We often hear that marriage rates in the U.S. are declining. But what do trends in marriage and divorce really look like over the long run, and why? Show
In a new post, data tinkerer Randy Olson provides some clarity on those trends by pain-stakingly assembling and analyzing data on marriage and divorce rates going back to before 1870 from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. Here is Olson’s graph of the number of marriages and divorces per every 1,000 people in America since 1867: First, you can see that the common generalizations are true. As the chart shows, marriage rates have declined steadily since the 1980s. Today they are lower than any other time since 1870, including during the Great Depression. However, divorce rates today are actually slightly down compared with the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s on a per capita basis. In addition, you can see that events like World War I, World War II and the Great Depression all had a significant impact on marriage and divorce rates. Couples rushed to the altar before the wars started, as well as at their conclusion. As Olson notes, divorces also spiked after the conclusion of WWII, perhaps because some couples who had married rashly before the war realized their differences. The chart also shows an obvious drop in marriage rates during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Fewer jobs and less economic stability appears to be a popular reason for not forming new families — a trend we also saw during the Great Recession. This second chart shows the raw counts for marriages and divorces (not adjusted per capita, like the first chart): As Olson writes, the second chart makes clear that the dip in marriages and divorces in the 1960s that you see in the first chart is due in part to the post-war population boom. A surge in Baby Boomers in the 1950s and 1960s greatly increased the population; since the Boomers were almost all too young to marry, the per capita marriage rate declined. Once the Boomers got old enough to tie the knot, marriage rates rose back to pre-WWII levels. You can see an interactive version of Olson's chart here. A previous version of this post incorrectly said that the first chart showed the number of marriages and divorce per every 10,000 people. The post has been updated. You might also like:
1The baby boom is commonly regarded as a general and overwhelming phenomenon. Descriptions frequently present it as a global and massive increase in fertility rates that deeply scarred Western societies. Yet, such a vision does not account for the diversity of situations and behaviours
during the baby boom. Taking into account the heterogeneity of reproductive behaviours during the baby boom in Switzerland, this paper focusses on the people who did not participate in the rise of births during the baby boom era because they remained childless. Childless people during the baby boom are particularly interesting, as their life trajectories lack events that were frequent and highly valorised during this period. Analysis of their trajectories allows interrogating the cultural and
ideational context of the baby boom through non-normative life experiences. How can we explain the reproductive trajectories of people who did not have children in a context where most people had children, fertility rates were on the rise and family values were highly valorised? 2Starting in the 1930s in most Western countries, the baby boom began suddenly and
unexpectedly, reversing a long-lasting trend of fertility decline (Monnier, 2006). Unlike its consequences, its causes still remain unclear, and up to now, no widely accepted theory exists (Van Bavel, Reher, 2013; Calot, Sardon, 1998; Bean, 1983). A large portion of the literature on the baby boom has so far insisted on economic explanations, using aggregated data and often focussing on the specific case of the United States (Greenwood, Seshadri, Vandenbroucke, 2005; Macunovich, 2002; Butz,
Ward, 1979; Easterlin, 1961). Such hypotheses, however, have found little empirical support (Doliger, 2008). Other studies have associated the baby boom with the end of the Second World War and the relief and return of soldiers. This has been heavily criticised though, and several studies have rejected the hypothesis of the baby boom being a consequence of post-war optimism, as fertility began to recover in all Western countries long before the end of the Second World War, sometimes even before
its beginning. Fertility rates started their upward trend in the late 1930s, even in countries that did not participate in the war (Van Bavel, Reher, 2013). This was the case in Switzerland, where studies on the baby boom remain scarce. However, Calot (1998) established that, as in most Western countries, the rise of fertility rates did not start with the end of the Second World War but, rather, much earlier. The Swiss fertility rate hit a minimum in 1937, with 1.74 children
per woman. From 1938 onwards, the rate exhibited a rising trend, reaching the threshold of 2 children per woman in 1942 and a maximum of 2.68 children per woman in 1964 (figure 1). Fig. 1  Total fertility rate, 1876-2011, Switzerland3Having excluded the post-war hypothesis, recent studies have suggested that the rise of births originated from a rise in nuptiality, a marriage boom, arguing that “both the proportions ever marrying and the proportions marrying at young ages (20–25 years) were on the rise” (Van Bavel, Reher, 2013, 279). In addition to this marriage boom, marital fertility, which had been decreasing for decades, assumed an increasing trend between 1930 and 1960 in many countries (Van Bavel, Reher, 2013; Monnier, 2006). 4However, if such conclusions offer new insights into the roots of the baby boom, they do not provide explanations for why more people entered into marriage and had more children. Equally, if recent studies have improved our knowledge on the length, timing and volume of the baby boom (Van Bavel, Reher, 2013), they have also pointed out the lack of studies taking fertility differentials into consideration. This point was confirmed by Duvoisin and Oris (2013), who addressed the heterogeneity of the baby boom in Switzerland and showed that not all socio-economic and sociocultural groups of women participated equally in the rise of births. Such results call for a more in-depth analysis of the diversity of the fertility distribution in Western countries in order to improve our understanding of the inner logic of the phenomenon. 5Along this line, in this article we focus on the specific subpopulation of childless people living in Switzerland during the baby boom and who were then in their reproductive years. We look at a minority of people who had a non-normative life course in a given sociohistorical context (Hagestad, Call, 2007; Furstenberg, 2005). Normative transitions are experienced by the majority of a birth cohort, with a proper age range; they imply social stigma on those who are too precocious or too late, as well as for the “stayers”, those who are unable to realise this transition (Hareven, 1991). Consequently, we expect childless people during the baby boom to be different from the others and to have suffered from their marginal situation. 6This approach offers insights into the norms and values at that time, which is important for a better understanding of the rise in marriage and fertility. Indeed, there is a deep contrast in the explanations for the baby boom and for the following baby bust. For the latter, the theories around a “second demographic transition” (Lesthaeghe, 1995; Van De Kaa, 1987) give great attention to ideational and cultural factors that include a revision of the gender norms. Those perspectives reinforce a vision that associates the baby boom to the peak of so-called traditional family and gender values. The rising demand for marriage and children, as well as the quasi absence of divorces and out-of-wedlock births, is seen as confirmation of a model whereby housewifery was women’s ideal fate while men had to assume their breadwinner duties, a model that was sometimes violently, often smoothly rejected from 1968 onwards (Segalen, 1981). Only recently have researchers questioned this discontinuity, using qualitative materials. Catherine Bonvalet (2015) in France and Marianne Kempeneers and Isabelle Van Pevenage (2013) in Quebec collected interviews of baby boomers’ mothers. They showed that mothers pioneered changes in behaviours and in mentalities that their daughters later imposed. Caroline Rusterholz (2015a, 2015b) also examined the point of view of fathers and more generally questioned the discontinuity between the baby boom and the baby bust. By looking at the baby boom through those who stayed on the margins, our paper contributes to this emerging flow of researches. 7In the next section, we discuss the main factors related to childlessness as have been highlighted in the literature on fertility. We then describe our data as well as the mixed-methods approach we mobilised. The following section presents the statistical models we used, providing first quantitative results on the childless people, documenting their distinctiveness. Then we provide the complementary qualitative analysis drawn from in-depth interviews whereby childless people retrospectively evaluated their life course and located the absence of parenthood within. We conclude by integrating the results from both approaches. Childlessness and related factors8“Childlessness” refers to a variety of situations which lead one to remain without a child: sterility of one of the partners in the couple, infertility resulting from delayed pregnancy, rupture or lack of stable relationship or obviously, the desire not to become a parent. It is very difficult to disentangle the causes of childlessness because individual life circumstances evolve along with life-course trajectories. However socio-economic and sociocultural factors have been identified in the literature. 9So far, studies on childlessness have mainly concerned later cohorts than those who conceived the babies of the boom, focussing instead on the baby bust that characterised the following period from 1964 onwards. In this context, infertility has been regarded as a potential factor in the decrease in birth rates. Analyses first focussed on cohorts born after 1940 and mainly explored the characteristics and profiles of childless people. In the 1990s, studies started to more specifically address the issue of voluntary childlessness as an expression of new values and attitudes towards children and parenthood in post-industrial, low-fertility societies (Debest, Mazuy, Équipe de l’enquête Fecond, 2014; Debest, 2013; Donati, 2000; McAllister, Clarke, 1998; Toulemon, 1995; Jacobson, Heaton, 1991). Within the Swiss context, very few researches have focussed on childlessness. As underlined by Schlittler et al. (2000), the phenomenon is statistically difficult to investigate, as there is no national data available on childless people. Using census sheets, Wanner and Fei (2005) nonetheless provided what is, for now, the most complete statistical analysis of this phenomenon in Switzerland. Both studies focussed on post-baby boom mother cohorts though: Schlittler et al. (2000) interviewed women born between 1943 and 1952, while Wanner and Fei (2005) analysed a population born between 1940 and 1959. The same applies to the data collected in 1994-95 in the frame of the Swiss Fertility and Family Survey (Office fédéral de la statistique, 1998). On that basis, Coenen-Huther (2005) explored the wish to have children for women born after 1960 (less than 35 years old at the time of the survey), focussing on several opinion statements related to parenthood and pregnancy. 10When trying to point out the determinant factors that might explain the absence of children, statistical models have underlined a number of factors that might influence reproductive behaviours. Demographic, socio-economic and cultural characteristics have been explored. Among them, education levels have drawn particular attention. The literature highlights a negative correlation between education and fertility levels for women and a positive one for men. Robert-Bobée (2006) studied childlessness in France for cohorts born between 1943 and 1953 and observed that childlessness was more frequent for women with a high education level and for men with a low education level. These results were confirmed using other variables as proxies for the socio-economic position, such as the socio-professional category or the career trajectory: women in managerial or intellectual positions, respectively having had upward career trajectories, were more likely to be childless (Monnier, 2006). For men, the opposite relation was observed, as those belonging to employee and worker categories and those who did not move up the socio-professional scale were more likely to remain childless. Wanner and Fei (2005) drew the same conclusions for a population of 861.494 Swiss women born between 1940 and 1959 (census data): those who achieved a tertiary education degree were more likely to have no children than all other women. These observations are in line with economic approaches to fertility that underline the opportunity cost of children, especially for women (Becker, 1991). For more-qualified and higher-income women, both the real and symbolic price of having children increases. Higher education attainment also means a longer period spent studying and, thus, a later entry into paid employment and a potential postponement of union formation and childbearing (Requena, Salazar, 2014). 11Research on the factors of (in)fertility has also found marital behaviours to have an impact on reproductive behaviours. Marital behaviours were particularly influential during the baby boom: “[…] it became clear that rising nuptiality was a key factor behind the rise of period fertility: the baby boom clearly involved a marriage boom as well” (Van Bavel, Reher, 2013, 271). Various empirical studies have come to the same conclusion. The analysis by Kiernan (1989) of a British cohort born in 1946 showed that components of the matrimonial calendar were clearly associated with childlessness. Focussing on the French context, Robert-Bobée (2006) pointed out that age at first union significantly impacted fertility and, thus, childlessness: the later people entered into their first union, the higher their probability was of not having any children. Interestingly, the same study showed that ruptures such as separation or divorce appeared to play a different role for men and women: while ruptures were always linked with a higher chance of childlessness for women, they were associated with a lower probability for men if they re-entered a new union shortly. 12Part of the literature has also explored the potential inheritance of fertility behaviours. Régnier-Loilier (2006) stated that social or geographical homogamy enhances family background reproduction. Similarly, several studies observed a positive relationship between the number of siblings and fertility behaviours, the people having more siblings being likely to have more children (Desplanques, 1985; Deville, 1979). Kiernan (1989) concluded that women who were only children were more likely to be childless than those with siblings. According to a study conducted using Danish data, “[…] the effects of overall sibship size on fertility are substantial and persistent among the most recent generations in contemporary societies” (Murphy, Knudsen, 2002, 247). In France, Robert-Bobée (2006) showed that women with at least four siblings were significantly less likely to remain without children. The effect of the variable was not significant for lower numbers of siblings (0 to 3), however. For men, the size of the sibship did not explain childlessness. The number of siblings thus seems to impact higher fertility more than childlessness, but empirical results are divergent. 13Besides family inheritance, social interactions in general have also been thought to influence fertility behaviours: what people observe in kin’s and friends’ behaviours and attitudes, as well as the feedback they receive on their way of life, might impact their own reproductive preferences and decisions. In a qualitative study of married Italian women aged 30 to 39, Bernardi (2003) observed four types of possible social influence: social learning, social pressure, subjective obligation, and contagion. In the context of the baby boom, at a time when the fertility rise was general and parental roles were valorised, such channels of influence might have played a role in the increasing number of childbirths. Regarding childless people, they might either have seen parenthood experiences around them as counter-examples rather than as incentives or have been surrounded by other childless people. 14Such factors are situated at an individual or interactional level, even though socio-economic mechanisms often contribute to determining them. 15However, reproductive behaviours might also be the result of social norms and values and their influence on individuals’ behaviours. Religion is a central issue against this background. Several studies have explored the impact of religious affiliation on fertility differentials, mainly focussing on fertility decline and demographic transition. Within the Swiss context, Praz (2009, 2007) compared Catholic and Protestant areas, showing that different religious backgrounds resulted in various institutional configurations (including aspects as diverse as schooling systems, population policies and gender roles) influencing reproductive behaviours. 16Other cultural elements such as family values and gender systems are thought to shape individuals’ preferences and expectations, providing distinctive role models for men and women (Janssens, 2009; Kling, 2007; Praz, 2007). This is again of particular interest in the context of the baby boom and the almost undisputed adhesion to the nuclear male-breadwinner family model (i.e., high marriage rates, low age at marriage, low divorce) during this period. The roots of such adhesion can be found in the socialisation process of the cohorts who engendered the baby boom. In the French case, Bonvalet (2015) found that school and youth movements like scouting and guiding played a key role in the diffusion of the stay-at-home-mother model. These institutions helped to promote and diffuse the male-bread-winner values from the bourgeoisie to the rest of society (Bard, 2001, as cited in Bonvalet, 2015, 76). Data and method17To address childlessness issues during the Swiss baby boom, we used original data provided by the Vivre, Leben, Vivere (VLV) survey. VLV is an interdisciplinary surveyed on the living and health conditions of people aged 65 and older living in Switzerland. It was conducted in 2011 and 2012 by the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Gerontology and Vulnerability of Geneva University. The survey took place among five heterogeneous regions of Switzerland (Geneva, Central Wallis, Bern, Basel and Ticino), which represent the complexity of the country in terms of cultural, linguistic and urban/rural areas (figure 2). Fig. 2 Geographical situation and sociocultural characteristics of the five regions in the VLV sample*Geographical situation and sociocultural characteristics of the five regions in the VLV sample** The main confession may differ from historical confession. However historical confession have deeply impacted institutional organization of Swiss regions (Monnot, 2013) 18The VLV survey consists of two complementary databases that include 3.659 respondents randomly selected from the administration’s registries, stratified by age, sex, and region. The first database contains questions on physical and psychological health, social relations and participation, social values, economic wealth, and couple and family life trajectories. It also includes questions regarding respondents’ children. The second database consists of data collected through a life calendar and provides information regarding residential, familial, professional and health trajectories (for details about the VLV survey, see Oris, 2016; and Ludwig, Cavalli, Oris, 2014). These complementary databases quite precisely document the way the elderly have constructed their economic, human and social capitals during their lives. They enabled us to reconstitute the reproductive and marital trajectories of 1.190 women and 1.299 men born between 1906 and 1941: the baby boomer parent cohorts. [1] Such a survey thus provides the opportunity to study more in depth the individual mechanisms at the origin of the baby boom and to take into account the interactions between life domains. 19The VLV survey also offers the unique opportunity to study both women’s and men’s reproductive trajectories. Most of the studies on fertility have exclusively targeted women’s behaviours and attitudes. According to Edvinsson and Kling (2010, 119), “male perspectives on the practice of birth control are often ignored”. Since childbearing is commonly regarded as a feminine issue, men are often neglected by research on reproduction and fertility. There is thus a dramatic lack of knowledge on men’s behaviours and attitudes towards these issues. Such blindness on the male side of reproduction is problematic, as men’s experiences of reproduction have been shown to be different from those of women and qualitative studies have demonstrated that fertility preferences are not always harmonious within couples (Edvinsson, Kling, 2010). Moreover, researches focussing on the fertility transition have highlighted the predominant role of men regarding birth control practices until as late as the 1970s, in a context when the most common contraceptive methods were withdrawal and abstinence (Oris, 2007; Fisher, 2006; see also Rusterholz, 2015b, for a more nuanced perspective). 20That said, it is obvious that any retrospective data (Brée et al., 2016) are affected by a bias: those who participated in the VLV survey in 2011-12 were the survivors. In another paper, we verified that the sample composition by socio-economic and sociocultural characteristics is compatible with what we know from the Swiss society at that time. More specifically, the coherence of the fertility levels and the childless proportion of the VLV data have been compared with tables from Swiss Statistics (Duvoisin, Oris, 2013). Taking a look at the VLV fertility data, the measure of the family size reveals an obvious convergence towards the two-child family model during the baby boom in Switzerland (figure 2). Heterogeneity remains observable though, as significant numbers of women and men had no child, only one or more than two children. A non-negligible part of the population thus remained childless, which clearly accounts for the diversity of fertility behaviours during the baby boom. More specifically, within the VLV data, 208 women and 165 men remained childless, representing 17.5% of the former and 12.7% of the latter. As noted above, these proportions are in line with aggregated national data. [2] Fig. 3 Women and men by completed fertility, VLV sampleWomen and men by completed fertility, VLV sample21Using surveys to study childless old people has already been done (Dykstra, Hagestad, 2007), including to look at pathways across the life course (Keizer, Dykstra, Jansen, 2008; Hagestad, Call, 2007). Our paper, however, relies on an original combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The VLV survey provides us with extensive quantitative data on individuals’ life trajectories along with several socio-economic, demographic and value indicators. We developed binomial logistic regression models in order to investigate the socio-economic and demographic factors that might explain why certain women and men remained childless during the baby boom. Through this approach, we aim to define possible profiles of childless people and highlight regularities within childless trajectories. 22Researchers, however, more and more agree on the need to articulate aggregated data with qualitative material, arguing that mixed methods allow one type of approach to complement the other and compensate for limitations. Such a complementary perspective relies on the idea that different types of data produce different types of knowledge (Small, 2011). While quantitative data provide insights into the macrosocial regularities of life trajectories and capture a global picture of population dynamics, qualitative life stories help to make sense of life events and transitions along individual pathways (Heinz, 2003). Scholars working on fertility and reproduction issues have demonstrated the difficulty of statistical models to provide satisfactory explanations for fertility shifts. Fertility depends on multiple factors, often highly individual, that are not easy to capture within theoretical models (Wanner, Fei, 2005 ; De Bruijn, 2002 ; Joshi, David, 2002). These papers argue that quantitative approaches have a hard time providing explanations for “why people acted as they did, how they came to change their behaviour, and of course the impact of these changed demographic behaviours on other aspects of their lives and on larger social institutions and social interactions — these can only be understood in terms of a complex web of relationships involving cultural norms, social structure, political power, and economic relations” (Kertzer, 1997, 839). 23Life history thus provides a complementary approach to quantitative analysis of the VLV data, allowing us to grasp the cultural and ideational dimensions of the phenomenon. Qualitative approaches have a growing legitimacy and place in demographic studies, but researches specifically focussed on the baby boom remain rare (see, however, Sánchez-Domínguez, Lundgren, 2015, on Spain and Sweden). More has been written in relation to qualitative analysis of the demographic transition and the fertility decline (Fisher, 2006; Bryand, 2004; Szreter, Nye, van Poppel, 2003), with results advocating for the development of such an approach. 24In addition to statistical models, we therefore developed a qualitative approach through in-depth retrospective interviews. We followed a sequential design in collecting the data, using interviews to complement statistical analyses and questioned the mechanisms lying behind individuals’ reported behaviours (Small, 2011). Such interviews represent the potentiality of understanding reproductive behaviours directly from individuals’ experiences. They allowed us to interrogate the way childless people perceived their non-parenthood and how they articulated this specificity within their personal trajectories. Life stories also add a longitudinal perspective and allowed us to examine non-reproductive life courses within the coherence of a whole life and according to people’s own words. Through a micro-level approach, we could reach a better understanding of how norms and values are experienced in individual people’s lives. Considering time and aging issues, interviewing this population is probably our last chance to capture elderly voices and testimonies on fertility behaviours during the baby boom and to contribute to the oral history of this period. 25The VLV database provides exceptional access to possible interviewees, greatly facilitating the population sampling process. From the surveys we selected a subsample of people of both sexes born between 1919 and 1941 and living in the three linguistic regions of Switzerland, in both urban and rural areas, stratified in three groups according to their experience of parenthood: the childless, those who had two children (the emerging norm) and those who had large families. Forty-six semi-structured interviews were completed between June 2014 and June 2015, including fifteen of childless individuals (9 women and 6 men). 26An interview grid was built in order to grasp the widest possible view of fertility determinants. Drawing on the literature presented above, the grid explored the individual, interactional and macrosocial levels, addressing interviewees’ childhood, education, occupation, family and friend networks, and personal life, including possible marriages and/or divorces as well as children-related questions. It also integrated the life course perspective through the investigation of the interdependence between different dimensions of life (Heinz, Huinink, Weymann, 2009). Following the VLV’s life calendars, which provided information about distinct spheres, the interviews included questions on geographical mobility (travel and migration episodes), work, family, and health to try to illuminate their reciprocal influence. The interviews took the shape of a life story narrative, where interviewees were invited to tell about their lives, starting from their childhood. They were free to choose what to talk about and in what order. Questions were asked by the interviewer on the topics and fields that had remained unspoken by the interviewee. The interviews lasted from one to two hours. Needless to say, we use here only a part of this material. Who were the childless? A quantitative approachWere childless people a distinct population?27Using logistic regression analyses, we modelled the impact of different factors on childlessness during the baby boom. Our models included socio-economic, demographic, and sociocultural variables, which are presented below, going from macro-contextual to individual dimensions. The sociocultural background of the respondents was estimated through their place of residence in order to explore more in depth the potential impacts of cultural contexts on reproductive behaviours. Switzerland comprises several religious and linguistic regions, each of them being under the influence of distinct cultural areas (France, Italy and Germany). Such influences resulted in different patterns of fertility according to the cantons (Wanner, 2000). On a smaller scale, we also introduced the commune of residence as an indicator of the degree of urbanisation. We would expect urbanised contexts to be linked with better access to education structures, diverse cultural influences and less-traditional value orientations. 28As shown above (figure 1), the baby boom in Switzerland lasted 27 years. The parents of the baby boomers were thus born in various birth cohorts. In fact, considering the length of the baby boom, those who were born at the end could be the children of the first cohorts. All of them hit their reproductive period during the baby boom years in Switzerland, but previous researches have suggested that fertility behaviours might have differed among them (Duvoisin, Oris, 2013). In order to grasp the possible changes in fertility behaviours during the baby boom years, we separated our sample into five distinct birth cohorts. 29At an individual level, we introduced a variable reporting the level of education. As discussed earlier in this paper, educational attainment seems to have an opposite influence on men than women: highly educated women are arguably more likely to remain childless, while it is the less-educated part of the male population that is more likely to remain so. We also included two more variables capturing micro-level characteristics: number of siblings, as a proxy of family inheritance, and religious affiliation, as a measure of the persistence of the “Catholic doctrine of procreation” (Praz, 2009). 30In a second regression model, we also included three variables of opinion, measuring the degree of adherence to social norms and values. The first one was the evaluation by the respondents of their own childhood, on a scale ranging from very happy to quite unhappy. As studies have highlighted the potential inheritance of fertility behaviour from one generation to another, people’s own experience of childhood might influence their fertility preferences. In addition to religious affiliation, we also included an indicator of adhesion to religious principles. Such indicators are arguably better estimates of individual behaviours than mere affiliation. Lesthaeghe and Wilson (1982) showed, for example, that the effective influence of churches on social and political institutions (estimated through secularisation indices) had a greater influence on couples’ behaviours during the European fertility transition than religious affiliation. When religious authorities play an active role in society, churches develop more incentives that encourage people to conform and are, in turn, more likely to influence demographic behaviours (McQuillan, 2004). In order to measure adhesion, respondents were asked about the extent to which they tried to put religious principles into practice in all aspects of their lives. With the purpose of capturing the influence of the sociocultural context, we finally introduced an opinion question on gender roles: respondents were asked to report how much they agreed with the idea that women’s place was at home. We used this variable as a proxy for cultural adhesion to normative values about family and gender differences. These last two factors are of course reflecting the values of the respondents at the time of the survey, several decades after the baby boom. Based on a social psychology perspective, we made the hypothesis of stability in personal values. Indeed, “during our youth and early adult years events occur that shape our personality, determine our identity and guide the course of our life” (Draaisma, 2012, 195). Statements formulated at the time of the survey are thus likely to remain in accordance with attitudes during participants’ reproductive years, an assumption that we checked, however, through the analyses. These three variables related to social norms and values were included in a second phase in order to assess their possible influence on the other explanatory factors. Finally, given the different expectations and roles of men and women in society, we divided the sample and tested the variables for each population separately. 31The first regression model (table 1) indeed points out different results for women and men. For women, the contextual effect of the canton does not exist. However, there is a significant relationship between childlessness and the place of residence (rural/urban): women living in urban areas were most likely to remain childless, even when controlling for their education level. This result could indicate a preference of women with non-normative trajectories to live in urban areas where social control is lower. 32Birth cohort also impacts female childlessness, as younger women in our sample are less likely to remain childless. The women of this generation (1937-41) hit the mean age at first childbirth (25.6 years old) right at the time when total fertility was at its maximum, around 1964. They were, therefore, the ones who contributed to the peak of fertility, so it is not a surprise that they were less likely to be childless. This is not an explanation, just another indication of the data coherence. Tab. 1 Logistic regression on childlessness, VLV sampleLogistic regression on childlessness, VLV sample*** p<0.01 ** p<0.05 * p<0.1 33Among individual variables, the level of education is a significant factor for women. In line with the hypotheses presented earlier, we observe a negative relation between childlessness and education level. Higher educated women are more likely to skip motherhood from their life course, which is confirmed by the distribution of education levels among childless women (table 2). Women with a tertiary degree are overrepresented among childless women in all birth cohorts. Tab. 2 Women completed fertility by level of education and by birth cohort (%)Women completed fertility by level of education and by birth cohort (%)34On the contrary, there is no significant impact of the number of siblings or religious affiliation. As opposed to the first fertility transition, the distinction between Catholic and Protestant is not so clear during the baby boom era. Finally, none of the variables added in the second model has an effect on female childlessness. Surprisingly, these normative values do not have any influence. 35In regards to men, none of the variables introduced in the models has a significant impact on the state of being childless. Quantitative modelling seems inconclusive for male childlessness. Exploring married people’s childlessness36There is an important distinction to be made between two profiles of childless people: those who stayed single and those who married (Rowland, 2007). Although this distinction seems obvious, it reveals interesting features. Within the childless population, men and women show different marital patterns. A majority of childless women never married (54.4%). As the baby boom era was a time when marriage and procreation were closely linked, [3] this observation is not very surprising. In such a context, remaining single should be a powerful explanation for childlessness. The situation for men is different though. Only 33.3% of childless men were never married. In such a context, this observation can be startling as these men were at high risk to have children but did not. Therefore, single life should not be considered a sufficient explanation for childlessness, and further variables should be tested. Considering childless married couples, it seems obvious that some of them simply could not have children. However, the frequency of biological infertility is hard to measure, and it is surely not the only explanation. [4] Against the backdrop of rising marital fertility that characterises the baby boom years (Van Bavel, Reher, 2013), the behaviour of married but childless couples needs to be investigated. 37Table 3 shows the result of a logistic regression including only married men and women. In addition to the variables used in the previous model, we introduced two variables related to marital life: the age at first union and a dummy variable for breakdown (widowhood or divorce) before 50. Tab. 3 Logistic regression on childlessness, married people of VLV sampleLogistic regression on childlessness, married people of VLV sample*** p<0.01 ** p<0.05 * p<0.1 38This second analysis brings some new results whose interpretation is sometimes quite puzzling. For instance, married women who regarded their childhood as very happy were surprisingly more likely to remain childless than those who reported a decently happy or (quite) unhappy childhood. In the case of men, some factors have an influence on childlessness. Unlike literature results concluding that there is no relationship between the number of siblings and the size of the family for men (Robert-Bobée, 2006; Kiernan, 1989), married men who were only children and those with only one sibling were more likely to remain childless. The number of siblings thus seems to also impact childlessness for married men but not for married women, at least in our sample. 39Moreover, the level of education is also significant among men, showing an inverse U-shape: compulsory and tertiary-degree education recipients behave likewise while intermediate-education degree recipients are more likely to remain without any child. To some extent, this relation is in line with the study of Robert-Bobée (2006) on the first baby boomers’ cohorts in France, which demonstrates the existence of the same relationship between socio-professional categories and male childlessness (men of intermediate occupations are more likely to remain childless). However, and contrary to the results of our analyses of the whole population (ever married and never married), the educational level is not significant in the modelling of married, childless women. How can we explain such a shift of education attainment for women from significant for the whole population to insignificant for married women only? Considering the close dependency of parenthood on marriage during this period, it suggests that the effect of education on childlessness in our first model could be understood as an effect on their marital status. In other words, a longer education increased the probability of a single life, from which childlessness was a consequence. Within a married population, this effect is not observable anymore and other factors emerge. 40Finally, the variables related to marital life prove to have a great impact on childlessness (for married women especially, since both age at first marriage and separation have a significant and impressive impacts on childlessness). This confirms the results highlighted by Kiernan (1989) but only for women. For married men, age at first union is also associated with childlessness, but breakdowns are not. Hagestad and Call (2007, 1338) found similar results on US and Dutch data and concluded that “delayed transitions had domino effects and blocked second chances at securing an economic base and becoming a parent”. 41Overall, those regression analyses confirm the necessity of distinguishing between married and never-married people and between men and women in order to understand the mechanisms underlying childlessness. Among the married, women’s childlessness appears to be prominently influenced by marital trajectories, while for men, even if age at marriage significantly and importantly impacts childlessness, family inheritance and educational level tend also to be linked. Qualitative results: rational behaviours questioned42The statistical analyses so far have portrayed distinctive profiles and only a few significant factors regarding childlessness among men and women. Such results provide insights on global trends within our population. The life-story interviews bring different and complementary contributions to this first set of results, calling for further reflections on the notions of rationality and rational choices when reproductive behaviours are concerned. Indeed, the most striking element coming out of interviewees’ narratives about their lives is the absence of rational decision-making processes concerning having children. Interviewees told stories about their lives without mentioning any decision about having children. In many cases, they did not even talk about childlessness until the interviewer addressed the topic, as if what we might regard as a central specificity of their lives was just a trivial aspect in their eyes. 43The literature on fertility commonly divides childless people between those who could not have children and those who decided at some point not to have children. Such an alternative between not being able and not wanting to have children implies a certain degree of rationality regarding reproductive behaviours: either people want to have children but cannot or they rationally decide not to have children. Our analyses suggest a third hypothesis, which is well supported by our interviews. As Donati (2000) stated, the opposition between two rigid categories, voluntary versus involuntary childlessness, is an impasse. It does not allow to grasp the multiple and sometimes contradictory effects of life-course events on individual trajectories. Understanding childlessness might thus start from giving up the assumption that personal decisions are the origin of reproductive behaviours such as becoming a parent, postponing childbirth or remaining childless (Donati, 2000, 103). In the interviews, in most of the cases, the absence of children appears to result from life circumstances rather than from anticipated decisions. This confirms the observation made by Sauvain-Dugerdil (2005) or Arnaud Régnier-Loilier and Daniele Vignoli (2011) that fertility intentions might not be good predictors for completed fertility. Reproductive trajectories are the results of situated choices within specific pathways, individual temporalities and life events (see also Huinink, Kohli, 2014; Liefbroer, 2009). 44This was particularly striking in the case of men. When we asked one man whether he had children, he answered, “No. As for why, I don’t know. I can’t answer that” (LS). Another man, who married a woman who was ten years older than him when he was 36, explained that when he got married, it was too late to have children and that before that, his life was too busy to think about even having a relationship: “I didn’t have time before. I went every weekend to the mountains. I didn’t have time” (HW). The same observation was made by Donati (2000) in her study of childless people in France. Men interviewees were convinced not to have actually made any real choice regarding either parenthood or childlessness. Life events had resulted in their childless state, without them thinking about the issue or really considering it a problem afterwards (Donati, 2000, 39). For only two of them, childhood had left bad memories, and one explicitly formulated that he did not want to have children for this reason. Additionally, his life story seemed to have been highly influenced by historical and socio-economic circumstances, since he was living in Italy during the Second World War, where living conditions were extremely difficult, even more for non-Italian people who were not allowed to work. [5] Otherwise, a few men wanted to live as bachelors and enjoy life and ultimately “just missed the time for marriage”. 45As regards women, different patterns emerge. Because motherhood was a very normative event in the life of women, especially during a period when the compliance to the norms of marriage and family was as high as it was during the baby boom, we would expect childlessness to have generated self-reflective thoughts. At a time when around 85% of the population married and more than 85% of women became mothers, following a different path was marginal (Calot, 1998). [6] Yet, like male interviewees, women did not report having made early decisions regarding their reproductive life. They were planning neither to have nor avoid having children. They simply ended up not having any. More than men though, women interviewees exhibited and formulated a certain distance regarding conjugal and family norms. Their trajectories reflected at some points a choice not to live by the common normative model of marriage and family. Only one, coming from an upper-class family, mentioned some family pressure to comply with the norm, but all the others denied having been pressed. They acted according to their feeling that married life was not what they wanted and made alternative choices. In most cases, these choices did not directly concern whether to have children though; they occurred beforehand. They experienced conjugal and life decisions which did not really entail a reflection on children and motherhood. For example, one woman from a popular family in Ticino, had an unpleasant experience with a fiancée and then stayed single, which was appreciated by her father since she was the one who took care of him in his old age. Another woman in Wallis had a first husband who lived “like a bachelor” and did not want children, while the second one already had three children. Remaining without a child of her own was not a problem for her though: “It never came to my mind”. 46Being childless thus appeared as a consequence of these choices, usually without leading to reflective thoughts on the matter. Like men, female interviewees described their lack of children as a factual matter that, in most of the cases, did not really cause thinking or regrets, and, similar to marriage, they unanimously deny having suffered from any social pressure. Even if they maybe made a choice not to enter married life and expressed sadness about hurting their (potential) husband in the process, they do not have any regret about their choice. 47AR was proposed to by a man who “liked her and whom she also liked”. He wanted to marry her, start a family and open a restaurant with her, but she could not imagine herself working in a restaurant all her life: 48“Me, working in a restaurant until midnight… This is how it was back in these days, people used to smoke, there was smoke… I never liked that. And I did not have such a good health. I had respiratory problems… […]. So I told him I could not, I could not work in a restaurant every night. I considered it at length… It was really sad… And now still… it is the only thing I feel guilty about. (AR)” 49For another woman interviewee, marriage was only a short experience, as she realised after a few months that she did not want such a life. She described her marriage as “the total mistake of her life”: 50“It lasted 9 months, no more. Then I said “It is not possible. It is not my life.” Why? Because at that time, managers’ wives did not work, could not work. There was a certain standard. But I said “Never mind the standard, never mind anything, I can’t.” […] I gave in to pressure, thinking “He’s a so nice guy… - I was 27 - …it would be about time you get married etc. etc.” […] I gave in to pressure, which I should never have and I will regret it until my last day… because I caused misfortune and sorrow to a man who had nothing to do with it.” (JE) 51Recent studies on voluntary childlessness in France improve our understanding of the reasons why people choose not to have children. What they mainly formulate is their feeling not to be able to become adequate parents. Formulating their reasons, they bring out the latent idea of good parenthood as they perceive it (Debest, 2013). In a similar way, the single women we interviewed appeared to have felt they would not fit in married life because of the current standards used to shape it. They felt that they could not meet the expectations associated with married life. Their trajectories mostly reveal a rejection of marriage and gender norms. In turn, this rejection influenced their reproductive life. Unlike voluntary childlessness as expressed in the late 20th and early 21st century, the norms that they did not fulfil were not those of parenthood but those of marriage and conjugality. However, parenthood being hardly thinkable outside of marriage at that time, their conjugal decisions had a direct influence on their reproductive life, leading them not to have children. 52The life-course perspective makes it possible to grasp the interdependence of individual, institutional and historical times (Heinz, Huinink, Weymann, 2009). Our interviews with childless people clearly demonstrate such intertwining, but the reciprocal influence of micro-, meso- and macro-dynamics does not impact only life courses, making each trajectory a unique combination of the three. Within each pathway, different logics can also play a role according to the time and context. The interview of LR is a very good example to illustrate the complexity and multiplicity of factors which can finally result in permanent childlessness. 53LR was born in 1920 in Geneva to a middle-class family. She was married for eight years, from twenty-five to thirty-three years old. The couple had no children and found out that the husband was sterile due to a disease he contracted as a child. Biological causes were thus the first reason for her childlessness. When LR was 33, the couple faced conjugal difficulties and got divorced. After some time, LR involuntarily became pregnant and decided to get an abortion. This time, personal, social and institutional logics were involved. It is interesting to note that her narrative regarding this decision is more related to the issue of marriage than to the question of motherhood. The main reason she did not want to have this baby was because she did not want to marry again, and having a child without being married was unthinkable. This illustrates once again the tight association between marriage and parenthood. However, normative constraints were not the only driving force behind her refusal to be a single mother. She also reported having aborted partly because single mothers would then be placed under the supervision of social services. She flatly rejected this eventuality and preferred having an abortion. 54Her trajectory exhibits the game-of-life circumstances we mentioned above. Without ever mentioning an anterior decision or wish to have or not to have children, she was placed in successive personal and institutional configurations which led her to (make the decision to) remain childless. 55A different story also demonstrates the capacity of the institutions to impact life course. For instance, a couple who was sterile and stayed married but “the children, they didn’t come.” The bride longed for motherhood and wanted to adopt. She speaks about the adoption procedure: “We went 2, 3 times [we do not know where exactly] but they made such a mess”. Living in Ticino, the woman as a housewife and the man as a mason, they were considered not wealthy enough to adopt. “We gave up.” 56The importance of health problems, and more generally of life accidents, must not be underestimated. Some couples were affected not only by sterility but also diseases that could impact their lives. A musician in Basel married a Swiss woman who survived cancer in the first year of their marriage. She survived, but they stayed childless, stating that childlessness was a matter of fact, not a choice. A woman in Bern lost her husband in an accident. She reconstructed her life incredibly by going back to school and becoming a psychiatrist for children. She had some relationships but did not want to marry again, would not consider having an out-of-wedlock child and did not believe that motherhood could have been compatible with a job she loved. She is one of the two ever-married interviewees who expressed regret (“Yes, of course, even today when I see mothers with their children, I say to myself that I missed that”), but at the same time, she did not feel that childlessness was imposed on her: “No, I chose it.” Indeed, she was definitively the actor in her life, but her decisions depended on life circumstances and social environments that were far out of her control. 57Although it refers to a unique human story, a last testimony is highly significant. A woman in Basel came from a traditional family in which working and being married were not compatible. She studied and became a teacher in a secondary school. She had a relationship with a man, the only man of her life, who was married. We could assume this is the reason why she stayed childless, but she explains that as a teenager, she had decided that she would not have children. According to her, she was disgusted by her parental family life in which her mother always favoured her brothers and did not take care of her daughters “I didn’t want to be like that, never.” She affirms she made a choice, although we cannot imagine what would have happened if her lover was not married when she met him. As she said, “So, it was solved.” In this situation, the three of them (including the wife, who knew about the situation) considered divorce unthinkable. Social pressure eventually came from the director of the school where she was employed, who considered her relation with a married man as scandalous and threatened to fire her. In the end, the interviewed woman worked for 30 years in the same school and now says: “Yes, today nobody would care. In fact, I was a pioneer [she laughs]. Yes.” 58Focussing on later generations of women (born between 1943 and 1959) in France, Donati (2000) relates women’s decisions not to have children with the autonomy claims that characterised the value shift of the late 1960s and 1970s towards women’s emancipation and, more generally, towards individualisation and personal fulfilment: “The trajectories […] claiming for female autonomy are the “purest” expressions of social processes leading the refusal of children in those generations of men and women who were 20 in the 70s. They are part of a general dynamic, more or less conscious, of rupture with the private life models of the married couples with children” (Donati, 2000, 104). Our analyses show that a similar logic could be observed for earlier cohorts who grew up in a different socio-economic and cultural context in which the norms of marriage and family were hardly disputed. Going against the hegemonic norms and values of this period, the childless women we interviewed exhibited atypical behaviours and attitudes towards their lives. They followed uncommon paths for women at that time and prioritised personal aspirations over gender roles. When asked about the fact that she never had children, JE answered: “I do not have any maternal drive, I think. [Interviewer: You did not particularly want to have children?] No. No, I wanted to travel! So, I did not miss it [having children].” 59In her case, travelling was a strong desire, combined with a refusal to be a housewife. Over marriage and family life, she gave priority to her professional aspirations and worked in international cooperation. Geographical mobility appeared to play a role in other interviewees’ pathways as well, but in a different manner. Besides the difficult situation already presented above of a male interviewee who lived as a foreigner in Italy during the Second World War, other respondents mentioned geographical mobility in their life courses, occurring at specific times. Two female interviewees spent several months in London immediately following a difficult personal experience. In both cases, personal and conjugal decisions were involved, and the decision to go abroad reflected their need to re-centre on themselves. 60In line with the conclusions drawn by Donati (2000), our interviews support the idea of a wide range of intermediate positions between deliberate refusal and biological inability. As she states, “the game of life circumstances” is often the reason why people remain childless, without them having chosen either to have or not to have a child. In order to understand the paths leading to childlessness, there is thus a need to consider life trajectories resulting from dynamics that are situated in between the two well-defined and easily understandable visions of rational choice on one side and biological determinism on the other side. Final discussion61This paper attempted to improve our understanding of the still rather unexplored episode of the baby boom in Switzerland. Against the idea of the baby boom as overwhelming and involving all social groups, we broke down the phenomenon to investigate its heterogeneity. Our study has focussed on childless people, a population whose fertility behaviour was rather atypical in such a context of high fertility rates. We used a sequential mixed-methods approach, combining the original data provided by the VLV survey and in-depth interviews with childless people born between 1919 and 1941 who were selected among the VLV participants. We were able to include men in our analyses and shed light on the discrepancy between male and female logics regarding reproductive pathways. Regression analyses have identified only a limited number of factors differentiating the childless from the others. Over the whole population, in line with the literature on fertility, our results highlighted the impact of education for women and that urban, highly educated women were more likely to remain childless, essentially because they married less. However, in our whole population of male interviewees, none of the variables introduced in the model showed a significant impact on childlessness. Within both men and women without child, those who married were even more specific, since they were highly at risk of having children in that time but still did not. Quantitative analyses indicate firstly that women with a high level of education remained childless because they married less, and secondly that among the ever-married women, both a late entry into marriage and breakdowns demonstrated a significant impact. In a period where the age at first marriage has not been as low in Europe since at least the 16th century (Monnier, 2006), those who delayed this transition were, on average, less inclined than the others towards a family life. Additionally or separately, people whose union revealed to be frail and ended up with a rupture tended unconsciously or consciously to avoid motherhood. In the case of ever-married men, age at marriage also appeared to impact childlessness, but the occurrence of ruptures had no effect, probably because men have a higher probability to remarry than women. Only a few other variables proved to be significant for married men: the number of siblings and the level of education with a higher risk for childlessness in the middle class. 62Life-stories interviews brought different and original results, offering a complementary view to our statistical approach. They reaffirmed, especially in the case of single women, the central impact of marriage on reproductive trajectories. More specifically, they showed that conjugal decisions prevailed over reproductive choices. Women appeared to have made choices about marriage and conjugal issues, not about motherhood. Their marital choices had consequences on their reproductive lives, but this seemed not to be submitted to any rational decision-making process. Against all social expectations, they escaped marriage, and some of them expressed a feeling of incompatibility with the normative feminine role they were supposed to assume. Without expressing virulent emancipation claims, they rejected marriage and gender roles. In this respect, their attitude did not match the hegemonic norms of their time and ignored the valorisation of family life and motherhood for women. On the male side, the bachelors also rejected the dominant norms, but this was hidden behind the retrospective story of a bohemian life, seen as an ambivalent source of pride for old men suffering now from frailty and solitude. 63The life histories of the married childless appear simultaneously similar and different. They highlight the importance of life accidents, including health problems, and how these challenged their life course and life choices, sometimes provoking real turning points, making a difference in what Bulcroft and Teachman (2004) called “the ambiguous construction […] of a childless or childfree life course”. It is also in those difficult moments that, following Karl-Ulrich Mayer (2004), we see “how history, societies and institutions define and shape life courses.” The role of institutions which prevented a couple from adopting a child or appeared as an important threat for an unwed mother leading a woman to abort illustrates the conservatism of Swiss society of that time, which is well-documented in other domains (Burgnard, 2015). Moreover, in a life-course perspective, Swiss data confirm the importance of timing. A delayed and de-structured life course was a pathway to childlessness. Like in the United States and the Netherlands, late marriages and marital ruptures are sources of childlessness that have grown in importance after the baby boom but can already been observed during it (Keizer, Dykstra, Jansen, 2008; Hagestad, Call, 2007). 64This makes the fact that none of the interviewees evoked any social pressure, neither from the family, the in-laws, the friends, the neighbours nor the colleagues, even more striking. Further, when they were explicitly asked about this, they denied it. We definitively expected people with a non-normative life course, like childless people during the baby boom, to have endured sarcasm and suffered from discriminations. The only exception is a woman from a popular family in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, who explained that nobody laughed at her but that she “felt miserable to be a spinster.” We discussed another ambivalent case above, but generally, pressure or regrets were absent or at least not expressed. The absence of children is a consequence of life, “and that’s it.” 65Two interpretations are possible and compatible. The first one considers the possible impact of social changes on individual retrospective evaluations of past life. Indeed, fertility soon started to decrease, and childlessness became more frequent and one of the ways of life that had been growing in number and diversity (Kreyenfeld, forthcoming). Looking back today to their marginal situation a few decades ago during the baby boom, now that the norms and discourses have changed so much (probably more than the realities; see Esping-Andersen, 2009), childless people could have modified their appreciation. When we included variables about (non)conservative personal opinions in the regression models, about gender roles for example, the opinions expressed in 2011-12 do not predict anything about the patterns during the baby boom. It suggests that several people changed their mind. 66The second interpretation is that scientists have over-estimated the contrast between baby boom and baby bust and have over-emphasised the novelties of the so-called second demographic transition, gender revolution, family changes, individualisation, de-standardisation of life trajectories, and so on. It is a truism to say that researchers are embedded in their socio-historical generations and, indeed, a “generational fiction funded on the break and exceptionality” was built around the baby boomers (Gourdon, 2015). However, our study shows that these behaviours were not brand new in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, we have studied a group of people who were a minority in the pre-baby-boom generation and whose members, through their behaviours and discourses, announced the coming changes. They were — as a woman said — pioneers. 67Besides, more investigation is needed in order to determine whether the attitudes of childless women really differed from those of other women born in the same generations, especially the ones who were mothers and housewives. Recent researches on the baby boom indeed suggest that the baby boomers’ mothers did not form a homogenous group. Bonvalet (2015), focussing on French baby boomers’ mothers, highlighted their heterogeneous attitudes and expectations towards family and fertility issues. Some, mainly coming from the bourgeois upper class, reported having had a strong desire to have (many) children. Others had less defined intentions and showed similar attitudes to those of our women interviewees. Motherhood had often nothing to do with long-range planning. They had children, sometimes desired, sometimes undesired. Furthermore, Bonvalet (2015) suggests reconsidering our vision of these mothers as mere spouses, mothers and housewives, as they experienced the first signs of autonomy through increased social participation. This is coherent with the testimonies we collected in our interviews about the absence of any form of social pressure, indicating that during the baby boom, the majority of the population was generally tolerant to different behaviours and attitudes, being more open than some conservative institutions, which was a latent acceptance that was a cradle for the important evolutions that followed. Notes
Taking into account the heterogeneity of reproductive behaviours during the baby boom in Switzerland, this paper focusses on the people who did not participate in the rise of births because they remained childless. Childless people during the baby boom are particularly interesting, as their life trajectories lack events that were frequent and highly valorised during this period. Analysis of their trajectories allows interrogating the cultural and ideational context of the baby boom through non-normative life experiences. How can we explain the reproductive trajectories of people who did not have children in a context where most people had children, fertility rates were on the rise and family values were highly valorised? Prenant en compte l’hétérogénéité des comportements reproductifs durant le baby-boom en Suisse, cet article met en avant celles et ceux qui n’y ont pas participé puisqu’aussi bien ils n’ont pas eu d’enfants. Cette sous-population est particulièrement intéressante dans la mesure où sont absentes de leur trajectoire de vie des événements – maternité ou paternité – qui étaient fréquents et valorisés à cette époque. L’analyse de leur parcours de vie permet d’interroger le contexte culturel et les valeurs dominantes durant le baby-boom en raison même de leur expérience de vie hors norme.
Bibliographic references
Sylvie Burgnard Michel Oris [*] Institut de Démographie et de Socioéconomie, Centre interfacultaire de Gérontologie et d’Étude des Vulnérabilités, NCCR LIVES-IP213, Université de Genève
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What is the marriage squeeze quizlet?The phrase marriage squeeze refers to the demographic imbalance in which the number of potential brides does not approximately equal the number of potential grooms. When not everyone has an opportunity to marry, some will be squeezed out of the marriage market.
Which of the following supports the idea that divorce is as old as marriage?Which of the following supports the idea that "divorce is as old as marriage"? Ancient Jewish laws permitted divorce.
What does figure 10.3 indicate about the relationship between the age at marriage and the likelihood of divorce?What does Figure 10.3 indicate about the relationship between the age at marriage and the likelihood of divorce? A. The overall trend shows that the older people are when they marry, the higher their chances are of divorcing in the first 10 years.
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Which of the following significantly impacted the marriage rates of the baby boom generation
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