Personal understandings and cultural conceptions of family in European societies

ABSTRACT

Family lives in Europe have undergone considerable changes during the past decades. These changes have made it difficult or even impossible to grasp what people mean by ‘a family’ in their everyday life by an objective, pre-defined set of criteria. Marriage, a couple relationship, parent–child relationships based on shared bio-genetic substance, a shared household or functions such as reproduction or primary socialisation remain important characteristics of some of the most frequent family forms. However, against the background of an increasing destandardisation of family trajectories, growing importance of family ties across households, complex stepfamily constellations, advanced reproductive technology and negotiated gender relations, they do not hold up as definitions for the family as such.

KEYWORDS:

• Europe
• culture
• family

1. Introduction to the topic

Family lives in Europe have undergone considerable changes during the past decades. These changes have made it difficult or even impossible to grasp what people mean by ‘a family’ in their everyday life by an objective, pre-defined set of criteria. Marriage, a couple relationship, parent–child relationships based on shared bio-genetic substance, a shared household or functions such as reproduction or primary socialisation remain important characteristics of some of the most frequent family forms. However, against the background of an increasing destandardisation of family trajectories, growing importance of family ties across households, complex stepfamily constellations, advanced reproductive technology and negotiated gender relations, they do not hold up as definitions for the family as such.

The diversification of family life has kept researchers busy debating on how to study families and how to conceptualise what is under investigation. Changes taking place in cultural understandings of family in ‘western’ societies were already highlighted in the 1940s, when Burgess and Locke (1945) published a historical analysis on the development of family. One of the main arguments of their book ‘The family. From institution to companionship’ was, that while the institutional aspects of marriage and family were losing their importance in people’s minds, the quality of the conjugal relationship was becoming increasingly important for considering family life satisfying. Feminist critique in the 1960s and 1970s pointed out, how perceiving the nuclear family as the most ‘natural’ family form concealed power inequalities which directly reflected the subordinate position of women in society (e.g. Barrett and McIntosh 1982; Okin 1997). The individualisation thesis, that became influential in the field of family research in the 1990s, drew from the social scientific debate on late modernity (see, e.g. Beck 1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002; Giddens 1991). The thesis highlighted the family as one of the social institutions that was losing relevance; it was a zombie category ‘dead but still alive’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002, 204) that no longer grasped the diverse ways in which people lived as a family. As expressed by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim,

it is no longer possible to pronounce in some binding way what family, marriage, parenthood, sexuality or love mean, what they should or could be; rather, these vary in substance, exceptions, norms and morality from individual to individual and from relationship to relationship. (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995: 5)

In contrast to Parsons (1943), for example, who in the 1940s described the family as a fixed and clearly bounded entity isolated from the wider kin group, towards the end of the century, the research emphasis had moved to the individual’s perspective on family and family relationships. The family as such was increasingly seen as chosen or achieved instead of ascribed (see, e.g. Déchaux 2002; Smart 2007; Weston 1997). Recently, researchers have been discussing about alternative notions to be used when studying families and family life, such as relatedness, intimacy and personal life, as ways to circumvent the problematic presumptions ingrained into the conception of ‘the family’ (e.g. Carsten 2000; Gabb and Silva 2011; Jamieson 2005; May 2011).

Contemporary approaches in studying family life in Europe are manifold and many of them highlight how people live as families, how they make sense of their significant relationships and through which everyday practices family and family relationships are constructed (Morgan 2011; Ribbens McCarthy et al. 2012). Such a research perspective, however, can be found more often in qualitative than in quantitative approaches. In more quantitatively oriented research, family is still understood as a constellation of socially related people – often without clearly outlining how the boundaries around this constellation are defined. Typically, the operationalisation of ‘family’ is adopted from the survey from which the analysed data are taken. Surveys, again, will typically ask respondents about a steady life partner or children, leaving it to the respondent who should be considered as such. The destandardisation is recognised, mostly, only via more detailed questions about partners and children not sharing the same household as the respondent. There are, however, a few approaches that overcome these limitations, which might not be entirely novel, but have gradually gained in visibility in recent years: a first one lies in the tradition of network analysis, in which family is understood as a subjectively perceived, often intuitively defined personal ego-centred network (e.g. Widmer 2010). Here, the quality of the relationships is of central importance. A second approach, related to the first one, comes from the research on inter-generational family relationships across households, which focuses on the various forms of practical or emotional support that is exchanged between family members, particularly between adult children and their aged parents (e.g. Bertogg and Szydlik 2016). A third approach lies in the life course perspective, in which family is studied in terms of family-related transitions and biographical phases (Ammar et al. 2014; Elder 1977). However, there are no common overarching terminologies or heuristics available that are suitable for all research purposes trying to define or study ‘family’. Nowadays, family has to be understood as a ‘blurred’ social phenomenon that includes a wide range of variation on both interpersonal and intercultural levels. In addition, there is a constant change in what is referred to when looking at the concept of family. Accordingly, the majority of family-related research acknowledges the diversity characterising family life and the ways in which it is understood in different contexts.

This special issue is dedicated to research on family understandings from certain perspectives. The articles look into what people mean by family and who they include in their own definition of family. They discuss how people themselves and society at large see what is expected of families, for example in terms of parenthood, and how people’s attitudes on desirable family life and gender equality are realised. This issue also raises the question of the limits of ‘the family’ in contemporary Europe by asking what relationships are recognised as familial relationships in the realm of pan/trans-European jurisdiction. Seen from the legislative perspective, we end with reflecting the limits of family.

The articles draw from data that highlight individuals’ subjective understandings but also cultural conceptions. It is hardly exaggerating to claim that at present, Europe hosts a historical mix of different family conceptions and accepted, or at least tolerated, ways to live as a family. It also hosts a wide range of different family policies and ideologies that influence care arrangements and the division of labour in the domestic sphere. One special issue cannot cover it all, of course. The aim here is to map out family conceptions from certain perspectives, and on different levels of social life, in order to get an idea about the direction of change in European societies. We do not, however, intend to say that the development is unilinear in different societies. On the contrary, the articles of this issue display the particularities of societies examined and the tensions existing between available and competing conceptions of family.

There are several good reasons for studying individuals’ subjective understandings and prevailing cultural conceptions of family: one of them is assessing whether or not it is reasonable to consider family as an object of sociological research at all: Is there any common understanding? Is there (still) a social reality behind the term ‘family’? And, if so, what kind of reality is that? Which approaches are useful for capturing it empirically? A second reason is to empirically describe the specific configurations of the family, as they are implied by subjective and cultural conceptions in contemporary Europe. This description should add to our understanding of individual family trajectories and family practices on the micro-level as well as of political action and the design of institutions on the macro-level. A third reason is to shed light on the heterogeneity of and contradictions between conceptions, which may add to our understanding of conflicts within European societies regarding the ‘right’ conception of family. We observe such conflicts related to concrete political questions, for example, regarding how childcare should be divided between mother, father and public childcare infrastructures, or regarding whether or not same-sex couples should have the right to marry. We can assume that they are not just reflecting diverging attitudes, but rather diverging understandings of what family is or is supposed to be. A fourth reason is to learn more about ambiguities related to individuals’ subjective conceptions of family and the intra-personal tensions that may follow. These could be a key for understanding feelings of disorientation, as they are assumed to be characteristic for contemporary societies according to Beck (1992) or Baumann (2000). Finally, such research can be conducted in order to provide insight on mismatches between policies and prevailing social norms, including indications for structural or cultural lags within the process of societal change. The relevance of this perspective is found in a better understanding of the acceptance of social policies as well as in their impact. If, for example, a policy is introduced, that transfers responsibilities in elderly care to ‘the family’, implying individuals who are considered family members of the person in need, then it is crucial who counts as a family member in that understanding: If the applied understanding is not responding to people’s subjective views, either people in need are likely to face hardships or the people held responsible will feel exploited and treated unfairly. It is worthwhile to consider these questions in order to avoid policies that are inefficient, or even harmful.

A particular challenge for the empirical research on individuals’ subjective understandings and shared cultural conceptions of family is that they are hard to measure. This is because they are not directly observable. Personal understandings and cultural conceptions may be more or less pronounced, latent, un-articulated or highly fluctuating. At present and to our knowledge, there is no established methodological approach combining the analysis of subjective understandings and of cultural conceptions of family as a fixed toolkit designed to give a comprehensive picture.

This, however, does not need to discourage us from the endeavour. Even if one ‘ideal’ methodological toolkit cannot be developed, a variety of methodological approaches can be applied. Different methodological designs reveal different aspects of how family is understood and what is meant by it in contemporary societies. These may all be equally true and important, but they each give only partial answers. As we see it, it is important to apply different qualitative and quantitative approaches and combine different paradigmatic and theoretical perspectives. For us, international research collaboration together with sensitivity to cultural and societal particularities seem like a promising recipe for building a comprehensive understanding on family conceptions in the twenty-first century.

This special issue draws attention to subjective understandings and cultural conceptions of family in Europe. It offers several timely and inspiring theoretical and methodological approaches to the investigation of how individuals comprehend family and family relationships, but also how these understandings are translated into reality in different socio-economic and cultural locations of society, and more generally in terms of parenthood, kinship, gender roles and family legislations. Brought together, the findings give a complex and even at times a contradictory picture. In accordance with the increasing heterogeneity of family forms and ambiguity on what can be expected of the family as a social institution, individuals’ subjective views and cultural conceptions are also becoming more diverse. This special issue aims to grasp some of the variety related to family as a cultural and personal, collectively and subjectively perceived phenomenon in contemporary Europe. The articles address various aspects of family life, but in their own particular way, they all give us an enriching insight into what family means.

2. Summaries of individual articles

The article by Detlev Lück and Kerstin Ruckdeschel asks what cultural conceptions of the family look like in Germany. The paper sets to study this in a comprehensive way and relies on a multi-method approach. It combines a quantitative survey designed to generate statistical evidence on prevalence and correlations of family conceptions with a qualitative approach. The latter consists of family drawings, used as a key to the participants’ non-reflected and partly unconscious conceptions, and subsequent personalised semi-structured guided interviews on these drawings which help in interpreting them. This contribution highlights the blurred, ‘cloudy’ nature of cultural conceptions, with their ambiguous contours: Whereas it appears as obvious to all people that there is such a thing as a ‘family’ and that living-arrangements of married heterosexual couples with own underage children are its most prototypical form, there is no commonly shared knowledge on where exactly the boundaries lie. When looking at ‘borderline cases’, people may differ in their personal understandings or even be unsure about their own definitions. People may have a firm personal view and yet know about deviating common views in their social environment, questioning the generalisability of their own understanding. This ambiguity also applies to the functions and social relations that characterise families. Family is thought of as a place in which children grow up, are cared for and are sheltered, or a structure into which children are born. It is thought of as a place in which people feel emotionally close to each other and provide unconditional mutual support. It is thought of as a stable network of people who stay in contact throughout life and take interest in each other. It is thought of as a household community of people sharing meals and spending time together. All of this tends to be considered as typical for families. However, none of it necessarily is. What is particularly unclear is whether a family stops existing when children are grown-up and leave their parents’ home or whether it continues to exist as long as its members are alive. A further insight we gain from Lück and Ruckdeschel is that there are certain variations in the cultural conceptions of family between social milieus in Germany. However, these variations are not very profound.

Whereas the first contribution addresses cultural conceptions of the family on the macro-level, the second contribution by Aino Luotonen and Anna-Maija Castrén provides a complementary research design on the micro-level. Combining data from in-depth qualitative interviews with more structured information, they investigate, who is considered a family member by young Finnish wives and husbands in opposite-sex couples living in their first union, in most cases with young children. The article looks beyond the institutional setting of the couple and investigates the extent to which a particular family form, the nuclear family, determines individuals’ personal understanding of familial belonging. The study investigates the impact of cultural norms regulating family and kinship as hierarchical systems that prioritise, for instance, relationships based on genealogical proximity. Despite the conventional family structure within which the interviewees live, understandings of family vary greatly between spouses. Findings suggest that one’s spouse and, when applicable, one’s children form the nucleus of the family. But, mostly, definitions of family reach beyond the nuclear family to include a varying set of people from the interviewee’s own and their spouse’s extended family of origin, as far as even including non-kin. Altogether, 30 different relationship types were mentioned as family members. In all couples, the two spouses’ lists of family members differed. While in some couples, spouses held similar ideas about family composition, most couples expressed considerably different understandings. Interviewees’ family understandings draw from balancing between perceived emotional closeness, genealogical proximity and cultural expectations, producing different and sometimes conflicting tendencies of familial belonging as outlined in the analysis.

The third contribution by Daniel Sjödin and Christine Roman has been inspired by the recent discussion on the importance of parenting cultures for the reproduction of social class and inequality. In research literature, children’s participation in extracurricular activities has received attention as families’ means for passing on cultural and social capital. In this context, many studies have pointed out differences between middle class and working class. The article focuses on how Swedish working-class and middle-class parents reason about enrolling their children in extracurricular activities. Sjödin and Roman’s contribution deals with family understandings with reference to class, and it informs us about the intertwining of class with conceptions on good parenting. However, as the research is conducted in a society with a generous welfare system that evens out some of the differences between classes found in other societies, the article also highlights the importance of being sensitive to the societal context. According to the findings, allowing children to participate in extracurricular activities was central to most of the participating parents’ childrearing ideals. Participating in activities was seen to help children in developing useful skills and a healthy lifestyle. However, despite the low financial cost of and easy access to most extracurricular activities, social class was found important in making sense of children’s engagement in organised activities. For example, in comparison to some working-class parents, middle-class parents tended to emphasise the importance of extracurricular activities, and their children seemed to be engaged in more activities. Overall, however, both the middle-class parents and a group of the working-class parents shared quite similar views about engaging children in organised activities. This finding highlights the importance of the sociocultural context. The authors conclude that in Swedish society, parenting culture and childrearing ideals cross class boundaries, but that they are related not only to strategic enhancement of children’s possibilities but also to supervision and control: extracurricular activities may be a way to ensure that children spend their time in an environment supervised by adults.

The fourth contribution by Natalie Nitsche and Daniela Grunow takes the debate forward to the effects of subjective normative conceptions on individual action and couple arrangements in everyday life. The authors investigate how conceptions of gender-specific responsibilities relate to (and possibly affect) the factual distribution of responsibilities regarding childcare within heterosexual couples in Germany. They use the seven available waves of the yearly German panel study pairfam (‘Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics’). Instead of expecting simple and direct causality, the authors assume a complex interplay of rational reflection and bargaining between the two partners, on the one hand, and the constellation of the two individuals’ subjective conceptions, on the other hand. The processes of bargaining are assumed to be based on the two partners’ relative economic resources. The constellations of gender ideologies involve support or rejection of maternal employment as well as agreement or disagreement of the two partners in that respect. Nitsche and Grunow find evidence for an interaction of both rationales. There are couples with matching ‘traditional’ gender ideologies, in the sense that both partners are unsupportive of maternal employment. Among these, the economic resources have a minor effect on the division of labour and its direction is counter-intuitive. Here, women generally take over the vast majority of childcare. This share even increases if their contribution to the household income is high. The authors interpret this as a gender display, which women tend to perform with more effort if their share of income seems ‘gender-atypical’, as an act of compensation. In these couples, it seems that bargaining does not take place. In couples with matching ‘egalitarian’ gender ideologies, that is both partners are supportive of maternal employment, the economic resources become highly relevant: The woman’s income in particular has a strong positive effect on his contribution to childcare. If the partners’ conceptions deviate, it is her subjective views on gender-related responsibilities that have the stronger impact. The analysis suggests that subjective understandings do not necessarily determine individual action and factual family lives, but certain constellations of subjective understandings may well have a considerable impact. Also, certain constellations of understandings may open up the floor for other modes of decision making, such as rational reflections and negotiations or gender displays.

The fifth contribution by Linda Hart looks into the cultural understandings dealing with the limits of acceptable forms of marriage and family life in contemporary Europe. This article focuses on the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) as an arena in which different realms of knowledge come together and produce interpretations of norms related to human rights and family. Hart analyses five judgments from the 2000s and 2010s concerning marriage between former in-laws, sexual relations between genetically related siblings and understandings of maternity in contexts of egg donation and surrogacy. The judgments offer examples of legal arguments and extra-legal knowledge that have been applied by member-states and the ECtHR itself when arguing for, or against, giving particular understandings of family legal protection in interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights. In the article, Hart argues that there is a tension between taking the relational concerns of individual applicants into consideration and state-centred rationalities on what kind of public policy and legislation to profess. Hart concludes that when defining marriage and family life in the legal sphere, the rationality of human rights protection is only in parts backed up by empirical scientific knowledge, while rationally unsound axiomatic views tend to dominate the arguments made by states to protect existing national legislation.

3. Discussion

The insights we gain from the research findings presented are manifold. The contributions highlight that subjective and cultural understandings are hard to grasp – in the sense of operationalisation and empirical measurement, but also as a social phenomenon per se: Subjectively envisioned ideas of a family are to some part vague and instable over time and collectively shared cultural conceptions are shared only to a certain degree and only with a certain (more or less large) share of a given society. So, even if methods existed to measure subjective or cultural understandings of family precisely, we could not describe our findings in a precise way or in concrete numbers – much unlike science often aims to do. The main characteristic of subjective and cultural conceptions appears to be that they are blurred. This fact complicates research on cultural phenomena in general as well as the research presented in this special issue in particular.

The articles of this special issue highlight that subjective and cultural conceptions have an impact on social reality – on decisions, behaviour and arrangements in everyday life (cp. Nitsche and Grunow 2018). This insight is not new. However, the relevance of subjective and cultural conceptions in that respect has been discussed controversially, in empirical research as well as in theoretical debate (e.g. Liefbroer and Billari 2010), and the results presented in this issue add to the clarification of this question. Findings suggest that we should not ask to what degree cultural-subjective understandings or rational reflection and economic resources influence behaviour, but rather how these are interrelated and how various rationales can interact. As the contribution by Nitsche and Grunow shows, a certain gender ideology or – to be more precise – a certain combination of gender ideologies between partners is able to suppress rational reflection and bargaining and activate gender displays, while another combination may do the opposite. Presumably, this is only an example for an interaction of several rationales influencing behaviour, as they may appear in various variations in all kinds of family-related fields. What we can expect from cultural conceptions from theoretical debate (e.g. Esser 2009) is that they allow individuals to behave in known and consensual situations in an experienced way and spare the effort of gathering and evaluating information and negotiating, while they lose relevance in unknown or controversial situations.

The contributions to this special issue tell us that people’s personal family understandings are quite diverse and often far away from common expectations. Particularly, the subjective perceptions of who is part of one’s personal family network can be very heterogeneous, which challenges any standard definition of the family (cp. Luotonen and Castrén 2018). This concerns scientific heuristics as well as the implicit or explicit pre-assumptions of policies or family services. Beyond father–mother–child constellations, individuals establish and maintain strong emotional, practically relevant and intensive relationships to all kinds of other people, whether or not being related by blood or by marriage. As Luotonen and Castrén show, this even applies to families that, from the outside, match the ideal-typical nuclear family form. This underlines the importance of taking the plurality of family constellations into account. Family lives can hardly be understood without the individuals’ subjective views on what their family is and who is part of it. Presumably, this is also true for other, more specific social realities in the family context, such as the understanding of one’s couple relationship, of parenthood, of grandparent–grandchildren relations, etc.

Not only individuals’ views on their families, but also their understanding of what family means in general, appear to be heterogeneous. This, however, is only partially true. While there is a variety of conceptions, or even uncertainty for many people, regarding which constellations exactly are to be regarded as family, there also seems to be a very clear and widely shared understanding of certain constellations as defining a family: the heterosexual couple living in harmony and mutual solidarity with their own underage children under one roof (cp. Lück and Ruckdeschel 2018). Thus, despite the diversity of subjective views, widely shared and standardised cultural views exist beside them. And, they seem to be much more stable and persistent than individual perceptions. Regarding cultural conceptions, it is difficult to give an exact definition; we cannot pinpoint what exactly ‘being a family’ means and where the family’s boundaries are to be drawn. Cultural conceptions are rather defined by particularly typical or stereotypical images which mark something like a lowest common denominator. In that sense, the cultural production and reproduction of common understandings follows an imprecise logic which science is not used to deal with.

This blurriness of cultural conceptions makes it difficult to identify cultural differences. Given the not precisely delimitable nature of contemporary family conception per se, it is not surprising that also the ways in which two societies or social groups differ regarding these family understandings cannot be pinpointed in precision. Sjödin and Roman (2018) are looking for such differences, using the example of parenting cultures of working-class and middle-class families in Sweden. In addition, in Lück and Ruckdeschel’s contribution to this issue, differences between various social groups are investigated, including differences between East and West Germany, which are still often considered to be two different societies. In both cases, the empirically revealed differences are gradual and not particularly distinct. The overlap of commonly shared understandings between any two social groups within one society seems to be larger than the differing understandings that are characteristic for each of the groups. The differences between East and West Germany in that respect may be somewhat more distinct than those between working-class and middle-class families in Sweden. This may be an indication of the importance of a common historical and sociocultural background. Presumably, even the differences between any two European societies would rather be found in the details. It remains an open question whether class differences are bigger in societies with a liberal welfare regime than in those with a social democratic regime. In a liberal regime, there is only little public intervention and individuals and families’ resources may become more relevant in the interpretation of what being a family means in practice. Empirical measurement of cultural differences requires somewhat precise descriptions of the existing conceptions and their prevalence in a society or social group, revealing a comprehensive picture not only of the stereotypical core but also of the complexity and the boundaries of each society’s family understandings. The closer the compared groups are, the more important it is to look at the details in which a difference may be detected.

The fact that cultural differences between social groups within a given society are rather subtle is remarkable, since in political and public debate, today, deviating cultural understandings of family sometimes seem to mark a new social cleavage, much like class differences in former centuries. West Germany is one example of a society in which conflicts about how family is supposed to look like have been quite present in recent years. As in several other European societies, in Germany the family policies and institutions have been shifting from the support of a male breadwinner and female caretaker arrangement to an individualised arrangement of two egalitarian partners, supported in their childcare responsibilities by public infrastructures. This process, however, is accompanied by quite emotional debates and ongoing conflicts. Even if there exist important cultural differences within a given society, they are not necessarily strongly correlated with social class, education, region, generation or age.

A question of particular relevance is how policies, legislation, jurisdiction and administration are supposed to deal with different family understandings. According to the main principles of modernity, they would need to be free of any ex ante normative evaluation, such as considering a heterosexual nuclear family to be more desirable than a childless couple or a gay couple with children. However, it is hardly imaginable that any institution regulating anything that relates to families could do so without implying a certain understanding of family. All regulation is connected to questions with a normative standpoint, such as who is entitled to which kind of support. Only an extremely liberal political system, not intervening into family lives at all in terms of institutional support or particular requirements for family members, could exist without being led by cultural conceptions. It was not long ago that religious convictions were used to legitimise constitutions, policies and legislations in most European societies. And only recently, this practice has been re-activated in a few of them. In that regard, the strategy of the European Court of Human Rights in its jurisdiction, as described in the contribution by Hart (2018), seems rather advanced. The court takes the human rights declaration as a fixed reference point; however, against this context it also tries to empirically identify the contemporary dominant societal understanding of a given society and use this understanding as an orientation for its court decision. Its line of argument takes into account whether the defined limits are appropriate in the light of people’s feelings about family. Following that rationale, it is reasonable to expect that actors in policy making, legislation, jurisdiction and administration regularly investigate and adjust to the contemporarily dominant cultural understandings, as they may shift from time to time.

Nevertheless, several questions regarding the relationship between individual freedom versus public interest remain open and will continue to challenge European societies in the future. It is particularly important to be aware of the danger of discrimination against minorities, as when institutional regulation follow the predominant cultural views, it is left to the open-mindedness of the people whether their understandings include or exclude the ways in which minorities live as families. On the other hand, it is probable that many institutions continue to follow the most predominant understandings in a given society, since they are established to serve this particular society. As in a democratic system people sharing the majority’s view tend to be elected into positions of power, it may be hard or even impossible to substitute the most dominant cultural understandings with a more objective standard. Moreover, how could an objective or the most recommendable understanding of family be identified? Another open question remaining is how to deal with the situation, if in a given society, there are different social groups with deviating cultural understandings that contradict each other. Solutions can only be found based on the understanding of institutions and culture as being interrelated. However, in a modern democracy, public actors have the responsibility to continuously evaluate and re-evaluate the assumptions underlying policy making, legislation, jurisdiction and administration in the light of international human rights agreements. Wherever it becomes obvious that cultural views are violating these principles, institutions have the obligation to work against such views. After all, cultural understandings can always be influenced on and institutional regulations offer tools for creating change in how people think.

As emphasised, this field of research is large and, of course, it cannot be covered comprehensively with five articles collated into this issue. The contributions thus leave out a number of potential methodological approaches, aspects, perspectives, countries, social groups, etc., which all deserve attention and call for further research in the future. Nevertheless, we hope that the papers provide readers with an idea of how large this variety is and of the perspectives that can be taken. We hope that they provide relevant knowledge on particularly promising examples for such perspectives. In our view, the papers in this issue are creative and innovative in terms of their methodological approaches and have strong narratives which add to the state of research in this field. For future research, maybe even more creative and ‘clever’ ways of investigating need to be found in order to gain more insight: better ways to measure relevant aspects of understandings as well as more meaningful dimensions of comparison and better ways of grasping the intertwining of attitudes and behaviour as well as various behavioural rationales.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Detlev Lück is a Senior Researcher at the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Anna-Maija Castrén works as a professor of sociology at the University of Eastern Finland. She has studied the evolvement of relationship configurations in a life-historical perspective, post-separation family and kin relationships and weddings.