During the second half of the twentieth century, there has been a positive/nrelationship between single parenthood and the mother’s educational level in Spain/nand Italy. However, several important transformations contemplated in Goode’s/ntheory suggest that this relationship might have been inverted in Spain but perhaps/nnot in Italy. The purpose of our study is to test this hypothesis using EU_SILC data/nfrom waves 2005 and 2011 and logistic regressions. We found the relationship/nbetween the mother’s ...
During the second half of the twentieth century, there has been a positive/nrelationship between single parenthood and the mother’s educational level in Spain/nand Italy. However, several important transformations contemplated in Goode’s/ntheory suggest that this relationship might have been inverted in Spain but perhaps/nnot in Italy. The purpose of our study is to test this hypothesis using EU_SILC data/nfrom waves 2005 and 2011 and logistic regressions. We found the relationship/nbetween the mother’s education and being a single mother is negative in Spain,/nwhile it is not significant in Italy. However, we found that for Italian mothers aged/n40 and younger, and mothers from northwest Italy, this relationship is also/nnegative. In contrast, for older mothers and mothers from the islands or southern/nItaly, this association is positive, while for mothers from the central and northeast/nregions, the relationship between education and single motherhood is not/nsignificant. These results show how Spain and some parts of the Italian society are/nmoving towards family models similar to those in the northern European countries./nAs Sara McLanahan (2004) noted for United States, this social transformation in/nsouthern Europe cannot be considered without recognizing the potential negative/nconsequence for future generations. The single-mother households dealing with the/neconomic crisis which started in 2008 have lower socioeconomic backgrounds than/nsingle mothers who suffered through previous crises, and, therefore, the/nconsequences of this crisis for children in single-parent families might be even/nmore negative, especially in Spain
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