Family Trajectories After Marital Separation in Germany: Patterns and Antecedents

Abstract

Marital separation has been an important driver of the diversification of contemporary family arrangements, yet the diversity and the nature of family patterns after marital separation in Germany remain understudied. In this study, we adopt a trajectory-based approach to address two key questions. First, what are the typical family trajectories following marital separation? Second, what marital circumstances lead to specific family trajectories after marital separation?

We analysed a sample of 1,563 individuals who separated from their first marriage and participated in the German Socio-Economic Panel between 1991 and 2019. We followed the trajectories of combined partnership and parenthood episodes for these respondents over a 60-month period after their marital separation. To capture the diversity in post-marital trajectories, we used sequence and cluster analysis.

To examine the antecedents of post-marital trajectories, we employed discrete-time event history analysis for multinomial outcomes, using all first-time married respondents as the at-risk population along with typical predictors of marital separation. This approach allowed us to link characteristics of the first marriages with family trajectories after separation.

Our results reveal that most separated individuals spent this period in single living arrangements, often combined with some episodes of non-cohabiting relationships, and with (particularly women) or without (particularly men) children from their first marriage. During this early post-marital period, a relatively small percentage of these respondents remarried or had post-marital childbirth. Additionally, we found that certain post-marital trajectories corresponded to specific demographic and socioeconomic profiles. For instance, our results show that the personal income of women and their contribution to household income during their first marriage likely determined their family trajectories after separation. Overall, our study provides insights into the development of the post-marital life course, and thus on the consequences of marital separation.