Divorce Conference 2025 Program (1)

The ‘European Network of Divorce’ comes to Barcelona!

On October 9 and 10 the conference of the ‘European Network of Divorce’ takes place at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. The network exists for 23 years now. It all started with two ‘founding fathers’ Jaap Dronkers and Matthijs Kalmijn in Florence in 2002, in a small group that was interested in studying ‘divorce’. At the time that was a big challenge as many quantitative datasets covered only a small group of people who were divorced or separated. The network therefore also has a good share of qualitative work from scholars. Bit by bit, however, more and more data became available and the network grew from a small group of about 30 scholars to now having a mailing list of over 500 participants. The conference addresses both the causes and consequences of both divorce and separation (union dissolution) for adults and children. Where initially only small-scale studies could be done, and mostly sociologists were involved, we now have contributions from many disciplines, including economists and psychologists for instance. Some themes of this year include: stepfamily arrangements, the increasing popularity of joint custody (co-parenting) and it’s consequences, the mutual relationship between employment and union dissolution, the reliability of the divorce decline as measured in the USA, the consequences of repartnering, health and well-being consequences of union dissolution, the role of domestic violence in union dissolution, disagreement over household chores and intention to break-up, and single mother’s living arrangements. The presentations to be held are ‘work in progress’, hence results of the studies presented will not be made public. The keynote speech will be held by the outstanding scholar Prof. dr. Andrew Cherlin on why the divorce rate goes down for the young and up for the old.

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Dr. Andrew Cherlin “Why Are Divorce Rates Going Down for the Young and Up for the Old?” (9.10.2025)

Erlend Nordrum; Torkild Hovde Lyngstad; Pablo Gracia.- Does Internet Expansion Impact Divorce Risks? Evidence from Norway.
Jordi Gumà-Lao.- Gender differences in bidirectional association between ending a union and health in Spain.
Federica Becca; Diego Alburez-Gutierrez; Albert Esteve.- Intergenerational Living Arrangements among Single Mothers in Latin America.