A Cross-Cohort and Cross-Country Exploration of Relationship Dissolution across the Life Course

While once the exception, relationship dissolution has become an everyday - albeit diverse - reality, of which the consequences are known to differ by, among others, socioeconomic and socio-demographic profiles. Especially relevant in this respect are one’s birth cohort and country context, as both relate to diverging experiences and outcomes of a separation. On the one hand, sequential romantic relationships (and thus separations) have become seemingly inherent to the developmental stage of the “transition to adulthood”, and these complex relational trajectories are increasingly perpetuating in mid and later life (exemplified by e.g., research into “grey divorce”). The incidence and implications of relationship dissolution however, differ considerably across cohorts. On the other hand, country contexts are known to differ in terms of judicial conditions (e.g., length of factual separation), related policies (e.g., housing), macro relational trends and societal norms surrounding separation, and may thus lead to significant variation in the timing, actualisation and consequences of a relationship dissolution across countries.

Considering the rapid (inter)national changes in terms of relationship formation and dissolution, correctly mapping these trends is a crucial exercise – both from a demographic and a policy standpoint. However, significant empirical challenges, starting with the requirement for comparative, longitudinal data on relationship trajectories, imply that how relationship dissolution currently presents itself in light of simultaneous cohort and country realities remains largely uncharted. In answer, this paper makes use of seven large-scale comparative datasets that (retro- or prospectively) register relationship histories to i) investigate the frequency and timing of separations and the duration of the preceding partnership across cohorts while ii) simultaneously gauging to what extent these differences converge or diverge across countries. Through descriptive and sequential analyses and employing a life course perspective on dissolution, this study takes an important step in simultaneously mapping dissolution trends across time and space.