Leaving Mum Alone? The Effect of Parental Separation on Children’s Decisions to Leave Home

There is a growing body of literature that examines the relationship between parental separation and children’s life-course patterns. The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of parental separation on the timing of nest-leaving of young adults. After providing descriptive findings using the recent Generation and Gender Survey for six countries (Italy, France, Hungary, Bulgaria, Russia, and Georgia), we assess the extent to which the association between parental separation and nest-leaving timing is masked by two mechanisms. First, do the children of separated parents develop characteristics that differ from those of children of intact families, which in turn cause them to leave the parental home at a different pace? Second, do the children of separated people leave the parental home at different ages in response to the new family structure? After we identify the two mechanisms at work, our findings become similar across countries, and show that children who have experienced parental separation tend to leave home earlier, but that the last child in the household—who would leave the mother alone—tends to delay his/her departure.