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| Greek romantic love was really lust, often brief, and equally often fatal. Early Greek (1100-1300 BC) marriages were a man “by purchase” (oxen) got a woman (with a dowry) and “love, in the truest sense, as a profound mutual tenderness and solicitude, comes to the Greeks, as to the French, after marriage rather than before; it is not the spark thrown off by the contact or nearness of two bodies, but the fruit of long association in the cares and industries of the home. The Homeric wife is as faithful as her husband is not.” He could have as many wives/concubines as he wanted; Theseus had so many, a historian catalogued them. 4.
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| This holds true in 5th Century Greece: “Romantic love appears among the Greeks, but seldom as the cause of marriage.” It leads to affairs (while prostitution was common, legal, taxed,, a man could buy a woman to live with him) not marriage; romantic love is a “a form of ‘possession’ or madness, and would smile at anyone who should propose it as a fit guide in the choice of a marriage mate.” Although now (with the assets of her dowry) the woman has to purchase the man! (Yea! . . . kinda.) The Greek man marries not for love but for his dowry, and children to ward off evil. And don’t forget that a man’s affection was properly directed to a younger boy. 5.
Being passionate – feeling passion – meant you were suffering – or, if not yet, would be soon enough. People quote Plato as being the one supporting the finding of your other half, because of the Symposium, but they forget that the story of the two-headed - four-legged creature split by the Gods is told by Aristophanes, the Greek comedian. It’s supposed to be for laughs. Instead, it is the goal of friendship/brotherhood/raising families by the state/etc which is the Platonic ideal.
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| At the end of the Greek area, poets were no longer writing about the faithfulness of wives, but about beauty. Sex was still everywhere. Men didn’t want to marry or have kids: infanticide was so pervasive that the death rate exceeded the birthrate. 6.
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| No romantic love in getting married, or even in Roman marriages, either; at first, it was for the sake of making babies, a useful wife and useful children. prostitution was around but in the shadows. but later, marriage was just a stepping stone in politics and wealth, so some didn’t even grow to love each other in marriage; serial divorces were common and frequent. prostitution became so big that brothel-keepers had their own guild. Over time, less Romans would marry; they would live together, with the woman leaving the house for three nights a year so that her property didn’t become his. 7.
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| Roman Stoics thought that marriage was for people who couldn’t control themselves sexually. 8.
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| Early Christians got married only to propagate the species. Sex was discouraged; love was between brothers. 9.
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| In the early middle ages, marriage continued to be a property arrangement. and despite the church, sex was all around; Arthur, Gawain, Roland, William the Conquerer, were all illegitimate. 10.
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| In the 12th Century, troubadours began to sing/write poems/etc spread an idea of love between two people: Joseph Campbell considers this to be the first in the West to think of it as that sort of personal relationship between individuals. Before that it was eros/lust -- and who the object was was secondary – or agape/spiritual – love of all neighbors as thyself. (That sort of personal experience would have been contrary to religious teaching/the church.) So it’s the troubadours who first come up with the idea that a “true marriage is the marriage that springs from the recognition of identity in the other, and the physical union is simply the sacrament in which that is confirmed.” 11.
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| But even the troubadours were singing in a land where marriage was about property, so that love would have come after the marriage, or with someone else. 12.
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| The historic Catholic church and its leading philosophers had a history of teaching that women were pretty much evil incarnate, served only to distract men from their higher purpose; sex and passion were bad, and should only be used for procreation. Thomas Aquinas thought that marriage was the least important sacrament because it was the least spiritual. Ideal marriage was that which was chaste; sex in marriage was regulated – the when and the how. 13.
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| Notwithstanding such condemnation, in the late 1400-1500s, arranged marriages in the patrician class were failing as Europe “seethed with lust.” The arranged marriages were fixed when the children were just seven or so, so romantic love had no role in marriage; instead, romance was outside the marriage. love was a synonym for sex and prostitution was a booming even respectable business (the famed courtesans). Sex was a priority for young woman, who if they weren’t married by 21 were spinsters or off to the convent, and the best way to prevent that was to get pregnant. 14.
From the Greeks and Middle Ages right up thru the Renaissance, romantic love is often thought of a bad thing; love/chivalry/courtly love may be a wonderful idea/feeling, the sex may be terrific, but it usually brings with it pain, suffering and/or death. and is not something that works out in life. It's a world where the heroes and heroines are Odysseus, Tristan and Yseult, Lancelot and Guinevere, Romeo, Juliet, Othello, etc. It's lovers who are in the second circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. And the Coy Maiden should give in to love – meaning sex – because she’ll be wormfood soon enough anyway. 15.
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| In the Renaissance et al 1300-1500s, marriage was for getting property and “love” was for getting some. In Italy, lots of men wouldn’t marry or put it off as long as possible; it was too expensive a process and not worth it. Poetry and love letters and mushy stuff abound -- but it was for seduction, not marriage. 16.
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| In fact, in the 1600s, romantic love was still considered at least in part, an actual sickness (you really were lovesick); that’s why Dutch painters of that time kept painting sad people in doctor’s offices. 17.
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| As time when on, love was allowed to be for the young, while they were young. 18.
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| Historians differ on if love became more important of the working class wanting to be free, or the bourgeoisie, but from the late 17th century, ideas of “marital affection” began to spread in society. However, they still believed that “Feelings of love during courtship considered a prelude to marriage but a danger during marriage.” Passions will turn attention away from the marriage. And a passion-based marriage will fade, while a land-based one won’t. Instead, it will only over time grow its own form of love relationship. 19.
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| By the 1700s, love begins to be the reason, but parental consent and property still reign supreme. By 1760s, Rousseau is writing that Emile can pick his own bride, but consult with his parents, and the ideal family is the agrarian unit. 20.
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| By the late 1700 - early 1800s, in Europe, British church and government were trying to clamp down on those flight-by-night romantic marriages, so adultery flourished: in Italy, women felt that once they’d married out of duty/prudence, and since marriage was indissoluble, “they were entitled to take a cavaliere servente (for love)” Everyone slept around: Byron claimed to have had sex with 200 women in 2 1/2 years – and paid 2,500 pounds for it. As long as the affair was kept quiet, it was fine. Think Les Liaisons Dangereux. 21.
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| From 1740 to 1865 (as seen increasingly in popular media over time), developed a new construction of love, a “romantic love ideal” which included a belief in
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| 1) love at first sight,
2) there is one true love,
3) love conquers all,
4) the beloved is near perfection, and
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| 5) one should marry for love. 23.
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A “new romanticism” began in England in the late 18th Century, spread to Europe, and then hit America’s shores by the beginning of the 19th century: “It was pluralistic, its manifestations were as varied, as individualistic, and as conflicting as the cultures and the intellects from which it spring. Yet romantics frequently shared certain general characteristics; moral enthusiasm, faith in the value of individualism and intuitive perception that the natural world was a source of goodness and man’s societies a source of corruption. Romantic values dominated American politics, art, and philosophy until the Civil War. The romantic exaltation of the individual suited the nation’s revolutionary heritage and its frontier egalitarianism. The romantic revolt against traditional formalities gratified those displeased with the narrow limits of neoclassic literature, painting, and architecture. The romantic rejection of rationalism comforted those opposed to religions encrusted with the intellectual remnants of Calvinism and led increasing numbers of Americans to turn to the fervors of camp-meeting revivalism or to the tenets of New England transcendentalism.” 24.
CONTINUING ROLE OF ROMANTIC LOVE IN OUR SOCIETY
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| "Wherever, in the history of civilization, woman has ceased to be an economic asset in marriage, marriage has decayed; and sometimes civilization has decayed with it.”
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| -- Will Durant, The Story of Civilization 1.
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Live together first, then, if you have a kid, get married.
Up until 1545, European marriages commonly had two ceremonies. First, a couple had a betrothal ceremony, after which the engaged couple was able to live together. Then, the couple had a child, that was taken to be the consummation of their marriage, so then they might (or might not) have the actual marriage ceremony. 2.
In fact, the prevailing attitude was that weddings routinely came after pregnancy and childbirth continued until the 1700s, and some scholars believe that the current decline in marriage and increase in unmarried women's births may actually be a return to that earlier tradition. 3.
An Unequal marriage of equals?
Marriage matches were historically a based in union of families and political dynasties, and families were hierarchies just as everything else was. And, while loveless, the low number of divorces in England until the late Nineteenth Century indicate that these marriages may have been more stable than the modern U.S. type of love matches between two equal partners. 5.
WHO'S THE LUCKY GUY (GIRL)?
Zero
The number of European nations that prohibit marriage between first cousins. 46.
CULTURAL TRADITIONS IN MARRIAGE AND WEDDINGS
Bringing English traditions with them, “Late marriages of men and women in strict birth order, delays in the transference of real and personal estates from fathers to sons, and residence of married children on their father’s lands were characteristic of many New England families in the seventeenth century and must of the eighteenth.” 62.
RELIGIOUS AND STATE INVOLVEMENT IN MARRIAGES, HISTORICALLY
Generally, in the UK/US Anglo-Saxon tradition, civil and religious rule grew in parallel over the centuries, really taking root following the Norman Conquest. Civil law would recognize nullification while religious law would come up with rules like don’t marry your sister. both religious and civil courts ruled over issues such as consummation (required), eligibility to marry, etc. Actually, it wasn’t until the 12th century that the Church recognized marriage as an official sacrament and therefore required church approval, and not until 1563 (when Henry VIII was giving the world headaches) that a priest had to marry for it to be recognized. Which is not to say that you couldn’t get in trouble with the church before that; married women could be excommunicated for being adulterous sluts hundreds of years before that (men were just slapped on the wrist because we’re expected to be unfaithful). 72.
Anglo-Saxon (and subsequent) courts have always recognized the importance of the marital state to the society and have therefore limited the ability to regulate marriage.
In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the marriage contract – remember it’s a real contract – is really between the husband, wife and the state, whereas in other traditions, it's a contract between families. Regardless, the contract was that a husband promise to her and the state that you will provide for your wife and your progeny. The contract can be, to a certain extent, modified by the real parties in interest (take care of me or else). The state will go along with those “contract modifications” if they are reasonable, and don’t discourage creation of marriages. That’s why Pre-Nup’s are so controversial in the U.S., because they are thought to encourage divorce. (It wasn’t until 1983 that there was a Uniform Antenuptial Agreement Act for the states to discuss/review). In Islamic marriages, there's frequently a negotiated contract of marriage, with specific terms – what the wife must do, what the husband can't do, what during the marriage will constitute grounds for divorce, etc. 73.
. . . and let no man tear asunder . . . .
That was actually the concern of marriages in the Middle Ages. Parents arranged their children's marriages. They also ordered those same marriages ended, if they became politically or financially inconvenient. So the Catholic Church's steps to declare marriage indissoluble were not originally based in a religious belief that marriage was a sacrament. Instead, it was began as an effort to protect couples from the continued interference in the marriage by their parents. 74.
1753
The year English state and church control began to regulate marriages and weddings. Prior to that, couples married in secret, paid off clergy, etc. Not having any regulation had "helped serial bigamists, those who held out a title or wealth for marriage, then deserted shortly thereafter. An estimated 250,000 such marriages took place between 1694 and 1754, providing large profits for unscrupulous clergy who were little more than marriage brokers. Half of the brides were pregnant for the marriage, which no one had a problem with." 75.
Originally intended to stop titled gentry from eloping, which they’d been doing with regularity, the Act was far more reaching than that. The Act required: marriage under Church of England law / procedure / services (even for Catholics! although Jews and Quakers were exempt); parental consent for marriage up to the age of 21, and other wedding formalities (even time of day). (If you were rich enough, you could pay for a special license to get out of it.) Women with previously “valid” common law marriages (eg those who’d jumped the broom) that were not licensed were suddenly whores with bastard children: the common law marriages were no longer recognized. 76.
It wasn’t until 1836! that British Catholics could marry in their own chapels. 77.
ARRANGED MARRIAGES
At least one historian claims that, since the Norman Conquest, before the modern era's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, all but two monarchs had arranged marriages: “Three basic principles have governed the choice of a royal consort. First, international prestige demanded that the ruler marry someone of suitable status; second, a royal marriage was a valuable diplomatic asset not to be wasted; third, a spouse should be a foreigner, since to marry within a realm was to risk disturbing the balance of internal politics.” 80.
The ability to marry someone of one's choosing, voluntarily, is considered a human right, and as such is included in the United Nations' Universal Declaration on Human Rights and other international treaties. That is significant on two points – first, it underscores the importance of the issue, and also that governments must address forced marriages – not arranged but forced marriages – by migrants from other nations. In the United Kingdom, with its growing Muslim emigrant population, its law enforcement community has taken special efforts to understand the different types of arranged marriages, and how to identify when an arranged marriage is actually a forced marriage. Just being able to identify a forced marriage, however, is not the end of the problem. Getting married is, unless a spouse is underage, generally not illegal, and if the only evidence of a forced marriage is a statement that a parent has ordered a child to marry, it's difficult to prove when a crime has actually been committed. At the same time, those who have been making the threats of violence – and perhaps their threatened victims – are in their home country, making it next to impossible for U.K. officials to investigate the matter. There are, unfortunately, cases with physical violence. But for many forced marriages, it is a domestic violence of the mind. 85.
MARRIAGES INTERNATIONALLY
306,200
marriages in the U.K. in 2003. 35.
"Virtually all couples are married in the southern European member nations but marriage is less likely in many others." 37.
19 percent
of those Year 2000 marriages in England and Wales were remarriages – for both parties. 49.
One-fifth
of all marriages in the U.K. – 109,090 – in 2003 were remarriages for one or both parties. 50.
TRANSITION OF UNMARRIED COHABITATION INTO MARRIAGE
80 percent
of Czechs who live with someone plan to eventually marry that person. 11.
Three and four times more likely
British unmarried partners who are parents are three to four times more likely to separate than their married/parent counterparts. 13.
UNMARRIED PARTNERS / PERCEPTIONS AND LEGAL STATUS
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| "Well, it's okay for them, but I don't want to . . . "
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Eight of 10 Czechs under the age of 30 think it's fine for a couple to live together without getting married.
But only one in 10 actually want to have that arrangement for themselves. 16.
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2000
The year Belgian government determined that any two persons sharing a home – homosexual or heterosexual couples, siblings, two friends, etc. – can register to be legally be considered as ‘living together.” 19.
“Two fake singles”
The term used in 1997 Belgium to describe couples who were living together but not getting married, acknowledging that there were tax advantages to remaining unmarried. The issue became a key issue in the 1999 elections, and subsequent tax reform was put into place such that it was neutral as to family form. 22.
UNMARRIED PARTNERS / PREVALANCE
In North America and Western Europe, the prevalence of unmarried cohabitation is increasing– and not just prior to marriage, but also following separation, divorce or widowhood. "However, there is still a considerable between-country variation: in some of the Scandinavian countries, premarital cohabitation is a quite generalised form of behaviour; in countries such as France and the Netherlands, it is fast increasing; in some regions, such as Flanders, Scotland, and Wales, and in Southern European countries it is still a minority phenomenon." 23.
"In Greece and Portugal, cohabitation is low because marriage is high; whereas in Italy and Spain, cohabitation is low because there are fewer unions (the proportions of women marrying being similar to those observed in Central and Northern countries). In Italy and Spain, young people are not forming any unions at all, while this is the population group that enters into cohabitation in the rest of the EU." 24.
About 6.3 percent
of young couples in the European Union are cohabiting. 25.
Six to 92 percent –
the range in percentages of southern Europeans countries’ unmarried cohabiting young people the ages of 16 and 29. The lows are 6 percent (Italy) and 14 percent (Spain) "while Denmark, France and Holland stand out with rates of 72 percent, 46 percent and 54 percent, respectively." 26.
In the U.K., "by the mid 1990s there were just over one and a half million cohabiting couples in England and Wales, and that if trends continue numbers will almost double by 2012. . . ." 27.
19 percent
of all couples in the U.K. were cohabiting, unmarried couples in 1998. 28.
About 75 percent
of women in Finland are expected to have lived with someone by age 45. 29.
83.6 percent
of women in France are expected to have lived with someone by age 45. 31.
Less than 10 percent
of women in Italy are expected to have lived with someone by age 45. 32.
Less than five percent
of women in Poland are expected to have lived with someone by age 45. 33.
UNMARRIED PARTNERS WITH CHILDREN
58 percent
of young women in Sweden were cohabiting at the birth of their first child. 60.
53.5 percent
of Swedish children will have their mother in a cohabiting relationship by the time the children are 16 years old. 63.
4.7 percent
of Polish children will have their mother in a cohabiting relationship by the time the children are 16 years old. 64.
1999
The year Portugal gave cohabiting couples the legal "right to adoption, entitled them to be taxed jointly and gave the surviving partner more rights to the joint home in the event of death (usufruct rights, for a period of five years, to the home owned by the deceased partner)." 68.
2001
The year the U.K. Parliament granted unmarried couples the right to joint adoption of a child. 69.
PATRIARCHY OR MATRIARCHY / GENDER ROLES
In Roman times, a family was entirely male-owned/dictated controlled. A Roman could sell his wife and kids (up to 3 times); he could use as labor, beat and even kill his children with impunity. The wife was not a legal guardian and could not object to the sale/other transfer of the children, even when he died. 14.
In the Anglo-Saxon world, this became modified: the mother didn’t inherit the property of her husband, but she could continue to care for the child. After the Norman Conquest, this trend continued and as early as the 1200’s, there were laws and cases which provided for, once the father was dead, mothers to become legal guardians -- although this determination was largely based on whether or not she would interfere with the property rights of the estate. If she would, or would be detriment to them, then guardianship went elsewhere. 15.
By the late 1200s, early 1300s, the family’s desires to remain intact began to be considered in deciding custody of children of deceased fathers – although their wishes weren’t determinative. The presence of the unified continuing family was an asset in the agrarian society, which helped widowed mothers who were trying to keep their kids. However, there was in parallel, if you had titled/military lands, children became wards. Guardians took over control of both the children and property. And this lasted, in varying degrees, for 600 years. 16.
In 1646, a British father’s authority to determine custody of his children was codified as absolute -- even after death. He could will a child to anyone he wished). Different types of guardianships were created; some allowed for family, some did not. It depended on the wealth involved, power/royal status, remarriage, religion, etc. In the 1600 and 1700s, the state became increasingly willing to get involved to decide the matter, invoking parens patriae, the concept that it was the state who acted as the ultimate parent. However, throughout the 1700s to 1800s, English law was based on the premise that the father had unlimited right/custody/control over his children. 17.
By 1839, British law gave a maternal preference to custody of children under the age of seven. 18.
By the mid-1800s, the law in the U.K. began to discuss the “best interests of the child” when deciding who should get custody of the child. 19.
"For many years the underlying assumption of social welfare and taxation in Ireland was that of a breadwinner father with dependent spouse and children in a lifelong marriage. As the Report states “this is, however, no longer necessarily the norm in Irish society.” 20.
In Finland, "Mothers spend considerably more time on domestic tasks than do fathers, and this is also true for women who work full-time. Women bear greater responsibility for children and have been the main users of various forms of statutory childcare leave. Men have taken advantage of these rights only on a small scale. Because the benefits do not totally compensate for earnings, it is more profitable for the parent with the lower income to stay at home. Most often, this is the mother." 34.
In Portugal, "Two campaigns launched in 1999 by the High Commissioner’s Office for the Promotion of Equality and the Family: The National Campaign on Reconciliation turned the month of March 1999 into the month of workfamily balance in Portugal. Entitled Sharing Domestic Chores – the Necessary Reconciliation, it targeted Portuguese couples and consisted of television and radio spots, company advertisements and street posters with images relating to equality between husbands and wives in the household. The campaign was the subject of much commentary in the media." 35.
In Belgium, "In 1979, the Minister for Equal Opportunities launched a great publicity campaign with huge posters and postcards showing males performing such typical female tasks as child care, and females performing such male tasks as plumbing. This campaign was applauded by a large NGO, the largest family organisation in Belgium, which carried out some research under the motto of ‘Family is a two-person job’. More importantly, however, they designed a toolkit enabling families to measure the degree of unfair division of labour inside their family. These types of campaigns probably achieved better results on the cultural level by raising awareness, but did not provoke dramatic behavioural changes." 36.
"Twelve was the average number of childbearing years that upper-class medieval women could anticipate. The average number of live births was five. . . . In fourteenth-century England, it has been estimated, 15 percent of couples were childless.” 43.
GENERATIONAL ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
"... family obligations in Italy have traditionally played an important role in the satisfaction of basic needs. Making up for the lack of an adequate structure offering assistance and services paid for by the public purse was, and still is, the duty of the extended family and the kinship network." 54.
In Italy, "Once they do marry and raise a family, women often end up caring not only for their children but for their parents as well. Daughters, in particular, serve as de facto social security for their aging mothers." 55.
"In Mediterranean Europe, the care of the elderly fell almost exclusively on the family, whether it was carried out by means of coresidence, the circulation of the elderly among the households of their offspring, or the spatial proximity between the homes of the elderly and those of their children: all of these alternatives entailed transfers of goods and services from the families of the offspring toward their elderly parents. In England, on the other hand, the situation was quite different. For one thing, a smaller proportion of the elderly appears to have coresided with their children.(24) A structural characteristic of English society, epitomized in the Poor Laws, was that the ultimate responsibility for the wellbeing of the elderly fell to the collectivity. In Spain there were no Poor Laws and only in such cases as extreme poverty or grave mental or physical illness could people count on institutional support, often organized by the Church. For the vast majority of cases, the family alone took responsibility for the material and personal wellbeing of its elderly." 57.
In Italy, "The highest quota of caregivers is concentrated in the age group between 55 and 64 years; this is also the group in which, between 1983 and 1998, there was the greatest increase in people engaged in giving help. It goes without saying that this age group is basically made up of those generations who are engaged simultaneously on two different fronts: caring for their children, who in Italy tend to stay at home even beyond the age of 30, and caring for their parents, who once past the age of 80 enter a phase of the lifecycle in which the need for care and assistance increases. An interesting fact emerges from the surveys: During the period under consideration, the help given to the oldest members of the population showed a marked decrease. While in 1983, 30.7 percent of families with at least one elderly member and without children received help at least once, in 1998 this percentage fell to 16 percent." 58.
In Italy, "A significant aspect of the changes that have taken place recently in the structure of family networks is related to the extent of help from relatives. If one considers help as a whole – informal and formal, provided by the kinship network and by outside services – between 1983 and 1998, the number of families having an elderly member over 65 who received help at least once grew by nearly 10 percent; and that of families with an elderly member over 80 by almost 14 percent. Most of this growth is due to a process of substitution of the informal network by utilising help provided by private individuals and the public sector. The case is different with regard to families with children, for whom the importance of services outside the informal network is minor. This shows that, in the meantime, family support networks have reduced their range of intervention. To a certain extent, they still survive within the restricted context of the nuclear family. Families depend almost solely on the informal help network but tend to contract care and assistance for elderly people, for whom it is apparent that the use of external help and services provided by the public authorities and/or paid personnel has increased enormously." 59.
WHAT HAS CHANGED FAMILY STRUCTURES
In Spain, "Cultural gender differentiations are gradually vanishing. A clear change in the opinions and attitudes about sharing household tasks has occurred since 1975, when household maintenance was considered to be women’s work. In a recent survey, young people saw sharing domestic tasks as one of the key conditions for a successful partnership. Notwithstanding this tendency, families – especially those with children – tend to reproduce traditional roles, either by preventing married women from working when care obligations are impossible to fulfil with both parents working full-time, or by forcing working mothers to accept strategies involving informal and formal care and lengthy working days without any noticeable support from their husband, except in terms of direct child care. Staying at home is more often the case among women with less education, who at the same time feel less attraction for their job and are less able to afford external help given their small salary. Traditional roles have not changed in the workplace, which is still dominated by the male-breadwinner model; and these roles have not changed much in the family either, the two areas being too closely related." 74.
"Differences in family and demographic behaviour are, however, much more striking for migrants coming to Europe and North America from developing countries and in particular from less advanced rural regions in those countries. These immigrants encapsulate in their demographic behaviour more traditional beliefs and customs specific to their agrarian cultural and economic background. Family relations and dynamics are often characterised by patriarchal relations and gender divide, early marriage, low divorce rate, low age at first birth and childbearing into higher ages, high fertility, and larger household size. Because of initial difficulties to adapt to the new social, economic and cultural environment and their ethnic and/or religious differences, they tend to remain isolated from the host culture, living in communities where they strive to preserve traditional family structures, gender relations and cultural specificity in general . . . . The persistence of these behavioural differences is in general interpreted as an example of ineffective integration policies of the receiving country." 75.
"In terms of family formation, research on migrants shows that the relational and reproductive behaviour of migrants of European or American origin is not very different from that of the sedentary, non-migrant population in developed countries . . . . In some cases, immigrants from developed countries show lower nuptiality and fertility rates than the nationals in the host countries." 76.
In Portugal, "Attitudes to the distribution of responsibility within the family have also clearly shifted, with a majority of couples expressing commitment to a ‘symmetrical’ family organisation where both partners work and share responsibilities as well as authority within the family. By contrast, change in the allocation of household tasks has been quite slow. These still remain strongly segregated by gender, albeit less than in the recent past, with the 1999 survey showing that only one in five couples were actually sharing all the main household chores, such as cooking, cleaning or doing the laundry." 77.
DEFINITIONS OF FAMILY
Family, as defined by the Netherlands Cabinet:
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| "a social unit where one or more children are being cared for and/or brought up." 5.
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As long as you're under my roof . . . .
The National Statistical Service of Greece counts all the people who live under the same roof as a family – even if they aren't related. 6.
Oxford English Dictionary
first defines a family as the servants of a house, or the household. The second definition is everyone who lives in a house or under one head. It isn't until the third definition that it defines family as a "group of persons consisting of the parents and their children, whether actually living together or not." 8.
ANALYSIS OF FAMILY AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
Fascinatingly, Czech sociologists credited the family as being the tool that helped bring down Communism in Czechoslovakia. The Communist government had promised to end the traditional bourgeois family structure, and created institutions designed to replace it – even including infant boarding houses. But, during times of crisis, the government could not provide for the people – and families got together and were able to fulfill the people's needs, both material and emotional. 5.
POVERTY – INTERNATIONAL
Spanish aphorism: "The only truly poor person is one who has no family." 27.
15 percent
of European families are at risk of being in poverty. 29.
12.3 percent
of families in Ireland are in poverty. 30.
A European test for poverty:
if for a household to fall below 60 percent of the household total mean income. 31.
19 percent
of those in Spain are in poverty. 67 percent of Spanish households have difficulty making ends meet while 38 percent cannot afford at least three of the basic necessities. 32.
Over half
of those in Finland in the late 1990s who were in poverty were families with children. 33.
12.3 percent
of families in Italy are in poverty. 13.9 percent of total population is in poverty. 34.
21 percent
of families in Portugal are at risk of being in poverty. 35.
Doing better –
While the presence of children in a family often increases the poverty, in Greece, the poverty rate for families with one or two children is actually lower than for families without children. One explanation for this is that families are choosing to stabilize their finances before having children. 36.
URBANIZATION BY THE NUMBERS
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On the left is our chart illustrating the change in urbanization, by continent. The red column is the urbanized population in 1950, the blue is today's percentage, and the green is the United Nations's projected percentages by the year 2030.
By this, you can see that the percentage of those living in urban environments has more than doubled in Africa and Asia in the past 50 years, and Latin America's is almost double.
Already comparatively urbanized, Europe and North American urbanization is continuing, but at a less dramatic rate. 20.
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| Families migrate together as a group, or, if individual family members do migrate alone, they bring with them a clear expectation that the others in their families will soon join them.
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More than eight million
of those who migrated to Germany between 1973 and 1994 who were relatives of migrants already living there. 1.
More than 600,000
of those emigrating to the U.K. between the early 1970s and the early 1990s had relatives already living there. 2.
727,000
of those who emigrated to Switzerland during 1968 and 1995 had relatives already living there. 3.
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22,000
Yugoslav female migrants were working in the Netherlands in 1995 – almost equal number to the number of Yugoslav males there (23,800). 5.
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36 percent
of immigrants to Ireland in 2001 were married. According to a study. 10.
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52 percent and 44 percent
of the legal, and illegal immigrants in Greece in 1997 were married. 11.
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One out of every four
children in Sweden has their roots in other parts of the world. In its larger cities, that figure rises to almost half. 13.
1,200
Number of unaccompanied children who immigrated to Finland in approximately the past ten years. Over half were Somali. 14.
5,400
immigrants to Ireland in 2001 – 20.5 percent of all those who immigrated there that year – were under 14 years old. According to a study. 15.
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Higher than in the U.S.
In 2002, net migration to the European Union was higher than the net migration to the U.S. 48.
18.69 million
Number of the European Union population who were third-country nationals in 2002. One-third of these were actually citizens of another EU nation. 49.
Five percent
of the European Union population were third-country nationals in 2002. 50.
About four million
Number of non-citizens living in Western European nations in 1950. That number doubled within 20 years. Between 1970 and 2000, the number almost doubled again. 51.
More than one million
By the 1990s, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland each had at least 1 million immigrants within their borders, which make them the most important immigration countries in Western Europe. 52.
And that's probably an undercount
There is a rising number of criminal networks that smuggle illegal immigrants – usually labor migrants – into the E.U., usually through Central and Eastern Europe. 53.
26,300
The non-citizen population of Ireland in 2001, more than three times what it had been just five years earlier (8,000 in 1996). While much less than other nations' immigrant populations, the sudden increase hit a small country that traditionally sees itself of as country people emigrate from, not emigrate to. The result was that this rapid growth caused serious social and political tensions. 54.
A five-fold increase
In 1991 there were only 167,000 immigrants in Greece. By 2001, the number had risen to 797,000 – making the foreign-born population over seven percent of the total population. The clear majority of these immigrants – 440,000 of them – are from Albania. That is 56 percent of the total immigrant population. The next largest share of the immigrant population were Bulgarians, and they're just five percent of the immigrants to Greece. 55.
Over 90 percent
of the population increase in Greece over the past decade has been due to immigration. The natural increase (that is, from births) has only increased the population by 22,600. But the population of Greece has increased by over 650,000 during that same period – about 630,000 of whom were immigrants. 56.
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Cheap labor from the former colonies –
During the 1950s and 1960s, there was a mass migration movement of laborers from former colonies to the respective former ‘mother countries’ These migrants more willing to migrate, and the countries were more eager to receive them because they already spoke the language, there were systems in place to grant them residency or even citizenship. So Indians and Pakistanis migrated to Great Britain, Moroccans and Algerians moved to France; and people from Surinam who migrated to The Netherlands. 64.
So many laborers had left, that they had to import replacement labor –
Beginning in 1950, increasing unemployment in Jordan meant that the government began to allow laborers to leave the country for Europe, Australia and the U.S.A. But by 1976-1982, so many people | | |
