Changes in the family network after parental divorce
Final Report Abstract
The divorce rate in Europe has doubled over the past 50 years, leading to significant changes in one of the core institutions of social life: the family. While previous research has focused on the effects of divorce on specific family relationships, less is known about how parental divorce affects the broader family network. Impacting not only parent-child relationships, but also ties with and among grandparents, aunts, uncles, and stepfamily members. This DFG project analyzed kinship network data from Dutch registers and showed that the Dutch baby boom after World War II trickled down across generations, resulting in more aunts, uncles, and cousins. It also found that divorce and separation affect family structure, with fewer half-siblings in the Netherlands compared to the numbers found by colleagues in Sweden. The second study compared children in sole physical custody (SPC) with those in joint physical custody (JPC). In both arrangements, stepfather-child relationships were generally positive. A weak but positive association was found between the quality of the fatherchild and stepfather-child relationships, suggesting a spillover effect. JPC did not significantly affect the quality of the stepfather-child relationship. Finally, a handbook titled ‘Family as Networks’ is currently being edited, to which we have invited scholars to contribute chapters based on their expertise in family networks.
Publications
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The quality of the stepfather–child relationship in sole and joint physical custody. Family Relations, 73(5), 2981-2995.
Steinbach, Anja; Augustijn, Lara & de Bel, Vera
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A parallel kinship universe? A replication of Kolk et al. (2023) with Dutch register data on kinship networks. Demographic Research, 52, 915-938.
de Bel, Vera; Bokányi, Eszter; Hank, Karsten & Leopold, Thomas
