Lone Mothers’ Expectations About Repartnering: Between Family Project and Adult Relationship

Mothers’ repartnering is usually understood looking at demographic and socioeconomic predictors, while subjective expectations remain undertheorized. Merging these two perspectives, this article explores variations in expectations around repartnering in a group of 35 lone mothers (LM) in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Using two waves of a qualitative panel held in 2012/2013 and 2015, 11 categories of expectations are identified through thematic analysis and clustered along a continuum from family-oriented to adult-oriented repartnering. In family-oriented expectations mothers incorporate the new partners’ expected impact on their children, while in adult-oriented expectations this does not factor in their decision about repartnering. Having bad or no experiences with couple parenting before lone parenthood is common to mothers in some family-oriented expectations, while mothers looking for an intimate relationship (adult-oriented expectation) report higher SES and older age. Custody arrangements, child-rearing preferences, fertility intentions and LMs’ social network can also affect their expectations.