Children's post-divorce living arrangements have become increasingly heterogeneous the past decades, because of the rise in shared residence and stepfamily formation. This study investigates how post-divorce living arrangements (i.e. the combination between residential arrangement and stepparent presence) are related to children's school engagement. The focus is put on different explanations of the relation between living arrangements and school engagement, namely financial resources, parent–child relationship, selectivity and stress. Structural equation models are performed on a sample of children with divorced parents from the Leuven Adolescent and Family Study data 2008–2011 (n = 1630). First, the results show that stepfamilies have higher financial resources than single-parent families, but these higher financial resources are not directly related to children's school engagement. Second, parent–child relationship is an important mediator between post-divorce living arrangements and school engagement. The results suggest that shared residence is related to a better fatherchild relationship and in this manner improves school engagement. The relation between stepparent presence and the parent–child relationship is less straightforward, and the findings suggest that the combination of residential arrangement, stepfather and stepmother presence should be taken into account. Third, children's sociodemographic characteristics, time since divorce and level of pre-divorce conflict function as selection mechanisms, as they are related to both post-divorce living arrangements and children's school engagement. Finally, the findings indicate that the complexity of multiple part-time residential figures is stressful to children. This may partially counterbalance the benefits of such systems, via the better parent–child relationship and the higher financial resources.

In recent decades there have been two significant legislative amendments to shared parenting in Belgium. In 1995, joint exercise of parental responsibilities was introduced as the default legal position. In 2006, the legislation required that in all cases of joint parenthood in which parents could not agree on children's living arrangements, equally divided alternating residence must first be considered by the judge. In this article, we summarize recent research findings from Belgium about alternating residence for children. There has been a fourfold increase in alternating residence, and families in these arrangements became increasingly diverse. Compared to children living exclusively with their mothers, children in alternating residences report a better relationship with their father, while mothers report a more active personal social life. For children, alternating residence is found to be more challenging under certain conditions (e.g. no communication between parents).

Personality is known to be a key predictor for several aspects of close relationship functioning. Most likely, the influence of this psychological factor is even growing in contemporary societies, where the individual life biography is increasingly the result of personal preferences and less influenced by normative expectations and cultural institutions. In an era of high relationship instability, more and more people engage in a second union. Although it becomes increasingly relevant to study the effects of personality on close relationship functioning in higher order unions, this remained understudied until now. This study examines the impact of personality on partnership trajectories following divorce. First, we construct a typology of eight partnership trajectories, capturing the occurrence, order, and timing of different partnership events (e.g., repartnering, cohabiting, getting married) in the first 7 years after separation. Then, we use multinomial logistic regression to examine the association between personality and the post-separation partnership trajectories, thereby controlling for sociodemographic variables. The analyses are based on data from a large-scale representative survey, the Divorce in Flanders Survey. Results show that personality and sociodemographic factors are both important determinants for explaining post-separation partnership trajectories. Extraversion tends to increase the likelihood and speed of repartnering. Neuroticism lowers the stability in partnerships. Conscientiousness is related with a higher likelihood to remarry. A higher age at separation and the presence of children at home decrease the likelihood to repartner, while education increases this. The present study delivers an important contribution for unraveling part of the complex association between personality and partner relationship dynamics.

OBJECTIVE Men are commonly assigned the role of economic providers in the family, and education informs about their capacity to fulfil this role. Yet having biological ties to coresident children can determine the man's willingness to step into the provider role. This study investigates how education is linked to fatherhood after divorce, distinguishing between biological father and stepfather positions. METHODS We analysed life course data from 1,111 divorced Belgian men collected in the 'Divorce in Flanders' project. We used descriptive methods of sequence analysis to illustrate the pathways of postdivorce fatherhood. In multinomial logistic regressions, we estimated the likelihood of, firstly, being a father with coresident biological children or/and stepchildren and, secondly, repartnering with a mother and fathering children in this union. RESULTS The family situations of divorced men are dependent on their educational level. Moreeducated men are more often in the role of a resident biological father, whereas lesseducated men are more often stepfathers. Men's resident arrangements for firstmarriage children, their selection into a new union, and the parental status of their new partner help explain the educational differences in postdivorce father positions. Highly educated men live more often with the children from their first marriage and repartner more frequently, especially with women without own coresident children, which is beneficial for their transition to postdivorce childbearing. CONTRIBUTION The findings suggest that both capacity and willingness to support the postdivorce family are lower among the less educated. These education-specific pathways of postdivorce fatherhood are likely to enhance social inequalities.

Inleiding en situatieschetsDe wijze waarop moeders en vaders hun kinderen samen opvoeden is de afgelopen decennia drastisch gewijzigd.In de naoorlogse periode was het mannelijk kostwinnersmodel dominant: vader ging buitenshuis werken en zorgde voor het inkomen en moeder ontfermde zich over huishouden en kroost.Een genderspecialisatiemodel was de logische afspiegeling van de afhankelijkheid tussen de man en vrouw en de verbreking van een huwelijk was in die tijd haast ondenkbaar.

The growing acknowledgment of children’s agency has increased the use of child reports in family research. This study investigates three challenges that are related to the inclusion of children in surveys: 1) selection bias in the sample through parent and child refusal; 2) measurement equivalence of parent and child reports; and 3) the effect of parental presence during the interview on child reports. These challenges are investigated with the multi-actor data of the Divorce in Flanders study. The study shows that divorced parents more often refuse child participation than married parents. A parental refusal is also more likely in case of less frequent open communication with the child. The results further indicate that children answer as reliably as their parents on survey questions, but also that children report less frequent parental conflict, a less problematic communication with their mother, and a less open communication with mother and father, than their parents. This suggests that children’s perspectives on family relations are different from their parents. Therefore, including child reports in family research may enhance the understanding of family life. Finally, children tend to report slightly different on family relations when parents are present. It is concluded that processes of social desirability and selection are important to take into account when investigating children’s reports on their family life, as they can bias results and limit generalizability of the findings.

We use a stepfamily formation perspective to study two dimensions of the family life course following the dissolution of a first marriage. First, we examine how the presence of children from a prior union and the custody arrangements of those children influence the process of repartnering. In doing so, we extend the traditional explanations of union formation in terms of needs, attractiveness, and opportunities by taking into account the parental status of the new partners and a detailed classification of the custody arrangement of the children. Next, we investigate the likelihood of childbearing within those post-separation unions with a particular emphasis on the prior parental status of both partners. By studying post-separation union formation and fertility behavior together, we get a more complete depiction of stepfamily formation especially in their more complex forms. Our analyses are based on survey data for 2077 divorced men and 2384 divorced women collected in the Divorce in Flanders study. The results show that compared with other divorcees, full-time residential parents are the least likely to start a new union following separation and that parents are more likely to start a union with another parent than with a childless partner. Several of our results suggest that parenthood may not be a particularly attractive status on the partner market. Potential partners without children themselves appear especially reluctant to assume a (residential) step parental role. In contrast with the results for union formation, it is not the custody arrangement of the child(ren) but parental status itself that predicts childbearing within higher order unions. Our findings are important from a policy perspective as they stress the consequences of gender-neutral childrearing patterns following divorce for the repartnering of women after separation.

Background: Most studies investigating family life after a separation or divorce focus on single or competing events or transitions. Despite the growing popularity of the life-course perspective, few studies have given an overview of the sequence and timing of various post-divorce partner and parenthood trajectories. Objective: In this study we apply the technique of sequence analysis to describe the complete post-divorce partner and parenthood trajectory of divorced men and women in the first seven years following residential separation from their spouses. Methods: We use data from Divorce in Flanders, based upon a representative sample of first marriages drawn from the National Register. Our research sample consists of 1,530 men and 1,762 women who had been divorced for at least seven years at the time of interview. Ward's method is used as a clustering method. Results: A large proportion of divorced men and women remain single or outside a union, and make no partner or parenthood transition at all. However, we identified eight patterns of post-divorce partner trajectory and eight patterns of post-divorce parenthood trajectory. These trajectories differ from each other in the occurrence, the order, and the timing of specific partner and parenthood transitions. Conclusions: Our results do not suggest complete de-standardization of the post-divorce family trajectories of men and women, but do suggest a substantial heterogeneity in post-divorce family life. This heterogeneity is often ignored or hidden by focusing on single events or family transitions.

In this article, we present a new method for measuring residential arrangements of children following parental divorce. We discuss the limitations of conventional methods for measuring postdivorce residential situations of children, but our principal objective is to present a promising alternative, the residential calendar. We evaluate its utility with data coming from the Leuven Adolescents and Families project, collected from a sample of 878 Flemish adolescents, who have experienced a parental breakup. Several substantive and methodological arguments and supporting analyses illustrate the potential value of the residential calendar for collecting policy-relevant data on the consequences of divorce.