May 22, 2014 | News

Marriage does not inhibit separation

Being non-religious and living in cohabitation increases the risk of separation, so some scientific studies say. These assumptions are refuted by researcher Christine Schnor. Her doctoral dissertation just defended shows that there is another driving force behind partnership stability.

Being non-religious and living in cohabitation increases the risk of separation. These are conclusions drawn by multiple studies. The well-received theory of the Second Demographic Transition even posits that there is a societal correlation that has contributed to the increase in non-marital unions and rising divorce risks, namely secularization.

Christine Schnor’s dissertation is challenging the assumptions made above. Her dissertation looks into the separation behavior of young couples – mainly of eastern and western Germans who have  children.

This is because eastern and western Germans largely differ when it comes to religion, family formation, and partnership: The former are much less religious and they have children out of wedlock more often so than do their western German counterparts, and for that matter, most Europeans. The striking regional heterogeneity makes Germany well-suited to study family demography. And if you buy into the theory, the differences should be a driving force behind east-west differences in partnership stability.

For the analysis, Christine Schnor used data from the so-called pairfam panel, a larger –scale* longitudinal study. It includes nation-wide data on more than 12.000 persons of specific birth cohorts and their partners, parents and children; these have been interviewed annually since 2008. The study, considered unique worldwide, allows researchers to conduct detailed analyses of demographic issues such as partnership relations, generational relations, and fertility at different phases of life.

The dissertation of Christine Schnor shows that eastern and western German parents do not differ in partnership stability, i.e. it is not affected by regional heterogeneity. It is rather religion and living arrangement that make for differences in union dissolution behavior between eastern and western Germans: Being affiliated to a church positively affects the partnership stability of eastern German couples with children, but it has no impact on the separation risk of western German parents.

Couples not married when they had their first child are less likely to separate – when they live in eastern Germany, that is. This compares to a higher risk of separation among western German parents who are not married; a finding attributed in part to selection effects: For instance, they have a shorter union duration  prior to family formation than married parents married or eastern German unmarried parents. The time spent in partnership prior to the birth of the child thus is an indicator of post-birth partnership stability: The shorter the episode spent in partnership, the more likely the risk of union dissolution. The data analysis was restricted to individual information from only one of the partners for reasons of availability; nevertheless, the results gained allow for important conclusions to be drawn.

“The relationship between spreading secularity, non-martial unions and high divorce rates has been disproved at least for the German cohorts studied”, says researcher Christine Schnor. “Partnership duration is the most determining factor and should receive greater attention in future studies,” she concludes.

Christine Schnor has defended successfully her PhD thesis entitled  "The contexts of partnership and childbearing as determinants of union stability" on 22th of May, 2014 at the University of Rostock. She has been supervised by Michaela Kreyenfeld (MPIDR) and Heike Trappe (University Rostock). More than three years she worked in the Laboratory of Social and Economic Demography. In October 2013 she started to work at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.