Shifting Childrearing to Single Mothers: Results from 17 Western Countries

Abstract

We investigate how recent changes in the Western family have affected childhood living arrangements. For 17 developed countries, we use multistate life table techniques to estimate childhood trajectories of coresi‐dence with biological fathers versus other maternal partners. In all countries childhood exposure to single parenting is more often caused by parental separation than out‐of‐partnership childbearing. Both exposure to single parenting and expectancy of childhood spent with a single non‐cohabiting mother vary widely across countries, with the United States exhibiting the highest levels of each at early 1990s rates. The greatest international variations concern parental cohabitation—its prevalence, durability, and the degree to which its increase has compensated for a decrease in the expectancy of childhood spent with married parents. Overall, we find little evidence of international convergence in childrearing arrangements, except that in countries where parental marriage has declined over time, childrearing has predominantly shifted to single mothers.

Changing Lone Parents, Changing Life Courses

“…In Europe, high poverty figures are also found in Spain, Germany, Estonia, the UK, and Ireland. The main foci in the research on how to tackle these extraordinary poverty figures among lone parents are either on income taxes (Brady and Burroway 2010;Heuveline et al 2003) or on transfers and family policies (Maldonado and Nieuwenhuis 2015;Van Lancker et al 2015). From both perspectives, results suggest that universal transfers are more effective for lone parents than measures targeting them as a specific group (Brady and Burroway 2010;Chzhen and Bradshaw 2012;Maldonado and Nieuwenhuis 2015).…”

The change in single mothers’ educational gradient over time in Spain

“…Compared with the United States, the latter source of single parenthood is uncommon in Europe (except in the United Kingdom and Ireland) (Part et al 2013). Single-parent families in Europe are mainly formed through dissolution of married or cohabiting unions (Heuveline, Timberlake, and Furstenberg 2003). Marital instability increased all over Europe during the second half of the 20 th century.…”

Family policies and single parent poverty in 18 OECD countries, 1978–2008

“…Many children will spend at least part of their childhood growing up in a single-parent household (Heuveline, Timberlake, & Furstenberg, 2003;OECD, 2011A). Single-parent households have exceptionally high poverty rates across countries (Gornick & Jäntti 2009;Brady & Burroway 2012) and there is clear evidence that poverty is harmful to the future wellbeing of children (Duncan & Magnuson, 2011).…”