Maternal repartnering: Do child physical custody arrangements matter?

Women, especially mothers, are less likely than men to form new partnerships after union dissolution. As women are often primary custodial parents, finding and building relationships with a new partner might be prevented by lack of time and energy because they are caring for co-residential children. Given increases in shared physical custody in many countries, however, this stylized fact might change as fathers increase their child rearing responsibilities. Using data from the British Millennium Cohort Study and discrete-time event history analyses, we examine the prevalence and predictors of maternal repartnering into marriage or cohabitation during the first 7 years of a child’s life. Preliminary results suggest that, contrary to much of the existing theory, higher levels of visitation by the non-resident father was linked to lower maternal repartnering rates in the following period. This finding was robust to all of the model specifications. We find little evidence linking either child support receipt or child characteristics to maternal repartnering, except for the child’s ethnicity. Our results therefore suggest that recent trends toward increased shared physical child custody in industrialized countries are likely to diminish the likelihood of mothers repartnering, at least during the first 7 years of a child’s life.