Whom do married and divorced parents consider kin?

Abstract

Despite the potential importance of kin to divorced parents in particular, prior research rarely studied how kinship patterns vary between married and divorced parents, nor within-group variations depending upon postdivorce residence arrangements and repartnering. We estimated mixed-effects logistic regression models using data from samples of Dutch married (N = 1,336) and divorced parents (N = 3,464) to predict the extent to which parents considered various blood relatives and (former) in-laws kin (i.e. parents, siblings, aunts/uncles, nieces/nephews, and cousins) and investigated differences within the divorced group per residence arrangements and repartnering. We found that married and divorced parents barely differed in the extent to which they considered blood relatives kin, but differences were large for (former) in-laws, and particularly great when parents did not reside with their biological child. Repartnered divorced parents were less likely to consider their former in-laws kin than single divorced parents but considered their new in-laws kin to high extents. For both blood relatives and (former) in-laws, parents were most often, and cousins least often considered kin. These results indicate that kinship patterns only differ for in-laws between married and divorced parents. Resident children may lead parents to consider former in-laws kin, whereas repartnering leads to exclusion of former in-laws.