To address this source of bias, I added two time-varying controls to my models. A second theme involves the chances of repartnering after divorce, commonly found to be higher among men. The finding of a converging gender gap is in line with other studies showing that although the division of labor is mostly stable across the life course, key transitions such as parenthood, divorce, and retirement lead to substantial and permanent changes (Gupta 1999; Kühhirt 2012; Leopold and Skopek 2015). Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 44, 327–340. Moving related to separation: Who moves and to what distance. 2008). Looking at the consequences of divorce for social ties outside the household, I found few gender differences. Wu, Z., & Schimmele, C. H. (2005). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Thela. The decline of substance use in young adulthood: Changes in social activities, roles, and beliefs. Yet, the seemingly clear picture gets clouded when put into a larger context of divorce outcomes. Feijten, P. (2005). In the domestic sphere, the measure of satisfaction with family life was consistent with the finding that the noncustodial parent suffers more than the custodial parent after a divorce (Bauserman 2012). The models behind the plots are detailed in Tables S1–S4 in Online Resource 1. Wallerstein, J. S. (1986). When both spouses agree to a divorce, they can apply for a divorce after an obligatory year of separation. Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies. 3 (health and well-being outcomes), and Fig. These results reveal an incongruence between objective and subjective measures of economic outcomes. For both women and men, the chance of weekly visits to friends and neighbors declined somewhat before divorce, increased in the year of divorce, and reverted to predivorce levels thereafter. Women live under the rule of religion-supported patriarchy. Unemployment and subjective well-being in Germany. Economic outcomes of divorce: Women (black curves) and men (gray curves), Housing and domestic outcomes of divorce: Women (black curves) and men (gray curves), Health and well-being outcomes of divorce: Women (black curves) and men (gray curves), Social outcomes of divorce: Women (black curves) and men (gray curves). Gender Differences in Satisfaction with Divorce Settlements Virgil L. Sheets; Sanford L. Braver Family Relations, Vol. The subjective well-being of the previously married: The importance of unmarried cohabitation and time since widowhood or divorce. For my purposes, these data yielded two main benefits. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2017.36.12. The measure of life satisfaction, for example, indicated that women’s and men’s subjective well-being adapted on different time scales. The Balance of the Sexes in Divorce: Gender Differences and Parity. HYPOTHESIS 2. This research seeks to more systematically address gender differences than previous studies have done. A., Selim, A. J., & Kazis, L. E. (2010). The descriptive statistics on the first panel observation presented in Tables 2 and 3 indicate that compared with women and men who stayed married, those who went on to divorce were less satisfied with life, family life, income, housework, and their standard of living. This context of a conservative male breadwinner model appears conducive to gender inequality in the effects of divorce, particularly regarding economic consequences for women. For example, if the age effect on subjective well-being is negative, an uncontrolled model could overestimate initial drops and underestimate subsequent adaptation. 1991; Horwitz and White 1991), but it may also entail beneficial health effects in terms of weight loss. Smock, P. J. 31). A multiwave panel study indicated that these changes may be permanent (Hewitt et al. American Law and Economics Review, 2, 126–169. Marital status and happiness: A 17-nation study. Women after divorce: Preliminary report from a ten-year follow-up. Still, because Israeli society is ori- ented toward democracy and egalitarianism (in conflict with religious These differences suggest that those who participate long enough to observe a divorce (i.e., at least once after separation) are more reliable respondents with lower baseline probabilities of exiting the panel. Social Indicators Research, 112, 497–527. The effects of transitions in marital status on men’s performance of housework. Vogt Yuan, A. S. (2014). Comparative Population Studies, 40, 277–312. Leopold, T. Gender Differences in the Consequences of Divorce: A Study of Multiple Outcomes. These considerations suggest that men’s and women’s health and subjective well-being may adapt on different time scales: Women suffer from the impending end of a marriage already in predivorce years, whereas this process is delayed—and possibly more devastating—for men. Germany has been described as a typical male breadwinner state (Lewis 1992), in which policy encourages men’s work in the market and women’s work in the home. Dykstra, P. A., & Fokkema, T. (2007). McLanahan, S., & Sandefur, G. (1994). Moving after separation: The role of location-specific capital. The latter might apply particularly to men who endorse traditional gender role attitudes. 2002; Chilcoat and Breslau 1996), but they also exercise less and weigh more (Grzywacz and Marks 1999; Jeffery and Rick 2002; The and Gordon-Larsen 2009). (1997). Homeownership in later life—Does divorce matter? Divorce and the housing movements of owner-occupiers: A European comparison. The gendered dynamics of age preferences—Empirical evidence from online dating. 4), whereas the frequency of visits to friends and neighbors was more responsive to the divorce process (panel f). The gender gap in the economic well-being of nonresident fathers and custodial mothers. Fixed-effects models focus only on changes within individuals over time, relating temporal variation in the outcome measures only to temporal variation in the independent variables. Three limitations of the present study require further investigation. Part of Springer Nature. Cathy Meyer. My analysis was based on data from 32 waves of the German SOEP (SOEP-long, version 32.1, release 2017; Wagner et al. First, people with resident children are less likely to repartner, and women more often get custody (Ivanova et al. A meta-analysis of parental satisfaction, adjustment, and conflict in joint custody and sole custody following divorce. Theoretical, political, social, and spatial aspects] (pp. For the measure of satisfaction with household income, I found that women experienced larger declines than men in all postdivorce years compared with the predivorce reference period (p < .001; Table S5). Assessing for subtypes of Major Depressive Disorder takes a trained eye, but the payoff can be great. Seasonal depression is not a black -and-white…. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 53, 464–488. Second, a medium-term view on multiple outcomes showed more similarity than differences between women and men. Understanding Gender Differences 3 Understanding Gender Differences in Children’s Adjustment to Divorce: Implications for School Counselors There is ample evidence that divorce can have adverse effects on children’s well being (O’Connor, Hetherington, … Lifeprints: New patterns of love and work for today’s women. In Tables 2 and 3, I present descriptive statistics and detailed information about the measurement of all outcomes. Our website services, content, and products are for informational purposes only. One explanation for these differences relates to gendered health benefits of marriage: because men experience greater health gains from marriage, divorce puts them at a higher risk of health declines and mortality. American Journal of Sociology, 112, 442–472. Studies that cut across two or more domains are rare. It must be acknowledged, felt, and grieved for as long as the time is needed. As a result, all time-constant heterogeneity (observed and unobserved) is rendered inconsequential. In D. Reuschke (Ed. Although the process of repartnering was faster in men, average gender differences in the chances of repartnering remained small. In this study, I examined gender differences in the consequences of divorce by tracing annual change in 20 outcome measures covering four domains: economic, housing and domestic, health and well-being, and social. My aim was to offer a comprehensive view of gender differences in the consequences of divorce in terms of women’s and men’s year-to-year changes in multiple outcomes. As a result, divorce is expected to have a negative effect on the quality of family life of both spouses (Umberson and Williams 1993). In line with this idea, more recent research has indicated that life satisfaction was lower among divorced men (Andress and Bröckel 2007) and that mortality following divorce increased only among men (Berntsen and Kravdal 2012; Shor et al. Bennett, N. G. (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0667-6, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0667-6, Over 10 million scientific documents at your fingertips, Not logged in Family Relations, 45, 336–342. In the Netherlands, for example, 70 % of men and 50 % of women repartnered in the first 10 years after divorce (De Graaf and Kalmijn 2003). 2). Demography 55, 769–797 (2018). At the same time, women are more likely to initiate divorce after they accept that their efforts are hopeless (Brinig and Allen 2000; Kalmijn and Poortman 2006). Berntsen, K. N., & Kravdal, Ø. Second, I controlled for a respondent’s satisfaction with health. Similarly, the effect of divorce on the risk of poverty might partly run through job loss related to the divorce crisis and associated residential moves. Marital dissolution and work disability: A longitudinal study of administrative data. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 40, 111–125. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 38, 21–37. By Nicole H. Sodoma. Men are prone to deeper depressions and more likely to abuse substances after divorce. Women may also face a higher risk of losing homeownership and “falling down the housing ladder” (Dewilde 2008). After divorce: Personality factors related to the process of adjustment. An alternative interpretation is that women anticipate and accept the economic consequences of a divorce. In the United States, the UK, Australia, and other liberal societies with less institutional support for the male breadwinner model, gender differences in the economic consequences of divorce may be smaller. Since then divorce rates declined in many countries. 1983). First, the data did not include sufficient longitudinal information to assess gender gaps in more objective measures of health, such as cortisol levels and other biomarkers. This allowed me to assess whether, even before separation, respondents who separated (divorce sample) differed from those who stayed married (control sample). (2015). Another line of research on how divorce affects health and well-being has focused on mediating factors, such as changes in drinking, smoking, and body weight. Life course transitions and housework: Marriage, parenthood, and time on housework. De Graaf, P. M., & Kalmijn, M. (2003). Taken together, these findings on the absence of gender differences seem to contradict theoretical considerations about several outcome measures under consideration in the present study. According to an article in the American Sociological Review, ‘The Effect of Marriage and Divorce on Women’s Economic Well-Being’, women do not completely recover from their financial loss due to divorce until they remarry. I assessed divorce effects relative to all observations in a marital union (i.e., the divorce sample’s observations in the reference period and the control sample’s continued observations in a marital union). Hewitt, B., Haynes, M., & Baxter, J. 2013). PubMed Google Scholar. Kühhirt, M. (2012). The effects of these recent changes are still modest, although women’s labor force participation and use of childcare are on the rise (Bröckel and Andress 2015). The effect of children on men’s and women’s chances of re-partnering in a European context. European Sociological Review, 21, 259–271. Theoretische, politische, soziale und räumliche Aspekte [Housing and gender. Both women and men declined and then recovered in terms of mental health, although recovery appeared to be somewhat slower for women (panel b). Lags and leads in life satisfaction: A test of the baseline hypothesis. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The relationship between mortality and time since divorce, widowhood or remarriage in Norway. Gender Differences in Satisfaction with Divorce Settlements Virgil L. Sheets; Sanford L. Braver Family Relations, Vol. Although the gender gaps in household income and risk of poverty narrowed somewhat over time, differences between women and men remained substantial. Because of psychological stress and often poverty, physical health is the outcome of these results. The social context of earnings, employment, and satisfaction. Berlin, Germany: DIW Berlin. The suicide risk for an unmarried man is 39 percent higher than that of a married man. 2013). Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 29, 1–12. These physical health problems can range from the common cold to heart conditions and even cancer. Multiple observations of respondents and short gaps between observations: data are at... Acknowledged, felt, and domestic outcomes the baseline hypothesis all aspects of and... Engender for the SOEP includes multiple observations of respondents and short gaps between observations: data are available at consequences. 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