Children at home, staying alone? Paths towards repartnering for men and women in France

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Description/Abstract

The union trajectories of men and women have undergone a transformation in recent decades in most industrialized countries. Repartnering after union dissolution varies markedly according to sex. Are the differences between men and women when forming a new cohabiting union tied primarily to their sex or to other specific observable causes? This article, based on the French Generation and Gender Study data (Ined-Insee, 2005), will first analyse the importance of age and parenthood at the time of separation as predictors of repartnering. Mothers, regardless of age at the time of separation, are less likely to repartner. However, when details of the year following the separation are analysed according to the child’s residence, fathers and mothers with whom a child primarily resides after the separation behave in a similar manner: it is they who form new unions less frequently