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| of Czech women are permanent housewives.
10 percent
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| of women in Denmark work more than 40 hours a week.
20 percent
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| of women in Germany work more than 40 hours a week.
Over 80 percent
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| of women in the Czech Republic work more than 40 hours a week.
In the Netherlands, "With respect to the normative aim of an equal division of labour between partners in a heterosexual marriage or partnership (Künzler et al. 1999), we feel it necessary to point out that a rather equal division of paid labour tends to predominate as a period in the life course of young couples. The moment they become a family, the equal sharing of tasks comes to an end. The process that leads to a more unequal division of labour will be described in the next section. The most prevalent pattern is that of a family where the father is working full-time and the mother is working for an extra income that, in most cases, amounts to a half-time job or less."
PAID VS. UNPAID WORK
It's almost exactly the same –
the time spent on work by British men and women. British women spend more time on child care while British men spend more time at school or at work. But when you add the time spent in all of their work activities, including paid work and unpaid work – from jobs to housework and everything else – on the average, men and women spend almost exactly the same amount of total time on it: just under seven hours and fifty minutes each day. 9.
CHILD CARE
Who's Doing What How Parents' Work and Education Effect Time with Their Kids
How Parents' Work and Education Effect Time with Kids
30 minutes a day –
– the amount of time devoted by British men in white collar jobs to childcare in 1999. 37.
50 minutes a day –
– the amount of time devoted by British men in blue collar jobs to childcare in 1999. 38.
63 percent of mothers
in France, with children under the age of 12, who reported that they spend more time with their children since the 2000 introduction of the French 35-hour work week. 39.
52 percent of fathers
in France, with children under the age of 12, who reported that they spend more time with their children since the 2000 introduction of the French 35-hour work week. 40.
In Finland, fathers of young children work more overtime than other them. And both new mothers and fathers often have atypical work hours. 41.
0.2 hours per day –
the amount of time devoted by U.K. married fathers to childcare in 1961. 47.
0.8 hours per day –
the amount of time devoted by U.K. married fathers to childcare in 1999. 48.
0.7 hours per day –
the amount of time devoted by U.K. married mothers to childcare in 1961. 49.
1.7 hours per day –
the amount of time devoted by U.K. married mothers to childcare in 1999. 52.
WHO'S DOING THE HOUSEWORK?
Gender
is still the best single predictor who is spending how much time doing housework. And that's not true just in the U.S., but around the world, from England to Poland to Japan. 1.
Women
were reported to be doing the majority of the housework, in every nation but Russia in a 13-nation study. 2.
One in Five
Couples in Portugal who actually share all the main household chores, according to a 1999 survey. 5.
40 –
in Italy, one-fourth of employed women do 40 hours of housework. 6.
– to Zero
in Italy, one-fourth of employed men do no housework at all. 7.
1 hour 40 minutes
Average amount of time a British man spends each day on housework. 8.
Almost 3 hours
Average amount of time a British woman spends each day on housework 9.
31.3 percent
of Russian husbands surveyed who said that their wives always or usually do the housework. 20.
38.2 percent
of those men's wives who said they always or usually do the housework. 21.
Once there's a baby –
of Austrian men do less housework than they had before. 35.
HOW HAVE THINGS CHANGED?
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| Why you feel like your mother's house was so much cleaner and more organized than yours –
Because it probably was. But it isn't because she was a better housekeeper than you are. It's that she took twice as much time to do everything as you do.
Interestingly, in the 1990s, U.S. women spent about half the time on housework as they had 30 years earlier (17.5 hours down from 30 each week), while men, on the other hand, were spending just over twice the time they had spent (10 hours up from 4.9).
That means women now only do 1.8 hours of household work for every hour a man does –compared to the six-fold difference in 1960s. But the men's work doesn't make up for the decrease in women's hours. And men's hours haven't really changed since 1985. So one sociologist decided that, yes, we are doing some things faster – with new gadgets like the microwave and the washer/dryer – but we're also relying on outside help for more of housework, and – probably more to the point – we are just not doing the rest.
The reduction in women doing household labor, with an increase (but disproportional one) in men's work is happening elsewhere, too, such as in The Netherlands. 22.
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| The more money a wife makes, the more likely her husband is to report that he does at least half of the household labor. But the women do not agree to the same amount of husband-done housework: they think it’s less. 25.
In households where women contribute to less than or up to half of the family’s income, the more money she makes, less housework she does. 26.
In households where women contribute to more than half of the family’s income, the more money she makes, more housework she does – by an increase of 5-6 hours each week. 27.
The amount of income brought in by his wife or he does not effect the man’s hours spent doing housework, so a woman’s role in the workplace effects her hours, not his. 28.
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| Lack of affordable child care is a problem in many nations including –
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– the U.K., where researchers have argued that the unavailability of child care is British mothers' main barrier to employment. 29.
– Greece, where the number of public day care services is considered inadequate and the number of families using them – including kindergartens – is very low. 30.
– Belgium, where the number of children who need after-school care exceeds the number of available places. 31.
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Women are still the caregivers –
In Belgium, 98 percent of those working in child care are women. In Sweden, it's an "overwhelming majority." 32.
Education and work –
change the type of child care mothers in the Netherlands use. More educated women, those who earn a higher income, send their children to formal child care centers, while those with lower educations and less income use informal child care – usually the grandparents. 33.
Almost 60 percent –
of Italians surveyed thought that government responsibilities should be extended to looking after children. That's considered a low figure: it's higher in other European countries. 34.
PRESCHOOL / EARLY CHILD DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS
35 percent
of France's two-year-old children were in preschool in 1998. In the west of France, that figure rose to about 60 percent. 37.
100 percent
of France's children aged three to five years old were in preschool in 1998. 38.
Almost all
of Belgium's children age two and half to three years-old go to a full-day preschool. 39.
48 percent –
of Portuguese children age three to six years old are in full or part time "early childhood education and care." 41.
CROSS-CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN CHILD REARING
Left to their own devices –
Beginning to attend school at the age of seven, children in Finland go to school by themselves, and then, after school, they spend the rest of the day by themselves or with friends. Since, compared to the supervised schedule in other European nations, some see this as neglect, there has been some movement to provide supervised programs for the seven and eight year olds. 55.
“Most ethnic minorities in the industrialized countries of Europe, North America, and Australia are rather recent immigrants from less developed countries and especially from their rural areas . . . [where] a socially rather than a cognitively oriented conception of competence is valued, stressing conformity – obedience goals, and early learning in the family is based mainly on observation and imitation." 69.
“. . . compared to Western children in the United States, France, and Russia, non-Western children reach the two-word sequence of linguistic development at a substantially slower pace. He [this scholar] attributed this difference to the lower density of language addressed to young children in non-Western cultures.” 73.
ADOPTION OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES
5,680
Number of adoptions in England and Wales in 2003. U.K. adoptions fell sharply from 22,502 in 1974 to a low of 4,317 in 1999. Since then it has risen by a third, to in 2002. 28.
1967
The year that began a rapid decline in the number of adoptions in the United Kingdom. The Government believes there were two chief causes for the dramatic decline at this point. First, abortion became legal in 1967. Then, in 1975, a law in custody required courts to dismiss applications to adopt step-children if continued legal custody was in the child's best interest. 29.
72 percent
of the children in the United Kingdom adopted in 2002 were children born outside of marriage. Such children, despite legalized abortion, have made up the majority of adoptions from 1971 to the present. 30.
1999
The year that it became legal for heterosexual unmarried partners in Portugal to adopt children: same-sex couples cannot adopt. 31.
2000
The year that it became legal for heterosexual unmarried partners in Belgium to adopt children: same-sex couples cannot adopt. 32.
2001
The year that it became legal for British unmarried partners – including same-sex couples – to adopt children. 33.
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CHILDREN
Seven out of ten
number of British children aged under ten to have their parents divorce. "The number of British children (aged 16 or under) whose parents divorced reached a peak of 176,000 in 1993, and since then numbers have fallen to 143,000 in 2000. But this still means that one in four children under five years of age." 51.
More than 80 percent
of Austrian 15-year olds lived with their married parents or step-parents in 1991. For the 19-year-olds, that figure was 70 percent. 52.
2.33
Average number of children in a family in Finland. 53.
Six percent
of all U.K. families with dependent children that are stepfamilies. 63.
70 percent
of children in Finland in 1999 live with married parents – a drop of 15 percent in 14 years. 64.
2.33
Average number of children living at home in a family in Finland. 65.
PARENTAL EDUCATION/ EMPLOYMENT
Every second child
in Finland had two working parents in 1998. 68.
CHILD POVERTY
One-third
of all British children are growing up in households that have less than half the national mean income; some claim the U.K. has the third worst rate of child poverty of the industrialized world. 87.
One in six
children in Ireland in 1997 were living in severe poverty – making the Irish rate of child poverty one of the highest in Europe. 88.
31.5 percent
of Italian children in poverty in 1993, a seven percent increase from 1980 and 1993 (from 24.5 percent to 31.5 percent). 89.
Over half
of the families in Finland living below the poverty line in the late 1990s were families with children. 94.
CHILDREN IN ANCIENT HISTORY
“Exposure was much more common among the Spartans, consistent with their disdain for flawed, weak physiques. Plutarch (46-120 A.D.) reported that Spartan fathers were required to have infant males inspected in order to receive the state’s clean bill of health before receiving permission to keep their babies.” 5.
13 to 17 years old
the age of marriage for girls in Ancient Rome. 6.
About ten years old
The age by which one-third of all children in Ancient Rome had died. The average life expectancy for men could have been as low as twenty-two and, for women, twenty years. Adoption, therefore, was common and legal, with the laws of property and inheritance extended to adopted children.” 7.
22 years old
The average life expectancy for men in Ancient Rome. For women, it was down to 20. could have been as low as twenty-two and, for women, twenty years. Adoption, therefore, was common and legal, with the laws of property and inheritance extended to adopted children.” 8.
Adoption
"was common and legal" in Ancient Rome, "with the laws of property and inheritance extended to adopted children.” 9.
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| Tacitus (55-120 A.D.) on wet nurses:
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“In the good old days, every man’s son, born in wedlock, was brought up not in the chamber of some hireling nurse, but in his mother’s lap, and at her knee. And that mother could have no higher praise than that she managed the house and gave her-self to her children. Again, some elderly relative would be selected in order that to her, as a person who had been tried and never found wanting, might be entrusted the care of all the youthful scions of the same house; in the presence of such a one no base word could be uttered without grave offence, and no wrong deed done. Religiously and with the utmost delicacy she regulated not only the serious tasks of her youthful charges, but their recreations also and their games . . . .
Nowadays, on the other hand, our children are handed over at their birth to some silly little Greek serving-maid, with a male slave, who may be anyone to help her, – quite frequently the most worthless member of the whole establishment, incompetent for any serious service. It is from the foolish tittle-tattle of such persons that the children receive their earliest impressions, while their minds are still pliant and unformed; and there is not a soul in the whole house who cares a jot what he says or does in the presence of its lisping little lord. Yes, and the parents themselves make no effort to train their little ones in goodness and self-control; they grow up in an atmosphere of laxity and pertness, in which they come gradually to lose all sense of shame, and all respect both for themselves and for other people.” 10.
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“By the second century A.D., Roman mores had become rigidly conservative, probably in reaction to the wanton excesses of its past. Celibacy as well as virginity until marriage became societal expectations and were thought to preserve health and energy. Sex had come to be considered enervating and dissipating; fidelity or mortality were not the factors that informed the changes in attitude.” 11.
“. . . citizens of early Rome were by law required to raise all healthy male children and at least one female. . . . Enforcement of these laws, however, was poor, and by the second century, B.C. constraints on abandonment had disappeared.” 12.
“An infant could be abandoned without penalty or social stigma for many reasons, including an anomalous appearance, being an illegitimate child or grandchild or a child of infidelity, family poverty, parental conflict (ob discordiam parentum) or being one of too many children. Sometimes there were given to friends, but more often than not they were abandoned to the elements, and death resulted from hypoglycemia and hypothermia. Sometimes the infant was devoured by the dogs that scavenged public places. It was likely however, that the expositi were rescued from these fates and picked up by slavers. Abandonment generally occurred in a public place, where it was hoped that the infant could be taken up by some wealthy person. A well-traveled street called the Velabrum, where oil and cheese merchants worked, and the vegetable market in the Forum (Olitorium), with columna lactaria, or nursing columns, were two favored locations for placing sucklings. Such an infant was considered a res vacantes (an unclaimed thing) and legally could be claimed. If picked up by wealthy persons, the child could become a slave, a play companion for another child, a pet (delicia), or a prostitute; it could be sold for begging purposes after mutilation or become a truly adopted child, a treasured alumnus. Most adoptions, however, were not of abandoned infants but of a close relative, a propinquus, because adoption commonly was used for purposes of succession or inheritance, to keep wealth within a biological family." 13.
Up to three times
The number of times a Roman father could sell his son. After that, the son was free. The practice of selling sons lasted for about 600 hundred years – finally ending around 300 A.D. 14.
A "pet child" –
“Commonly, a slave who became a pet child did not work and was kept around the house for play purposes. Some of these children were genuinely loved and educated. Some were assigned a mammae or tatae to nurture them, but more often than not, they were simply for jester-like entertainment or pedophilic gratification. 15.
“An expositi, or abandoned child, if recognized years later and desired, could be reclaimed if the cost of rearing was repaid. Although exposure was common, not all Romans approved of it, and some, like Epictetus . . . asserted with quiet passion about the proper care and nurturing of children. . . . ” 16.
It wasn't really until Christianity took hold that things changed for Roman children. Christianity taught that children were gifts from God, and therefore harm to a child was a violation of God's will. Gradually, Christian Roman emperors increased the penalties for abandoning children, they limited the number of years a child could be enslaved to five years. 17.
“The polygamous Celts commonly sent their children, at age seven, to foster families to be educated. Services were paid in livestock. A freeman paid six heifers or one-and-a-half milk cows for a son. Charges for daughters were higher–eight heifers or two milk cows. Girls remained in these foster homes until they were fourteen; boys, until seventeen.” 18.
“It is probable that all of the [barbarian/Celt/Germanic] tribes practiced infanticide in one form or another.” 19.
For Vikings, “Fostering for legitimate children was the norm. Children of nobles were reared in the homes of learned friends, where it was expected they would receive kind and supportive nurturing. Strong, affectionate bonds developed in these relationships. Foster children received the same care and affection as if they were biological progeny. Foster parents were rewarded with filial respect and trust, unsevered even in death.” 22.
CHILDREN IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Almost 60 percent
of the deaths of infants in Medieval England were due to fire – probably occurring because of a combination of busy parents, wooden cradles and linen swaddling, all too close to a hearth. 1.
Over half
of European children in Medieval Europe were being cared for by wet nurses – usually for about the first two years of their lives. If families could afford it, they would send the baby to live with the wet nurse for those years, until, about the 12th century, when wealthier families began to have the wet nurses live with them, instead of sending the babies away. 2.
“Peasant children’s stark lives permitted little time for play, and the few toys that might be found in a household would have been crudely manufactured homespun items. The games and toys of childhood for the well-to-do were varied and plentiful. The universal appeal of these toys, spanning millennia, is an amazing example of how humanity’s fundamental sensibilities are genetically connected to both the past and the future. There were dolls, doll carriages pulled by mice, toy knights and soldiers, miniature windmills, balls, and additionally, playground equipment such as swings, maypoles and seesaws. Children of the manor, however, most likely had toys made by toy-makers, who began to appear, it seems, during the thirteenth century. By 1400 professional toy-makers had shops in Nuremberg and Augsbury and began to export their wares to Italy and France. Manor children also played chess and backgammon and learned falconry and fencing.” 3.
50 percent
of children in Medieval Europe died before the age of five years old. 4.
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| “A frequently cited diary entry from an Italian visiting England reads as follows:
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| ‘The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested towards their children, for having kept them at home till they arrive at the age of seven or nine years at the utmost, they put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of other people, binding them generally for another seven or nine years.’” 5.
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“Families, however, did not sever ties with their children; conversely, they always maintained contact with them. English diaries confirm this fact.” 6.
About 30 percent
of the slaves in Medieval Florence, Padua, Venice, Sicily, and Naples were children. Women who were enslaved, or the mothers of infants, were sold into slavery, and so were their children. Trying to avoid this fate, women seemed to have frequently abandoned their children: it happened so often that the city of Genoa established a foundling hospital just to take care of the abandoned babies of slaves. 7.
In the Middle Ages, "Adolescents still lived and worked around the house. Male adolescents spent time fishing and gathering rather than following the pattern of their fathers in working primarily in the fields or at a craft. Like younger children, and unlike adults, they still had more accidents in the home than in a workplace. When they did move into adult areas of work, they did so gradually, only taking up plowing and heavy fieldwork in their late teens. Even the games of teenagers were ball games and target practice, not archery contests and wrestling. Urban records, particularly apprentice contracts, provide even more convincing evidence for an adolescent life-stage. Apprenticeship in London began at about age 14 in the fourteenth century and increased to 18 in the fifteenth century. Parents putting their children into apprenticeships and masters receiving them made a contract that bound the youth to rules of behavior proscribing 'adolescent' misbehavior. They were not to wear fancy dress, participate in gaming and theater, or waste their master's money." 8.
Some cash, and four to six sheep –
the going price for a child servant in the Middle Ages. “Some families made sharecropping agreements that indentured both boys and girls to domestic service, exchanging them, for example, for four to six sheep, in and twelve livres in cash. Children generally were twelve years old when they began domestic service, and by fourteen years of age, such children were expected to pay a poll tax." 9.
“Urban children grew up in severely crowded quarters. Nearly half of the homes of craftsmen had only one room. To make more room, infants sand toddlers would be sent out to wet nurses and latent children to schools, and adolescents were apprenticed.” 10.
There was such a large number of abandoned babies in Paris, that Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) began a home for them while “In large urban areas [not limited to France] the police found a dead child in the street or sewer almost daily." 11.
“Between 1670 and 1790 the number of foundlings admitted to the Hotel-Dieu in Paris increased over tenfold from 700 per year to 7,500 per year. Between 1771 and 1773 the Hotel-Dieu recorded mortality rates between 62 percent and 75 percent. French church registries of the same period show that in the private sector the death rate among infants was only 18 percent. The Hotel-Dieu policy of contracting infants outside the hospice to wet nurses additionally contributed to infant morbidity and mortality. . . . One wet nurse was given twelve infants to care for over a twenty-year period. Not one survived.” 16.
“At Vincent de Paul’s Hôpital des Enfants Trouvés, admissions of abandoned infants rose twenty-five-fold between 1670 and 1772. Of these, nearly 75 percent were illegitimate. As in all of Europe, in years in which their were grain-crop failures, a proportionate increase in abandonment of legitimate offspring of the destitute was noted. In Spain, for example, when the price of grain increased, the rates of abandonment increased, and the number of infants deposited at the door of the Inclusa of Madrid soared. At least one-half of the infants was illegitimate.” 17.
19,000 out of 21,000
Of the 21,000 babies born in Paris in 1780, 19,000 of them were sent out of the city to be raised by wet nurses. 18.
“Meneurs ferried three to five infants in baskets hitched to the backs of donkeys. These trips sometimes took up to a week. There was no nutrition for the infants, except a rag soaked in watered wine for hydration. Infants were known to fall out of the bottoms of baskets; many died and casually were discarded on the roadside. Empty slots in the baskets quickly were filled in the next town en route, since meneurs were paid by the number of infants delivered to the hospices. . . . A law in 1773, however, did not outlaw such trade. Instead, meneurs were ordered to use plan-bottomed wagons lined with straw and covered in canvas and to assign an accompanying nurse, both to nourish infants and to ensure that none fell out of the wagons.” 19.
“[Renaissance] guild apprenticeships that had been so respected . . . in time became an anachronism. . . . less-lengthy training courses evolved; they were called fellowships or journeymanships, and adolescents were schooled in relatively short periods of time in trades such as carpentry, tanning, dyeing, and basketry. Since only one in ten journeymen attended school to learn reading and writing, journeymen could be productive immediately, even as they grew in experience.” 20.
“Mostly, families, and pointedly, children had to turn to factory work and semiskilled labor, such as brick making, in order to survive.” 21.
One-half
of all British girls, and one-third of the boys, aged five to nine years old were working full time in 1861. Full time in the 1860s was 12 to 15 hours a day. 22.
As young as three,
children were working in British and American cotton mills and other factories of the 1700s. Children were sometimes flogged if they couldn't keep up with the work. 23.
Almost 100,000
children under 15 years of age worked as domestics in 1700's London.” 24.
Almost 50 percent
of all deaths in London in 1741 were children. Of these, one-third were children under the age of two. "The figure went up to 43 percent when children three years old to ten years old were counted, and an additional 3 percent when ten to twenty year olds were added . . . . ‘Consumption’ or pneumonia was responsible for 25 percent of these deaths; ‘fevers’ caused another 25 percent; 15 percent died of confirmed tuberculosis, and 5 percent from smallpox . . . . In England overall, from 1730 to 1749, 74.5 percent of child deaths struck children under five years of age. That figure dropped to 63 percent in the years 1750 to 1769, and further still, to 51.5 percent from 1770 to 1789.” 25.
88 percent
of deaths in Dublin in the mid-1700s were children. In that period, children were 60 percent of Barcelona's deaths, 45 percent in Paris, and 40 percent in Florence and St. Petersburg. One of the main causes theorized for the high death: feeding the children with a solution that that was five percent opium. 26.
About 800,000
children three to 12 years old were listed as urchins in the 1851 English census. That was 20 percent of all children counted in the census. 27.
“The cruelty and horror of violence in the young republic were especially visible in big cities, where postrevolutionary executions were celebrated by bloodthirsty crows. it was not unusual for children to witness either executions or their aftermath – beheaded bodies transported in open carts across town. During the Reign of Terror, between May 1793 and June 1794, 1,255 were guillotined publicly in the Place de la Revolution. Over the next two months, and additional 1,270 lost their heads. So inured were children to the events and so calloused the populace that miniature toy models of “La Sainte Guillotine” were sold shamelessly in the streets, together with living sparrows as victims. . . Children were the most innocent of victims in a country filled with despair and poverty. Urban orphans of war and revolution, ‘street-wise’ and precociously hardened children, often became street urchins and vagabonds, gamins who worked as messengers, street vendors, acrobats, and scavengers who collected wood, glass, rags – anything that could be sold. Metals picked from streams paid best, at five centimes per pound.” 28.
121,000
The number of French infants abandoned in 1835. In 1809, 67,000 French infants had been abandoned. 29.
EDUCATION
In Spain, the labor participation "activity rates of married women aged 25–49 did indeed increase from 42 percent in 1991 to 57 percent in 2000. However, the difference in relation to unmarried women remains very important because it is higher than in most other EU countries. Unmarried women show a high participation rate (over 80 percent in 2000 in the 25– 49 age group), one quite close to men of the same age and marital status. Men and women are increasingly showing equal rates of school attendance and entrance into the labour market, although many hidden inequalities still remain (the choice of the type of education, type of employment and level of earnings still show gender discrimination in Spain as in other more socially advanced countries)." 41.
In Greece, "As far as generational relations are concerned, an education gap between children and parents has become apparent over time, as a result of the increase in the children’s education level. In the late 1990s, the level of educational attainment among the population between 25 and 29 years for the uppersecondary and tertiary education was respectively 3 and 2.5 times higher than that of the population between 55 and 59. The corresponding EU average for those years was only 1.5 and 1.6)." 42.
Think the generation gap is hard? The real problem may be an "education gap" –
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| In Greece, "As far as generational relations are concerned, an education gap between children and parents has become apparent over time, as a result of the increase in the children’s education level. In the late 1990s, the level of educational attainment among the population between 25 and 29 years for the uppersecondary and tertiary education was respectively 3 and 2.5 times higher than that of the population between 55 and 59. The corresponding EU average for those years was only 1.5 and 1.6)." 45.
WHAT MAKES A GROWN UP?
“And as the inner life--this is all in Western history, of course--as the inner life takes over our philosophy of work, as people start asking, What do you want to be when you grow up?' it becomes impossible to stop that question from seeping into the rest of your life. Who do you want to be with when you grow up?' That's really a large question about who you are inside, What do you want to be when you grow up?' And once it's asked, once your work is no longer handed down to you, you know, you don't wear your parents' clothes or use the loom that your parents used, but have to go invent your life for yourself . . . .” 1.
In 2001, 28 percent of women between 21 and 25 were already mothers in Sweden and the United Kingdom, when just only 12 percent were mothers in Italy. 15.
In 2001, in the U.K., half of the young people had joined the job market by age 19, but half of young people in Italy and Spain were still without a job after age 24. 16.
In Spain, "The lengthening of the youth period, with young men and women remaining longer at the parental home, is shaping gender relations in a more equalitarian direction." 22.
WHEN ARE THEY LEAVING HOME?
"In societies of Mediterranean Europe, . . . the definitive departure of young people tends to coincide more or less closely with their marriage and finding a stable job. The years between adolescent maturity (ages 18-20 years) and marriage are spent largely within the parental household. If a person gets a job during this period, he or she normally continues to live at home, a strategy that enables the young adult to save for his or her own marriage." 23.
59 percent
of Italians from 18 to 34 lived with their parents in 1998, up from about 52 percent in 1990. 29.
More than 70 percent
of Italian men under 30, and Spanish men aged 25-29, live with their parents. 30.
27 percent
of Italians age 30 to 34 live with their parents. Twice as many men live at home than women. 31.
44.7 percent
The European average percentage of young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents – but that varies dramatically by region and nation. 35.
69.6 percent
The European average percentage of boys, 16-24 years old, who live with their parents. But that varies dramatically. In Ireland, that's 77.5 percent and in Belgium, it's 83.3 percent. 36.
25 percent
of Central European men aged 25 to 29 were living with their parents in the 1990s. 37.
11 percent
of Central European women aged 25 to 29 were living with their parents in the 1990s. 38.
65 percent
of Southern European men aged 25 to 29 were living with their parents in the 1990s. 39.
44 percent
of Southern European women aged 25 to 29 were living with their parents in the 1990s. 40.
34 percent
of British young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents. 41.
59.1 percent
of Spanish young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents. 42.
56.3 percent
of Portuguese young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents. 43.
42.9 percent
of Greek young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents. 44.
55.7 percent
of Irish young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents. 45.
22.6 percent
of Finnish young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents. 46.
24.7 percent
of Danish young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents. 47.
34 percent
of Swedish young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents. 48.
25 percent
of Dutch young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents. 49.
41 percent
of French young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents. 50.
33 percent
of German young people, 16-30 years old, live with their parents. 51.
23 percent
of Austrian men born between 1966 and 1970 had not moved out of their parents' homes by the time they were 30. The median age for men leaving home was 22 years and five months old, while women leave two years earlier. 52.
Why more young people are staying home –
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| In Italy, "The most common reason given by young people living with parents . . . is that they're happy with the living arrangement." 53.
In Italy, "leaving your family to work or study is not acceptable to Italians. "People will say that something is wrong with your family, or your relationship . . . . The only legitimate reason to leave the family is marriage--something Italians are doing later and later." 54.
In a survey, of Italians age 30 to 34 living at home, about 40 percent consider their situation "normal." 55.
High rents – they can't afford anything else. 56.
High unemployment. In Spain, a job search takes an average of 28.6 months. 57.
Higher affluence and moral tolerance in the parental home, and consequently, less pressure to leave. 58.
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Young people in Northern Europe who have a lower educational level tend to stay on longer with their parents, than those with a higher level. However, the situation is the opposite in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland: young people with a higher educational level are the ones who are staying on longer in the parental household. 59.
"In England, the Netherlands, and the United States, for example, young adults often remain at home past 20 years of age, while in Spain and Portugal some people leave home before marriage and others continue to live with their parents after marriage, at least for awhile. In fact, temporary coresidence of parents and married children, and even prolonged periods of economic help, have never been infrequent, either in the past or today. Nevertheless, these moments of help were always considered as exceptional by everyone. These exceptions only underlie the great differences between northern and southern Europe on this point." 60.
LEAVING HOME – A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
"From at least the latter part of the Middle Ages until the second half of the nineteenth century or the early years of this century, it was common in rural England for young adults to leave their parental households to work as agricultural servants in other households for a prolonged period." 61.
"Where the strong family flourishes, the familial group more than the individual tends to predominate in the socialization of the young. In these contexts, the family is seen as defending its members against the difficulties imposed by social and economic realities. A child receives support and protection until he or she leaves [home] for good, normally for marriage, and even later." 66.
"In weak-family areas, the value attributed to the individual and to individualism tends to predominate. Young adults leave home, encouraged by their parents, so as to acquire the experiences they need to handle life as autonomous individuals. Leaving home at an early age is considered an important part of their education. Where the strong family flourishes, the familial group more than the individual tends to predominate in the socialization of the young. In these contexts, the family is seen as defending its members against the difficulties imposed by social and economic realities. A child receives support and protection until he or she leaves [home] for good, normally for marriage, and even later." 67.
"In northern Europe and in the United States, young adults normally abandon their parental households when they have acquired a degree of maturity so as to start out their adult lives on their own, lives that are occupied by their studies or by efforts to establish economic independence from their parents. Their jobs, even if often unstable or only seasonal, might also enable them to save for their own marriages, although nowadays this sense of saving is much less important than their effort to settle into an independent life. Often these initial forays into the adult world are made while sharing housing with friends and colleagues who are at a similar stage of their own lives. Later, often years later, these young people marry and once again start a new household, albeit this time with the intention of founding a family within the context of a stable relationship with another person." 68.
TIMING OF MARRIAGE – EUROPE
28 years
The average age at first marriage for women under the age of 50 in Western Europe in 2000. 33.
27-28 years for men, 25-26 years for women
The average age at first marriage in Western Europe in the 17th Century. 34.
25-27 years old
The average for marriage in the Netherlands in the 1500s-1600s. 35.
22-23 years old
The mean age at first marriage in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1980s. 36.
About 24 years old
The mean age at first marriage in Central and Eastern Europe in 2000. 37.
Moldova and Azerbaijan –
The only two countries of Central and Eastern Europe where the the mean age at first marriage decreased from 1990 to 2000. 38.
Everywhere else –
In all but Moldova and Azerbaijan, the mean age at first marriage in Central and Eastern Europe increased from 1990 to 2000. The age went up as much as three years in a number of these countries. 39.
In North America and in Western Europe, "First marriage continued to be postponed and so did age at first birth. More young people left the parental home to live some time on their own before cohabiting or marrying. This resulted in an increasing number of single person households of young adults." 40.
"In Spain, for example, the substantial increase since 1977 in the age at which children leave their parental households has been strictly paralleled by the increase in the age at marriage, with both indicators situated today at extremely high levels. In the United States, England, Denmark, and the Netherlands, on the contrary, leaving home long before marriage has tended to be normative behavior." 41.
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