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Leaving Mum Alone? The Effect of Parental Separation on Children’s Decisions to Leave Home

Laisser maman seule? L’effet de la séparation des parents sur les décisions des enfants de quitter le domicile parental

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Abstract

There is a growing body of literature that examines the relationship between parental separation and children’s life-course patterns. The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of parental separation on the timing of nest-leaving of young adults. After providing descriptive findings using the recent Generation and Gender Survey for six countries (Italy, France, Hungary, Bulgaria, Russia, and Georgia), we assess the extent to which the association between parental separation and nest-leaving timing is masked by two mechanisms. First, do the children of separated parents develop characteristics that differ from those of children of intact families, which in turn cause them to leave the parental home at a different pace? Second, do the children of separated people leave the parental home at different ages in response to the new family structure? After we identify the two mechanisms at work, our findings become similar across countries, and show that children who have experienced parental separation tend to leave home earlier, but that the last child in the household—who would leave the mother alone—tends to delay his/her departure.

Résumé

Un nombre croissant d’études traitent des relations entre la séparation parentale et les modèles de parcours de vie des enfants. Cet article a pour objectif d’analyser l’effet de la séparation des parents sur le calendrier de départ des jeunes adultes du foyer parental. Après avoir présenté des résultats descriptifs issus des Enquêtes Genre et Génération de six pays (Italie, France, Hongrie, Bulgarie, Russie et Géorgie) nous évaluons dans quelle mesure l’association entre la séparation des parents sur le calendrier de départ du foyer parental est occultée par un double mécanisme. Premièrement, les enfants de parents séparés développent-ils des caractéristiques différentes de celles des enfants de familles dites complètes qui peuvent à leur tour les conduire à quitter le domicile parental à un rythme différent ? Deuxièmement, les enfants de personnes séparées quittent-ils le domicile parental à des âges différents du fait de la nouvelle structure familiale ? Après avoir identifié les deux mécanismes à l’œuvre, les résultats entre pays deviennent semblables et montrent que les enfants qui ont connu une séparation parentale ont tendance à quitter le domicile parental plus précocement, mais que le dernier enfant dans le ménage dont le départ laisserait la mère seule a tendance à le postposer.

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Notes

  1. In the study, we refer to “parental separation” as the time at which parents stop living together; they either were married or cohabiting. The decision to not distinguish between married and cohabiting couples, and to talk generally about separation, is due to the low diffusion of cohabitations for the cohorts of women we are studying (see Sect. 4).

  2. See, for example, McLanahan 1985, 1988; Goldscheider and Goldscheider 1988, 1998, 1999; McLanahan and Bumpass 1988; McLanahan and Garfinkel 1989; Aquilino 1991; Astone and McLanahan 1994; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994; Tang 1997; McLanahan and Percheski 2008.

  3. A few examples are O’Connor et al. (2003), Bernhardt et al. (2005) and Ongaro and Mazzuco (2009).

  4. Although the death event can in certain cases be considered as not random—when for example is the reflection of poorer health resulting from a lower socio-economic status—we assume that in the age range of the fathers of the children considered, these inequalities should not yet be so determinant to cause a “selection” into death, as it is the case for separation.

  5. The survey analyses for Italy is also called the “Family and Social Subjects” (FSS). For all of the countries, we used the first wave of the longitudinal surveys, which contains retrospective information. Germany was excluded because the GGS data provide cohort fertility and marriage trends for this country that are not comparable to the official ones; hence, it is useless for our purposes.

  6. Percentages of cases: 2.2 % (Italy), 7.5 % (France), 6.1 % (Bulgaria), 6.4 % (Hungary), 6.7 % (Russia), 2.1 % (Georgia).

  7. Percentages of cases: 2.9 % (Italy), 1.6 % (France), 10.9 % (Bulgaria), 5.1 % (Hungary), 14.3 % (Russia), 14.1 % (Georgia).

  8. Percentages of cases: 3.8 % (Italy), 0.2 % (France), 11.1 % (Bulgaria), 6.1 % (Hungary), 0.0 % (Russia), 32.8 % (Georgia).

  9. Although this is an interesting variable, it is not possible to include it as an independent variable in our analysis. This is because all of the respondent women in our sample have at least one child older than age 18; therefore, when they answer this question, the women may report their children’s actual behavior rather than their opinion.

  10. The “total divorce rate” is the probability of divorce for a married person if he or she were to pass through his/her marriage years conforming to the duration-specific divorce rates of a given year. The rate refers to a synthetic marriage cohort. It is computed by the summation of divorce rates by duration of marriage (generally up to 30 years) observed in a given year.

  11. Data for Italy, France, and Hungary come from the latest available Eurostat information; while data for Georgia and Russia come from national official statistics.

  12. We have not used survey weights in the regressions because they were missing for Georgia, Bulgaria, and Italy. However, we have conducted the same analyses for France, Hungary, and Russia, for which the data were available, and observed that results did not differ in a significant way.

  13. The coefficient in Table 4 is either the same coefficient as the one displayed in Table 3, or the sum of two coefficients displayed in Table 3.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Arnstein Aassve and Wendy Sigle-Rushton for their comments as well as participants to IUSSP seminar on Intergenerational Ties and Transitions to Adulthood, held in 2010 at Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics, Bocconi University, Milan, I. We are very grateful to two anonymous referees and to the editor Hill Kulu, whose precious comments and suggestions improved our work. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC Grant Agreement No. 201194-“Consequences of Demographic Change—CODEC”) and from the Collegio Carlo Alberto (project on “Parental and Public Investments and Child Outcomes”). Any error should be attributed to the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Collegio Carlo Alberto, University of Turin, via Real Collegio 30, 10024, Moncalieri, Turin, Italy

    Letizia Mencarini & Chiara Pronzato

  2. Department of Statistical Science, University of Padua, via Battisti 241, 35121, Padua, Italy

    Elena Meroni

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  1. Letizia Mencarini
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  2. Elena Meroni
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Correspondence to Chiara Pronzato.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 5 and 6.

Table 5 The effect of future parental separation
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Table 6 Development and co-residence effects of father’s death
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Mencarini, L., Meroni, E. & Pronzato, C. Leaving Mum Alone? The Effect of Parental Separation on Children’s Decisions to Leave Home. Eur J Population 28, 337–357 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-012-9267-0

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