Lone Mothers’ Repartnering Trajectories and Health: Does the Welfare Context Matter?

Abstract

We examined the relationship between lone mothers’ repartnering and health in three welfare contexts: the dual-earner, market-oriented, and general family policy model. Drawing on the resources and crisis models, we applied mixture modelling for spell data of the Harmonized Histories data set. We uncovered six distinct repartnering trajectories that varied regarding the timing, type, and stability of higher order unions for different cohorts of lone mothers. Unstable repartnering was more frequent in market-oriented contexts, while contexts with more comprehensive family support fostered more stable repartnering. Although repartnering trajectories were overall not associated with health, these associations differed by welfare context. Mothers experiencing repartnering, though unstable, reported to enjoy better health if living in market-oriented contexts rather than in general or dual-earner contexts. Altogether, our findings suggest that even if higher financial needs in less-generous welfare may translate in more unstable repartnering histories, this seems to have positive spillover effects on mothers’ health.