دانلود رایگان مقاله تفاوت های جنسیتی در ترجیحات ارتباط پس از انحلال اتحادیه

ABSTRACT

Women less often remarry or cohabit again after union dissolution than men. To develop our understanding of this gender gap, we look at men’s and women’s relationship preferences following the dissolution of marital and cohabiting unions. Using the Dutch Generations and Gender Survey Study (N = 973), results show that divorced or separated women less often want to live with a partner again than men, and this holds for both singles and persons with a steady partner. Men and women generally do not differ in their desire to marry, except when they cohabit. Cohabiting women express a weaker desire for marriage than cohabiting men. Overall, we find women are less willing than men to proceed to the next step in a relationship—from dating, to living together, to marriage. Children from previous relationships are pivotal for both men’s and women’s relationship preferences. Having (young) resident prior children attenuates women’s desire to live together, whereas for men it is the frequency of contact with non-resident prior children that matters. Because women more often than men have primary care of children after divorce or separation, the gender difference in the desire to live with another partner is largely explained by women’s greater involvement with children from previous relationships. We conclude that understanding preferences can provide better insight into gendered differences in relationship formation after union dissolution.

4. Discussion

A well-established finding in family research is that women less often marry or cohabit with a new partner after union dissolution than men (Sweeney, 2010). To develop our understanding of why women less often marry or cohabit again after union dissolution, this study examined people’s relationship preferences and the gendered nature of these preferences, using large scale survey data from the Netherlands. Our findings suggest first that women’s lower rates of marriage and cohabitation after divorce or separation may in part be a matter of choice. The gender gap in rates of (re)marriage and cohabitation following union dissolution has often been attributed to the greater restrictions faced by women on the remarriage market (e.g., Ivanova et al., 2013), but our study found that women also have less desire than men to co-reside again. In contrast to those who had not experienced separation or divorce, large gender differences were observed among divorced or separated persons in their desire to start living together with a partner in the future. Whereas about two thirds of the men wanted to live together, little over 55% of women expressed such a desire. The observed gender difference in the desire to live together corroborates Parker’s finding (1999) that women were less interested in a new relationship than men after relationship break-up. The percentages in the current Dutch data are similar to the Australian data (65 and 43%) in Parker’s study, despite differences in the country, sample criteria and measures.