Download Family connected demographic behaviours in contemporary Europe

Remaking the Social. New Risks and Solidarities
The First International Conference of the Society of Sociologists from Romania
http://cluj2010.wordpress.com
Family connected demographic behaviours in contemporary Europe
Convener: Mihaela Hărăguş, researcher, PhD
Centrul de Studiere a Populaţiei, Universitatea „Babeş-Bolyai” Cluj-Napoca
E-mail: [email protected]
During the last decades, profound changes have been observed in family connected demographic
behaviours:
 Fertility has decreased and all European countries experience below replacement fertility,
although there are important differences in fertility levels across the continent.
Surveys have revealed the gap which exists between the desired number of children (above 2)
and the actual number (around 1.5, as a European average). It seems that there are obstacles
that discourage people to achieve the desired family size, such as late access to employment, job
instability, expensive housing and lack of incentives (family benefits, parental leave, child care,
equal pay). Developing of efficient family policies has become a constant preoccupation of
governs, since many European societies are confronting with population aging, as a result of long
term below replacement fertility.
 Previously dominant social institutions such as marriage are becoming increasingly unstable.
Divorce rates have raised and family forms have diversified. Cohabitation – as a prelude to
marriage, as an alternative to single or an alternative to marriage, with or without children – is
more spread and in some countries it has become indistinguishable from marriage. Living apart
together has become very popular in some countries. Divorce and separation do not favour
childbearing and previous studies have shown that cohabiting couples have fewer children that
married couples.
 The lives of young adults have changed as a result of the prolonged education, the
transformation of social norms, the changes in the patterns of leaving parental home and
partnership formation, the new character of risk and uncertainty. On this background one speaks
about the destandardization of the life-course: the standard order of the life-course events has
been abandoned. The classical succession: finishing education – labour force entry – leaving
parental home (usually in connection with marriage) – childbearing, is reordered, by an
increasing share of the population. Moreover, new phases are added, such as living single or with
people of the same age, premarital cohabitation or cohabitation replacing marriage, childbearing
and childbirth before or outside marriage, events that can appear before finishing education or
before labour market entry. These manifestations are more spread in western and northern
European countries, but they are increasingly visible in Romania, too.
 The traditional division of paid and unpaid work between partners has been called more and
more into question. Women invest more in their education and career and want their partners to
involve more in domestic work and in childcare. Transition to parenthood has strongly different
implications for men and women, both in paid work and in domestic sphere.
In connection with all these changes in family life, we welcome papers that address possible factors that
maintain the discrepancy between fertility intentions and outcome, possible policy actions, the
diversification of family forms and how this affects childbearing behaviour, the changes in the life-course
of young adults, the connection between gender issues, women education and employment and family
formation and childbearing.