Abstract
Mothers’ repartnering is usually understood looking at demographic and socioeconomic predictors, while subjective expectations remain undertheorized. Merging these two perspectives, this article explores variations in expectations around repartnering in a group of 35 lone mothers (LM) in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Using two waves of a qualitative panel held in 2012/2013 and 2015, 11 categories of expectations are identified through thematic analysis and clustered along a continuum from family-oriented to adult-oriented repartnering. In family-oriented expectations mothers incorporate the new partners’ expected impact on their children, while in adult-oriented expectations this does not factor in their decision about repartnering. Having bad or no experiences with couple parenting before lone parenthood is common to mothers in some family-oriented expectations, while mothers looking for an intimate relationship (adult-oriented expectation) report higher SES and older age. Custody arrangements, child-rearing preferences, fertility intentions and LMs’ social network can also affect their expectations.
Introduction
Beginning a (new) couple relationship is the most common way to exit lone motherhood 1 across countries (Bernardi et al., 2018). As a new phase of the life course, a (new) partnership leads to various heterogeneous experiences for lone mothers (LMs) who were in a couple at the birth of their children and for those who were unpartnered at that time. 2 The new couple may cohabit or live apart in a LAT arrangement; they may or not marry or stipulate a form of legal partnership. Taking account such heterogeneity, this article explores variations in expectations around repartnering in a group of LMs who took part in a qualitative panel in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. This paper contributes to the mostly quantitative scholarship on the topic, offering a more fine-graded understanding on the mechanisms leading to a new partnership, by showing what matters to LMs when they think of/or undergo this transition. This is relevant for both adults and children involved in the dynamic of a new partnership. If on the one hand a new union may mean higher material and psychological resources for LMs and their children, on the other hand it exposes them to potential complex relationships and to the risk of another union dissolution with related family stress. An explorative investigation of mothers’ orientations and related expectations on repartnering sheds light on both the perceived advantages and risks associated with repartnering and allows to make hypotheses as to why some profiles of lone mothers have lower repartnering rates than others.
In addition, repartnering may lead to new births. By investigating the expectations around repartnering this work contributes to the literature on fertility intentions complementing the prevalent scholarship on first-time-ever parents, in the face of the current demographic challenges. Furhermore, repartnering leads to new family forms and living arrangements, like step and blended families as well as part time families; yet the mechanisms underneath the transition from lone parenthood to these new family forms are undertheorized (Raley & Sweeney, 2020), particularly for LMs who had never experienced couple parenting before. 3 The present article will contribute to hypotheses-making in these fields, including about the types of romantic involvement and level of engagement may be desirable for LMs, without the implicit assumption that forming a stable cohabiting couple is the most preferred biographical path for them.
LMs Repartnering: Orientations and Predictors
Anderson and Greene (2011) categorize mothers’ orientations towards repartnering along a continuum ranging from being an adult-focused decision to being a child-focused one: in the former case, repartnering mostly responds to the mother’s need of an adult relationship in the latter one, to her children’s needs. Some demographic features characterize adult-focused mothers who are “older, more educated, mostly employed outside home and ended longer marriages than child-focused mothers” (p. 748). Differences in orientations turn into different attitudes towards partnership in case of conflicts between the children and the partner: child-oriented mothers prioritize children’s needs over the partners’ and viceversa. Anderson and Greene do not engage with the relationship between repartnering and fertility and only look at divorced mothers, excluding former cohabitant unwed mothers and mothers who never experienced couple parenting. All in all, this approach to repartnering provides insights into what appeals divorced mothers about repartnering, but only accounts for a few predictors underpinning their orientations and does not look at what pushes them away from repartnering.
More classically, in the quantitative socio-demographic tradition, mothers’ repartnering has been explained looking at specific predictors and combinations thereof (Raley & Sweeney, 2020). Gender is one of the strongest determinants of repartnering. Men have higher odds of remarrying (Livingston, 2014; Payne, 2018) and mothers have fewer chances than fathers to repartner in general (Di Nallo, 2019; Gray, 2015). Similar differences concern widows and widowers (Wu et al., 2014). Often gender interacts with other predictors. For example, having children reduces the odds of repartering per se (Beaujouan, 2012; Galezewska, 2016; Gałezewska et al., 2017; Ivanova, Kalmijn, & Uunk, 2013; Lampard & Peggs, 1999; Vanassche et al., 2015) but this effect is much stronger for mothers than for fathers (Di Nallo, 2019). Custody arrangements also play a role whereby sole custody itself drops the chances of repartnering (Schnor et al., 2017), while if children live with both parents, mothers’ chances of repartnering are more similar to childless women’s (Pasteels & Mortelmans, 2015). The age of the children does not seem to affect mothers’ repartnering odds but having young children increases the chances to repartner for fathers (Wu & Schimmele, 2005). Conversely the higher the age of the parent, the lower the chances to repartner (Gałezewska et al., 2017; Gałęzewska, 2016). SES can also predict repartnering although evidence is less conclusive. Low SES affects the chances to remarry for both mothers and fathers in Australia (Hughes, 2000). Conversely, Shafer and James (2013) show that women with higher education report lower chances to remarry than to first marry as opposed to men with high SES, while low-educated women display similar chances to marry and remarry. Financial needs drive remarriage in divorced mothers with low income before divorce in Europe, but not necessarily for mothers who face income loss at divorce (Dewilde & Uunk, 2008). Low SES may influence living arrangements accelerating cohabitation (Cartwright, 2010). In the same vein, financially independent unwed mothers report lower odds to be in a coresident partnership (Bzostek et al., 2012). Looking at education, Di Nallo et al. (2023) show that motherhood does not affect educated women’s chances to repartner.
Relatively less studies look at how specific modes of entry into lone parenthood interact with other predictors affecting the chances of subsequent repartnering (Le Bourdais et al., 1995). For e.g., Skew (2009) shows that LMs who were never in couple have lower chances to repartner if they receive income support whereas among those who enter lone parenthood after a union breakup, age is the most relevant determinant – i.e., the older the mother the most difficult to repartner.
In addition to mothers’ and children’s characteristics, partners’ characteristics may affect repartnering chances. Surprisingly, Berger et al. (2018) show that in the UK the other parent’s involvement is not associated with repartnering among mothers who used to be married or cohabiting before couple dissolution, while those who were not married nor cohabiting report lower odds to repartner when father-child contacts are more frequent. In addition, receiving child maintenance is never associated with repartnering.
The perceived causes of marital dissolution for men and women can also affect expectations attached to a new relationship as people also learn from previous experiences. Schneller and Arditti (2004) show that the first breakup is the one that has the greatest impact and Poortman (2007) shows that after the first union dissolution the chances of repartnering are much smaller, than after subsequent couple break-ups. The new partner’s parental status also plays a role in that parents tend to repartner with other parents and being a parent involves more difficulties in reparnering as childless partners would not be available to begin a relationship with parents (Vanassche et al., 2015).
Finally, social policy might affect repartnering in low-income households. In line with the economic need theory, one might hypothesize that repartnering helps replacing poor welfare support (Fisher & Zhu, 2019). Welfare conditionality can interfere with preferences related to repartnering and living arrangements whereby administrations providing means-tested benefits assume that a new cohabitation implies pooling income between partners and stop benefit provision based on the incompatibility between a higher household income and the benefit income threshold (Griffith, 2017; Larenza, 2024). In sum, the predictors approach tests the impact of specific variables, or of the combination of a limited number of them, on repartnering, but does not come to terms with subjective orientations nor it unveils multiple interactions among predictors.
This paper contributes to the literature on the mechanisms leading to repartnering (and no repartnering) with a fine-graded investigation of LMs’ expectations. To do so it combines the abovementioned streams of literature (orientations and predictors). As a heuristic tool to investigate repartnering, subjective expectations can be positioned along the orientation continuum between family-oriented and adult-oriented repartnering and close the gap between objective predictors based on theoretical hypotheses and observed behaviors in repartnering. Ultimately expectations put in conversation mothers’ biographies with repartnering preferences and allow to account for the various forms of partnerships (e.g., marriage, cohabitation, LAT) mothers may look for, rather than just focusing on the dichotomy repartering versus not repartnering, i.e., they shed light on the kinds of repartnering that best translate mothers’ preferences.
Data and Methods
This work draws from the first two waves 4 of a qualitative panel with 40 lone parents (38 mothers and 2 fathers) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Participants were interviewed in 2012/2013 and in 2015 in the cantons of Vaud and Geneva. At wave one they had been lone parents for no more than 5 years, i.e., they were living alone with one to three dependent children due to separation (after marriage or cohabitation), widowhood or were unpartnered at the birth of their first child. Their youngest child was no older than 12. Participants would also feature various socioeconomic conditions and type of relationships with non-custodial parents ranging from supportive and respectful to unstable or inexistant Table Annex. A manyfold sampling strategy implied the support of local associations, kindergartens, personal contacts of the interviewers and flyer distribution. Before the interview participants provided verbal informed consent to participate in the study and to use anonymised data for research purposes (including publications). Consent for anonymised transcriptions archival was also asked orally and recorded at the end of the interview. Little snowballing with multiple entry points (Sulaiman-Hill & Thompson, 2011) allowed to select people from various societal contexts. Since dynamics of repartnering greatly vary between men and women, (Goldscheider & Sassler, 2006; Wu & Schimmele, 2005) this work focuses on LMs in both waves to facilitate intragroup comparison. Ten mothers had never experienced repartnering while 28 went thorough it at least once by the last interview. Five of them had very short repartnering experiences (a few months). No new marriages occurred, 10 new relationships implied a cohabitation and 32 a LAT. Three mothers were removed from the sample due to lack of expectations in relation to repartnering, i.e., 35 mothers were finally included in the sample for this study (See Annex).
Semi-structured interviews were conducted in wave one to collect LMs’ stories since their birth and across life domains (i.e., place of residence, couple and family life, education and work, health). A problem-centred approach (Scheibelhofer, 2008) was adopted in wave two to combine a narrative part with a semi-structured one. Narratives allowed to collect data on the changes occurred over time (including new relationships), while a more in-depth investigation of LMs’ challenges, also in relation to repartnering, was at the heart of the semi-structured part of the interview. Specifically, mothers who had repartnered were invited to talk about any previous and current experience with it as well as their expectations about the future. Conversely, those who had never had a new couple experience were invited to talk about their expectations about ideal relationships. In both cases, the relationship between parental and couple life was investigated.
By means of thematic analysis the topic of repartnering was singled out in all the interviews in both waves using a combination of deductive and inductive coding (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). The latter was particularly useful to identify sub-topics such as various expectations around repartnering. Expectations associated with current or ideal relationships describe the rationale underpinning repartnering and were categorized through content analysis. They could be linked to various aspects such as the role of the new partner, preferences about living arrangements and personal values concerning parenting and couple life. Expectations about repartnering reflect the needs that a new relationship would satisfy according to each participant. Mothers would not necessarily stick to the same expectations over time, but these could change across waves. Therefore, more than one type of expectation could be associated to each mother. Expectations reflect various preferences as to the relationship between the LM’s family life and the new couple life and were ordered along a continuum stretching between repartnering as an adult-oriented choice (which only involves the mother) and as a family-oriented one (which involves the mother and her children). Categories of expectations were further clustered into three broad groups featuring homogeneous expectations about the new partner’s role in LMs’ existing families. Ultimately, considerations on the relationship between expectations and potential predictors are developed for each category of expectations and discussed at the end of the paper.
The Expectations About Repartnering
Expectations about repartnering along the orientation continuum and related potential predictors
Cluster A: Family-Oriented Repartnering Expectations
Starting a New Family (A1)
LMs who expect to start a brand-new family aim at the highest level of involvement of their family of origin in the new couple project. This implies that the new partner is expected to parent LM’s existing children as if they were their own and share parental authority with the LM. Having other children together may be part of the plan. Cohabitation is the living arrangement that guarantees the highest level of integration among all the members of the new family. The LM is concerned that everybody feels at ease in the new situation: repartnering is both about finding a new father for the child and a new partner for life. Léonie is one of the mothers who see repartnering as a way to start a new family. She has been parenting alone since the birth of her child. When she met her new partner, the child was still a toddler. Some months after the beginning of their cohabitation she can see clearly in the future of her relationship: Yes he could adopt him (…) we often discuss about it and we also discuss about our visions, about how we see things for Nicolas, I mean these are things that are shared, except on the papers (…) where there is no other person than me that has parental responsibility, for the rest, he is entitled to pick him up from the crèche as I do ... he has the same access (…) it did not happen by chance... I think there is a sense in it, you don’t call “dad” anybody... I mean, this is not because he is there now and that there will be a following one ... I mean the project [is] a long term one (…) (Léonie aged 37, 1 child aged 2)
The expectation of starting a new family with another partner is expressed by five mothers who had extremely bad experiences with parenting before the separation involving child neglect and domestic violence or had no experiences of couple parenting at all before repartnering (as with Léonie’s case, fathers left before the birth of their children). These mothers were not discouraged by the failure of the nuclear family project and hoped for a new start with another partner.
Taking the Full Package (A2)
Some of the mothers who see repartnering as a family issue are concerned about the new partner being happy to “take the full package”. This implies that the LM does not want to split up between her family life and her couple relationship and expects that the new partner will be happy to share moments together with her children, accepting to be involved in the “package” (i.e., LM’s life with her children) rather than expecting to be always alone with the mother. The range of activities the partner may be involved in goes from simply sharing family moments with the LM, to being actively involved in parenting of her children. No specific types of living arrangements are associated with this expectation. Some mothers look for a cohabitation, others are willing to stay in a LAT relationship. Martine’s case is the one that best epitomizes this expectation. Sometime after the end of her homosexual registered partnership she starts a new relationship with another woman, but soon she understands that her new partner could not meet her expectations as she does not want to engage with her family life: My children loved her (…) but in the end she was totally unable to deal with them, she did not care about them. And this was difficult because in the end I had to split myself completely. This means that I would either do activities with my children [or with her]. And I would not even ask her to do any baby-sitting (…). But I had to have two lives, wear two hats, have two roles ... and shit! That was tough! And then, I was fed up with this (…) (Martine aged 51, 2 children aged 5 and 11)
Eight mothers showed this expectation at some point of their trajectory in lone parenthood. Four of them linked such expectation to fertility: LMs did not want to have more children or thought to be too old for that and would look for a partner that would be happy with the “package” and not ask for more children. Difficult experiences with previous attempts to repartner also underpin this type of expectation in three stories. Looking for a partner that would take the full package sometimes means looking for another adult who shares the same views on education. As opposed to A1 the partner here must fit into LM’s parenting style, as four mothers explain. Finally, in three cases this expectation is also driven by the need to manage time more efficiently while prioritizing the children’s needs as Flore states “I already have a house, a child and a practice to juggle with”.
Providing a Male Role Model to the Child (A3)
Some LMs are concerned about their children growing up without a male role model and expect that a new partner takes such a role. Being a role model does not necessarily equal being a (new) father, it just implies offering a male model that children can look at to complement the “maternal approach to childrearing”. This is what Sylvie has been looking for: Maybe he’ll see him as another daddy or as a father but I’d say more like a person…not an uncle but a … yes a person…a man he can trust, a...to have two people! (Sylvie 39, 1 child aged 5)
Despite being self-standing, this type of expectation is always expressed in conjunction with others from clusters A or B. The four mothers in this group had negative experiences with parenting before separation including child neglect (which continued after separation) and domestic violence or very high couple conflict. Alternatively, they had no experiences of couple parenting while in precarious circumstances, involving social isolation and financial hardship. The male role model is seen as a possible substitute for the non-custodial parent or the person who will fill the gap left by the absent father accordingly.
Protecting the Child (A4)
LMs must also think at the future of their children and how to protect them in case of impairment, this may be especially important for LMs who can only count on a very limited social network. In this context a mother might expect that their partner be ready to take up the parental role as if they were the biological parent. In this view repartnering responds primarily to the child’s need to be protected and mothers’ wishes in relation to the new couple life are not paramount. As opposed to A2, in this case the focus is not on the LM’s family (the package) but on the child’s future. Concerns about how to formally establish filiation between the new partner and the child gain centrality, as Lara clearly explains: I have no family, I have no brothers and sisters, I tell myself “If anything happens to me, my little child, I don’t want her to be left to social services” (…) there is a wardship service who would send her to a foster family that she does not know (…) now [I have got] him (…) I tell myself “I would like to name him” actually, “I would like to put his name actually”. (Lara aged 48, 1 child aged 8)
Source of Conflict (A5)
Another type of expectation associated with (re)partering is expressed by three mothers who experienced domestic violence while they were in couple with the father of their children who also witnessed violence. As with A4 their main goal here is to protect their children, but in this case their concern is to prevent their children to face again such dreadful experience. Because a new partner is seen as a potential perpetrator, repartnering is a source of conflict to avoid. As with the other expectations, mothers do not exclude to change idea in the future and reconsider repartnering, but this is not possible until the fear prevails as Catalina shows: I want no men here, this is our cocoon, that’s our thing … safe … it’s safe … (…) there is the two of us, that’s our thing … (Catalina aged 40, 1 child aged 6)
Cluster B: Between Family-Oriented and Adult-Oriented Repartnering Expectations
Starting a Blended Family (B1)
Repartnering may be a means to start a new family and have more children. The new partner is expected to cohabit with the LM and must be willing to have children together to create a blended family: It was kind of the logical sequence (…) we wanted to move in together, we each lived in our own apartment and we had been together for almost three years already…and then, indeed, to start a family all that, and then we looked for something that suited us. (Leila aged 39; 1 child aged 7)
As opposed to A1, this is not like starting a new family, as the partner is not meant to parent the LMs’ kids. Indeed, this expectation does not involve any specific type of relationship between the mother’s children and the new partner. Three participants share this expectation at some point of their life course. In all these cases the mothers and their children still have a relationship with the non-custodial parent, although the latter can be involved in parenting at various degrees ranging from having only irregular contacts with the child to being careful and highly involved in the child upbringing. Furthermore, this expectation is also associated with mothers’ fertility intentions, although they are not necessarily positive about their chances to have more children in the future.
Sharing Everyday Life (B2)
Some LMs primarily intend to repartner to share everyday life with another adult. The new partner is not meant to parent the LM’s children. This may happen incidentally because of the chosen living arrangement, i.e., cohabitation, and implies ordinary acts of family management that allow to keep the cohabitation project viable, by keeping together life as a parent and life as a partner for both members of the new couple. Mothers in this expectation group do not aim at having more children with the new partner. In some cases, children’s refuse to accept the new partner or the latter’s incapacity to care for them is not an obstacle to the cohabitation project. In fact, mothers may enact various strategies to face such problems such as bringing their children to a psychologist or giving the partner more time to develop the required parental skills before undertaking the cohabitation project: Yes, every now and then my children give him [the partner] a hard time, as their father doesn’t like him (…) He always has the impression to waste his time when we do something together. He loves teaching them how to do something, but the aim is that they could do it alone afterwards. (…) that’s why I said that sometimes I am happy that we don’t live together, because in this way we can try to have nice moments together for us also on these occasions. Everyday life together still needs some adjustments (…) (Gisela aged 29; 2 children aged 4 and 6)
When cohabitation implies making important changes to the family life such as changing place of residence and looking for another job, some mothers may be discouraged and think that cohabiting with a new partner will not be immediately possible, although they still expect to find a way to reach this goal in the future. Céline faces a moral conflict between accommodating a new life with a partner and imposing changes to her daughters, including the risks that such changes entail: it’s more [a matter] of expectations that one has about the other, about the success or the failure of the relationship. Can the relationship work if he has no ties, that he would rather leave to travel and work abroad? Etc. … and now these are things that I can’t do (…) And this is something that I often have to face … that I tell myself … I can’t … from a theoretical point of view I am single, but I am also a mother and this constrains me. (Céline aged 36, 2 children aged 6 and 8)
Seven LMs share this expectation about repartnering. All of them became LMs following couple parenting and are experiencing a new couple life with or without cohabitation. The search for an equilibrium between the parental and the couple life is central in all these stories although not all of them are developing in the same way. When LMs cohabit expectations may be fulfilled because the new partner is a source of practical help with everyday life or allows the mother to save money for babysitting when they care for her children. Sometimes cohabitation is accelerated by events occurred in one’s life (e.g., the partner taking full custody of their own children) in an attempt to keep the story going. For LMs who wish of cohabiting this may be the goal to reach in the future once the conditions will be more favourable (see Gisela and Céline). This implies waiting for the partner’s divorce to get married and stabilize the relationship, leaving the partner the time to familiarize with the children, and waiting until the LM is able to place her trust in the new partner. As opposed to A2, LMs with this expectation aim to reconciliate parenting and couple life for their stories to be viable and regain a private life beside their mother’s role.
Not Being Alone (B3)
Some LMs dream of a partner who could put an end to their solitude. Mothers with this expectation feel alone and would like to receive support in everyday life by a partner who could take care of them (e.g., violence survivors) and their children, help with domestic tasks and share free time with them. No specific living arrangements are associated with this expectation. Solitude is a great concern for these mothers and a major source of stress. The new partner is expected to relieve them from such a burden, as Françoise explains: Now, I say to myself that I am free, that’s true (…) On the other hand, I say to myself, I would not like to live eternally like this, this is very stressful. It’s good to have someone who helps with cooking, domestic tasks, that’s the thing. (Françoise aged 40, 2 children aged 7 and 10)
The six mothers featuring this expectation share three intertwined sources of vulnerability. First, they have problematic relationships with the non-custodial parents who can be inexistant or present but violent or totally unreliable. Second, they are mostly in precarious financial situations and often do not receive child maintenance (four out of six LMs). Finally, they have a very limited social network often due to poverty, isolation linked to previous experiences with domestic violence or a migrant background. Tania is a case in point. She arrived in Switzerland with very little connections and soon after having a child with her partner she was left alone to provide for her daughter: you can only understand this when you are a parent … and (…) when you don’t have a mother or a father, or anybody at your side … and that you cannot leave the child … not even an hour … (…) take my shower peacefully (…) not even this … (…) (Tania aged 31, 1 child aged 4)
Solitude is particularly hard to bear in case of children with special needs as Sylvie’s son. She thinks she needs a partner to support her during the child’s crises and stop the escalation of emotions they trigger: If I am very angry with him (…) at that moment for a child, it would be good to have another adult that takes over (...) I have no support so … so he knows that if things don’t work, if I do not manage to cope with everything, he will go to live in foster care! (…) but it’s true that if a man was there and that we were more or less in couple, there would be two adults who would cope with him. Even if the other one is not his biological father. (Sylvie aged 39, 1 child aged 5)
This is Not My Last Pregnancy! (B4)
To four mothers in the sample repartnering is linked to the intention of having more children. This expectation is often associated with other expectations from group A and B, nonetheless it has its own rationale. The plan of having more children may also be linked to the mothers’ will to give brothers and sisters to the first child and the expectation that they might benefit from growing up with siblings. If LMs wish to have more children with a new partner, it does not mean that they are not aware of how difficult this might be due to all the conditions that must be fulfilled for the plan to be viable. Some LMs think they are becoming too old to have the time to find the right person, get to know them well and make such a plan. Younger mothers are less concerned about time but may still find it hard to meet the person which would be interested in and suitable for the plan, as Natacha meditates on: I would like to have more children, to me, this was not my last pregnancy, my first child, (…) … and the thing is that you have to find the partner who agrees with this plan … (…) at the beginning I would overthink … my partner must not have children, this would be simpler … and in the end you just have to make do with what you have … and be very flexible (Natacha aged 30, 1 child aged 5)
Cluster C: Adult-Oriented Repartnering Expectations
Escaping From Former Relationships (C1)
In some stories repartnering is depicted as a matter which only concerns the mothers. This implies that LMs do not prioritize considerations about the impacts that the transition to a new couple life could bring to their children, when speculating about their expectations around repartnering. One type of expectation within this group is to escape from former relationships as three mothers in the sample put it. One of them was facing an ambiguous relationship with the father of her child (i.e., involving unclear feelings) at the time of the interview. The other two had experienced domestic violence while in couple, with further violence episodes or severe conflicts after separation. In all the three cases their link with the father of their children was not clearly cut as they wished, therefore, they were hoping to be with a new partner to clarify the previous relationship and distance themselves from the non-custodial parent. Alyzée is one of the mothers who finds herself in such a situation at some point of her transition to lone motherhood. At first she would expect to found a new family with the new partner (A1), however when she realizes that such expectation could not be met she changes her mind and gradually moves to the other extreme of the continuum. At wave two she explains the sense that the new couple has to her, in relation to her former (violent) partner: it allows me to be more detached from my ex-husband, to have more… um…(silence) yes, it gives me stability. (Alyzée aged 36, 1 child aged 11)
Intimate Relationship (C2)
Having a new intimate relationship is what six mothers expect from a new couple at some point of their life. Intimacy involves sharing moments that only belong to the couple during the mother’s free time. The partner is not expected to share everyday life as this might put at risk the love relationship and possibly the LM’s family balance although in some stories they might occasionally see the LMs’ children. Partnership is separate from parenthood but can nevertheless positively contribute to other life domains via spill-over effects and improve the mothers’ wellbeing. If mothers in B3 need to have a partner to put an end to a stressful situation, mothers with this expectation see repartnering as an opportunity although they do not depend on it for their happiness. Intimacy is not just about sexual relationships but may explicitly include intellectual stimulation, as Béatrice explains. She ended previous relationships since her partners wanted to spend time alone with her and she could not afford to pay for babysitting. Subsequently, she decided to look for someone who was willing to meet her at home. Despite the strong relationship he had established with her child, she decided to leave her partner as he was not enough intellectually stimulating and moved back to her original expectation of finding a partner who could fulfil her personal needs: the man that I have left, (…) that’s a man that I can rely on, he helped me with Jonas, (…) but … intellectually it is very hard for me, so I would feel alone in my discussions (…) he could not understand, because he was not used to read, that was the problem, (…) I need to have a more intellectual relationship, I need to have discussions, to keep on looking for the sense of things, to develop myself, to understand how I can improve (Béatrice aged 43, 1 child aged 9)
Despite mothers expecting to have an intimate relationship view repartnering as their private affair and do not think their partners are ment to develop a relationship with their children, still their communication with the children on this topic can be an issue. Specifically, mothers like Diane prefer to keep the new relationship secret to their young children as they think this is in not necessarily going to last and might be confusing for a little child: … that’s my life as a woman, it’s about physical relationships… I don’t know what I am going to do with them. We spend nice moments, but he is not going to commit to my family life (…). So it would be ridiculous that I introduce him to a seven year girl (Diane aged 50, 3 children aged 7, 15 and 24)
Aline made a different choice. To her, keeping the couple and the parental life separated is only a way to make the most of both and particularly to benefit from a love relationship without having to live together with the new partner. She is not concerned about her children’s attitude towards her partner and does not need to conceal her love story to them, but is clear about what they cannot expect from her relationship: I used to say to Gaspard, “when you will be older, you can be my co-pilot” (…) And he would reply, “but no, because I might have a step-father” and then I would tell him “Listen, this is not the plan” (…) Yes, I rather want to have little affairs, that’s for sure, but to live a new life with someone, not at all (…). I think it is very hard to keep the flame alive when you share everyday life. (…) I don’t need anybody in my everyday life, neither to care for my children, nor for me, nothing. (Aline aged 42, 2 children aged 6 and 9)
Most mothers sharing this expectation are in their forties or above at the time of the interview and see a clear opposition between repartnering to start a new family and repartnering to have an intimate relationship. At this stage of their life, they can think at repartnering without imposing such a major change to their family life which they see as stable and complete. The only thing is that now I do not really want to live with someone else… that’s the difference, in the past, when you are thirty, thirty-five, you want to live with someone again, to have a new life with your children. But now, I am also very well here, at my place, alone. And I do not want to be the little housewife for a man anymore, wash his shirts, preparing meals for him … I have my children, I mean, my life is perfect like this! (Diane aged 50, 3 children aged 7, 15 and 24)
Children’s age does not seem to make a difference among these mothers: despite some of them live with very young children (their age range goes from three to 13) none of them looks for a stepparent for their children at the time of the interview. The socioeconomic characteristics of the mothers may play a role in their expectations: all of them feature a stable job and a relatively good income, leading to financial independence; four out of six feature tertiary education and two of them have a secondary school diploma. All of them value independece. Finally, the failure of previous attempts to repartner may lead LMs to change their expectations in two opposite ways: in the case of Béatrice it reinforces her original beliefs by confirming that she has to prioritize the intellectual stimulation for a couple project to be viable; while in Aline’s case, after several couple failures, it leads her to think that she should begin involving her children in her couple life a little bit, if she wants her stories to last longer.
Conclusions
LMs’ repartnering expectations vary according to the partners’ expected role in their parental and couple life and can be positioned along an orientation continuum between family-oriented and adult-oriented repartnering expectations. When repartnering is seen as family-oriented decision, the partner can be expected to act as a new parent (A1 and A4) or as a parent figure (A2 and A3), i.e., be ready to participate in LMs’ family life and/or stand as a role model for their children. Alternatively, if a new partner is perceived as a threat to the LM’s family (A5), mothers may exclude repartnering.
Expectations about forming new partnerships and preferences for living arrangements (like cohabitation or LAT) don’t always align. For instance, mothers with similar expectations might seek different types of arrangements, as seen with A2 and B3 expectations. In the A2 group, some mothers preferred cohabitation, while others avoided it, fearing that sharing a house could jeopardize the new relationship. Ultimately such variety enhances family diversity.
This work clearly shows that repartnering is not always viewed as a mean to reduce vulnerability. Some expectations suggest that repartnering could help mothers overcome challenges like raising a child alone (A3, A4), managing daily tasks (B3), and escaping violence and fear (C1). Nevertheless, LMs also associate repartnering with new risks and challenges. For instance, some mothers see a new partner as a potential source of conflict (A5); fear the stress of sharing daily life with another man (see Aline) or the potential role conflict between being a mother and a partner, if the new partner does not want to be involved in parenting (see Martine). Mothers might choose to remain single if they are not satisfied with the new partner, despite any help they might receive (see Béatrice). This suggests that studies should stop assuming that repartnering is necessarily a solution to a problem and consider no repartnering as a risk for LMs. Indeed, negative expectations about repartnering are consistent with new social norms about motherhood and partnership and related variations in post-separation life courses.
Furthermore, whenever repartnering is associated with positive outcomes, this is not necessarily expected to be by forming a new nuclear family. The parental and the partnership trajectories can unfold independently from one-another in LMs’ life course as new family forms become more and more accepted in the society.
Some LMs conveyed multiple expectations at once from adjacent clusters, i.e., which do not belong to the two extreme clusters of the spectrum (A and C). This indicates that repartnering is sometimes perceived as neither a family project nor solely a personal LM’s decision. Additionally, some LMs altered their expectations over time and shifted from one group to another, due to events such as the failure of previous repartnering attempts (e.g., Alizée and Béatrice).
Some aspects of LMs’ biographies are particularly recurrent in specific expectations about repartnering and could potentially predict specific types of repartnering. Specifically, having no prior experiences of couple parenting is common among some mothers in A1, A3 and A4, i.e., three of the five family-oriented types of expectations. It may be the case that these mothers see repartnering as a way to move out of solo-parenting and begin couple-parenting, by looking for a relatively high level of commitment of the new partner in their family project. Having faced bad experiences with couple parenting before lone parenthood involving domestic violence is also common among mothers in A-type expectations (A1, A3, A5). Except for those who would relinquish parenting, mothers in A-groups may see repartnering as a way to make a new start with a careful partner. Having faced domestic violence is also one of the factors leading to C1. In this type of expectations are also mothers who are still in contact with the non-custodial parent, although the relationship with them is problematic and may involve violence or ambiguous feelings. Mothers in this case see repartnering as instrumental to freeing themselves from a burden.
After the transition to lone motherhood, when a minimum commitment exists and the other parent is to various extents involved in parenting, mothers do not express the need to find another parental figure; this is common in mothers looking for a blended family. If previous literature shows that father-child contacts are not associated with repartnering for mothers who experienced couple parenting (Berger et al., 2018), it might be the case that noncustodial parents’ commitment be associated with this specific form of repartnering (i.e., B1) rather than repartnering in general.
This work confirms that sole physical custody may impose limits to repartnering due to time constraints. However, if mothers in A2 deal with the work-life balance dilemma by prioritizing children’s needs, mothers in B2 expect to regain a private life sooner or later. In a couple of stories, this also depends on the new partner’s parental (e.g., partners who have full custody) and/or marital status (e.g., a partner who has not divorced yet). LMs’ parenting style is particularly important in A2, i.e., if physical custody arrangements play a role in LMs’ chances to repartner, child-rearing can also affect LMs’ expectations about repartnering.
Having a limited social network to rely on may lead some mothers to look for mere support and company (B3) while for others this is a key concern that has to do with their children safety and wellbeing as it is the case for mothers in some family-oriented types of expectations (A3 and A4). The intention to have more children is, by definition, what leads to B1 and B4 types of expectations. Conversely, excluding the possibility or the will of having more children is common in A2 and A5, i.e., the A-type expectations requiring the new partner to play a minor role (A2) or no role at all (A5) in the LMs’ family project.
This work confirms that mothers preferring and adult-oriented repartnering share relatively good SES. At the other end of the continuum, a precarious financial situation is most common among mothers in A3 and B3. Having said that, qualitative data shed light on more complex relationship between financial resources and repartnering, i.e., a bidirectional one. Indeed, to some mothers repartnering requires money to be invested for external childcare while spending time with the new partner, to others who have repartnered it allows to save money if the partner helps with childcare when needed. Ultimately, inequalities between mothers who can afford to repartner and mothers who cannot, may raise over time. Mothers’ age only seems to play a role in the C2 type of expectations, i.e., older mothers are common among those who look for an intimate relationship. If older parents have higher odds to repartner, older age predicts this specific form of repartnering, in line with Anderson and Greene’s (2011) results. The age of the children does not seem to be associated with any specific type of expectations, in line with previous research.
Social policies cannot be singled out among the potential predictors in any of the expectations. However, they seem to play a role in the specific living arrangements and the type of relationship that LMs look for, via conditionality, as previous research has shown. For example, they can discourage cohabitation whereby it implies the loss of eligibility to healthcare subsidies, due to cumulation of partners’ income. In another story they lead to reject the hypothesis of a new marriage not to lose the survivors’ insurance benefits. Alternatively, and more indirectly, social policies may affect the type of expectations via the sole custody predictor, i.e., it might be the case that exorbitant costs of Swiss childcare play a role in mothers’ expectations of finding a partner that would help with it.
This work shows that a more fine-grained understanding of the rationale about repartnering dynamics shall rely on knowledge about the relationship between differentiated expectations and potential predictors of repartnering, rather than on the causal relationship between a set of predictors and a binary outcome (i.e., repartnering or no repartnering). The decision to repartner or not is multifactorial and influenced by the kind of repartnering LMs long for given their expectations. Furthermore, on top of the known predictors, experiencing domestic violence and openness to accept the new partner’s involvement in child education can also underpin specific forms of repartnering and deserve further investigation.
However, expectations do not necessarily translate into repartnering behaviours, i.e., they are first best options although LMs may go for a second best. By including questions aiming at investigating repartnering expectations in existing population surveys, useful insights could be drawn on lone parents’ aspirations to be contrasted against actual behaviors in couple life. Finally with a larger dataset, a separate investigation could be conducted with LMs who have experienced repartnering and those who have never been in couple after the transition to lone parenthood, to disentangle the impact of past repartnering experiences on subsequent expectations about repartnering.
Footnotes
Consent to Participate
Before the interview participants provided verbal informed consent to participate in the study and to use anonymised data for research purposes including publication. They were also informed of their right to withdraw at any time before, during and after the interview. Consent for anonymized transcriptions archival was also asked orally and recorded at the end of the interview.
Author Contributions
Ornella Larenza: Introduction; LMs repartnering: orientations and predictors; Data and methods; The expectations about repartnering; Conclusions. Laura Bernardi: Introduction; LMs repartnering: orientations and predictors; Conclusions.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation in the frame of the National Centre for Competence in Research LIVES, Grant number: 160590.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
Notes
Appendix
Sample Characteristics at First Interview aUnwed LMs, including mothers who separated after a cohabitation. bOne respondent was pregnant at the time of the first interview. cIncome includes wage and child maintenance support. Estimated wage is considered for missing wage values, based on the participant’s occupation.
Sample size
35
Average age
37.8
Civil status
Divorced
8
Separated (after marriage)
6
Single
a
18
Widow
2
Civil partnership (PACS)
1
Entry into lone parenthood
Lone mother after couple parenting
28
Began parenting as a lone mother
7
Number of children
1
19
b
2
14
3
2
Education level
High (at least Bachelor degree)
20
Low (below Bachelor degree)
15
Income level
c
High >7′000 CHF per month
4
Medium
18
Low <4′000 CHF per month
13