Abstract
This chapter examines repartnering over a 10-year period. Many people who have experienced relationship breakdowns go on to have new relationships. Repartnering, which is forming a new intimate relationship after the dissolution of a previous one, can take a number of forms. This is because of the widespread changes in the types of relationships available to people in Western-industrialized countries like Australia. Until the 1970s, repartnering almost exclusively took the form of remarriage. Over the last 30 years, cohabitation has increased considerably, resulting in four main patterns of repartnership: (1) consecutive marriages; (2) cohabitation with a new partner following a marriage; (3) marriage to a new partner following cohabitation with another partner; and (4) consecutive cohabitations. This chapter starts with a literature review and provides a theoretical lens that incorporates individual histories and social context for investigating repartnering. This is followed by a description of the data used to measure repartnering over a 10-year period. The analysis presented is based on retrospective and prospective longitudinal information available from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey (2001–2010). These data provide an opportunity to incorporate past relationships, family and fertility histories with current socio-demographic characteristics into understanding patterns of repartnering. The main emphasis of the chapter is on ‘who, when and how’ people repartner.
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Notes
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Discrete-time event history models of repartnering by sex could only be calculated for an overall measure of repartnering and for cohabitation. The numbers were too small to be able to analyse marriage.
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Appendix 6.1: Exclusions and Treatment of Missing Data
Appendix 6.1: Exclusions and Treatment of Missing Data
6.1.1 Exclusions
Waves 1–10 were pooled. Respondents were excluded if they were:
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Only present in one wave
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Partnered (with the same partner) at every wave they were observed
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Separated but then reunited with the same partner
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Never partnered at any point in time they were observed
If there were multiple separations over the period, the first separation and new partnership formed were retained.
6.1.2 Measure of the Importance of Religion
Independent variables were age, sex, highest education and parity. These variables were all taken from every wave the respondent was observed in. Special treatment was required for the importance of religion variable however, as this was only available from the self-completion questionnaire in Waves 4, 7 and 10.
The following procedure was used: If the respondent had information on religiosity for all three Waves (4, 7 and 10) then Wave 4 information was applied to Waves 1–4, Wave 7 information was applied to Waves 5–7 and Wave 10 information to Waves 8–10.
Wave 1 | Wave 4 |
Wave 2 | |
Wave 3 | |
Wave 4 | |
Wave 5 | Wave 7 |
Wave 6 | |
Wave 7 | |
Wave 8 | Wave 10 |
Wave 9 | |
Wave 10 |
If the respondent had information from only one of the waves, then this information was applied to all the waves they were observed in. If they had information from only two waves then information from those two waves was used. For example in the case of the respondent only having information from Waves 4 and 10, then Wave 4 information would be used for Waves 1–4 and Wave 10 information for Waves 5–10.
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Gray, E. (2015). Repartnering. In: Heard, G., Arunachalam, D. (eds) Family Formation in 21st Century Australia. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9279-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9279-0_6
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