One parent, multiple faces: trends in the socioeconomic profiles of single fathers in Belgium, 1991-2018
This research contributes to our understanding of the current plurality of single fatherhood, drawing on the Belgian context. Particular attention is paid to the pathways that relate a man’s socioeconomic background to his likelihood of becoming a single father. Single father families are likely to be a very heterogeneous group, as the father’s socioeconomic characteristics may relate to certain paths into single parenthood (separation, custody) and its duration (repartnering). For the past several decades, there has been a continuous increase in families headed by single fathers, and they now represent 21% of single parent households in Belgium (Census, 2011). Despite their rapid growth, little is known except for some basic descriptive information on their demographic characteristics. However, single fathers’ heterogeneity poses new challenges both for policy makers, and family researches. Particularly, they argue we need to adopt a longitudinal perspective to better understand the different dynamics of these families. Belgium is very suitable to study single fatherhood given the growing share of divorced parents occurred in the past 30 years, and because of the availability of longitudinal population data. We adopt a life course approach to show how socio-demographic and economic profiles of single fathers have changed over the years. In addition, we apply longitudinal analyses to investigate which individual and partner socioeconomic factors affect the probability of selection into and the duration of single fatherhood. Finally, we investigate how the duration of single father episodes affect their economic outcomes. This research uses data from the Belgian Register (1991-2018). The power of registers not only allow us to adopt a longitudinal perspective and overcoming attrition bias, but also to include the characteristics of the (non-resident) mother to our study.