Abstract

This keynote chapter presents main research findings on new gender roles and their implications for families and societies. It first depicts the development of family forms in Europe over the past fifty years, with a focus on increasingly diverse family biographies and the changes in the roles of women and men. It highlights that changes in women’s role have been more comprehensive, whereas in most countries the transformation of the male role has barely started. Next, views in contemporary scholarship on the interplay between the increasing family complexity and gender role changes are addressed. A detailed discussion of new challenges of transitions in and organization of family life follows, with a focus on four main topics: women’s new role and the implications for family dynamics, the gendered transition to parenthood, new gender roles in doing families, and coping strategies in family and work reconciliation under conditions of uncertainty and precariousness and impacts on fertility. A brief conclusion ends this chapter.

Highlights

  • First we present the changes in family patterns over the past fifty years, before addressing the transition of gender roles and views on their interplay with the demographic developments

  • The results show that the Dual-Earner cluster (Sweden) progressed most in the transition to involved fatherhood, followed by the Liberal cluster (United Kingdom)

  • Because the interplay between family changes and transformation of gender roles is increasingly recognized in contemporary scholarship of the family, in this chapter we addressed both processes in Europe

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Summary

Introduction

The major trends in family structures and their shifts across the industrialized world over the past decades are well known: fertility rates have declined below the level sufficient for the replacement of the population and childbearing occurs later and more often outside marriage. Too, is being postponed and is more often foregone, and couple relationships—both marital and non-marital ones—have become more fragile These changes have led to increasingly complex family compositions and to a previously unprecedented diversity of family forms and relationships over the life course. Developments related to women’s new role are seen as weakening the family and have been attributed to the first phase of the gender. Different policy contexts affect new constructions of gender in doing family in various ways, impeding convergence to a singular pattern of family life courses across countries. First we present the changes in family patterns over the past fifty years, before addressing the transition of gender roles and views on their interplay with the demographic developments.

Increasingly Diverse Family Biographies
General Family Support
Poland Romania Slovakia Slovenia
Changing Gender Roles
New Challenges of Transitions in and Organization of Family Life
The Gendered Transition to Parenthood
New Gender Roles in Doing Families
Findings
Conclusion
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