Changing family life in Europe: Significance for state and society

ABSTRACT

Family change and the risks associated with it form the departure point of this article. The intent is both to elaborate the nature of family change in European societies and to interrogate contemporary policy on the family in the light of emerging changes and risks. The first part of the article undertakes an overview analysis of the main changes affecting families, looking at structure, organisation and relations. It then moves on to consider the key risks and challenges posed by recent changes for individuals, states and society. The risks discussed include the seeming lack of readiness to commit to parenthood, a polarisation between parenthood and partnership, overburdening of women and risks around care. The final section of the article turns to the state's response, in terms of what it has been and what it might (need to) be. It shows how policy on the family, while a growing area of intervention, has actually narrowed in scope, becoming more an arm of employment policy and operating to a rather unidimensional model of family, viz. the two-income family. The underlying story is of a continuing divergence between states’ responses and what people wish for their family life. When it comes to the family, states it seems are always out of date.

Keywords:

• family change
• family policy
• family and welfare state reform
• demographic and social risks
• gender and family relations
• family in European society

Notes

1. For evidence that consensual unions with children represent a different type of family to marriages with children see Jensen (2003). The higher rate of dissolution and of employment of both partners in the former indicates that it is a lifestyle with a greater degree of emphasis on individual choice.

2. This country is quite exceptional not just in terms of the low proportion of households where both partners are employed full-time (36 per cent) but the high prevalence of the male full-time/female part-time arrangement (58 per cent). The Netherlands is effectively a new and distinct model in the European context, wherein part-time employment is increasing for both women and men.

3. This gap is made up of about 55–60 per cent of women who achieve their ideal fertility, around a third who under-attain and around a tenth who over-attain.

4. It is important to point out that the cross-country correlations of female employment levels and fertility change over time. Strong negative correlations up to 1980 indicate that in countries where a higher proportion of women worked the fertility rate was lower (Engelhardt and Prskawetz 2004). But around 1985 – when the Mediterranean countries entered the very low fertility group – the nature of the correlation completely changed to a strong, positive one.

5. In both new and old EU member states, informal care activities peak at prime age in the middle of the life cycle. The level of activity is found to be almost as high among economically active persons as among pensioners or the unemployed.

6. See the various contributions in the collection edited by Knijn and Komter (2004).