The impact of children on divorce risks in first and later marriages

In this study, we examine the effect of children on divorce risks in first and subsequent marriages in Sweden and compare risk patterns in the two types of marriages based on register data. We examine the impact of parity and the age of the youngest child while standardizing for age at marriage, premarital childbearing, calendar year, and marital duration. We apply our models to Swedish register data and also compute a number of interactions between marital order and our other demographic variables. We find independent effects of parity and the age of the youngest child on the disruption risk in both a first and a later marriage. In general, the patterns of divorce risks for women in later marriages are quite similar to the patterns in first marriages, but the effect of the number of children is weaker in subsequent marriages. Consistent with other studies, the level of disruption risk is higher in later marriages than in first marriages.