess whether
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