The Linked Lives of Separated Parents. Ex-Partner’s Life Events and Mental Health of Single Mothers and Fathers

Philipp Dierker, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Mine Kühn, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Sanna Kailaheimo-Lönnqvist, University of Helsinki
Mikko Myrskylä, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

This study examines the mental health effects of life events experienced by ex-partners who share a child, using Finnish total population register data. Drawing on the concept of linked lives from life course theory, we hypothesize that despite separation, parents’ lives remain interdependent and may influence each other's mental health. We examine the impact of various ex-partner life events – re-partnering, separation, childbirth, cancer diagnosis, death, death of parents – on the probability of antidepressant use. Using three different panel data methods, including two-way fixed effects, fixed effects with individual slopes, and dynamic difference-in-difference models, we analyze data from 675,247 families in which the parents separated while their firstborn child was a minor. The results are mixed. While there are no effects of ex-partner separation and the death of an ex-partner’s parents (i.e., a grandparent of a common child), the analyses consistently show that re-partnering and childbirth of an ex-partner reduce the probability of antidepressant use. Conversely, the death of an ex-partner’s and a cancer diagnosis increase the probability of antidepressant use, with stronger effects for men. These findings partly support the hypothesis of linked lives, showing that ex-partner's life events affect separated parents' mental health.

Keywords: Families, Unions and Households, Longitudinal studies , Health and Morbidity, Social network methods

See extended abstract.