Sole Physical Custody and Mother's Repartnering After Divorce

• Author: Jan Van Bavel,Inge Pasteels,Christine Schnor
• Published date: 01 June 2017
• Date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12389

C S University of Leuven and Vrije Universiteit Brussels

I P University of Antwerp∗

J V B University of Leuven and Vrije Universiteit Brussels∗∗

Sole Physical Custody and Mother’s Repartnering

After Divorce

Research consistently nds that divorced moth-

ers with full-time residential children exhibit

lower repartnering rates than mothers whose

children also stay with their ex-partners. Yet the

selectivity of mothers who take up sole physi-

cal custody could have biased the estimations.

Using data from the Divorce-in-Flanders study

(N=959), the authors model mothers’ hetero-

geneity in the uptaking of sole physical cus-

tody as a factor inuencing repartnering. They

nd that failure to account for the endogene-

ity of sole physical custody leads to a large

underestimation of its effect on repartnering.

Accounting for its endogeneity, sole physical

custody reduced the mother’s repartnering rate

by 63%, whereas this was just 33% accord-

ing to the naïve estimate. The results suggest

that mothers with full-time residential children

are disproportionally selected among those who

have better chances of repartnering but that

Centre for Sociological Research/Family & Population

Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leuven,

Parkstraat 45, BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium

(christine.schnor@kuleuven.be).

∗Department of Sociology, Universityof Antwerp, Kipdorp

61, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium.

∗∗Centre for Sociological Research, Faculty of Social

Sciences, University of Leuven, Parkstraat 45, box 3601,

BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium

Key Words: child custody, divorce, family research, policy,

remarriage, stepfamilies.

sole physical custody itself acts as an important

impediment to stepfamily formation following

divorce.

There is consistent evidence that having children

from a previous union living permanently in

the household—in so-called sole physical

custody—substantially decreases one’s likeli-

hood to form a new coresidential partnership

(Beaujouan, 2012; de Graaf & Kalmijn, 2003;

Ivanova,Kalmijn, & Uunk, 2013; Juby, Le Bour-

dais, & Marcil-Gratton, 2005; Theunis, Pasteels,

& VanBavel, 2015; Vanassche, Corijn, Matthijs,

& Swicegood, 2015). Nevertheless, studies have

treated the child custody arrangement after

separation as exogenous to repartnering. This

leaves it unclear as to what extent the corre-

lation between child custody and repartnering

is a result of the causal effect of the former

on the latter because the selectivity of mothers

who take up sole physical custody could have

biased the estimations. The negative effect of

sole physical custody may be underestimated

if an unobserved factor, for example, a high

family orientation, makes mothers more likely

to both be the primary caretakers and repartner

to restore the image of a complete family. Sim-

ilarly, the effect may be underestimated when

health issues make some mothers less prone

to obtain sole physical custody and nd a new

partner because such a situation would generate

a positive correlation between sole custody

Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (June 2017): 879–890 879

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12389