As we approach UN International Day of Families, simply the foolhardy would try and predict the future of family groups. Previous attempts have, in fact, failed. William J Goode, writing in the early 1960s during the "golden age of marriage", saw convergence towards the western-style conjugal family as an inevitable consequence of industrialisation. No sooner had his seminal volume Globe Revolution and Family Patterns been published than divorce rates started increasing, and married women began moving into the labour strength.

Nothing ventured, null gained, nevertheless. And in that location are some clear clues we can draw on to gauge at how family life might change in Europe over the years.

From the early 1970s, union and childbearing began to exist postponed and cohabitation and non-marital childbearing started to increment. The trend is clear in the chart below.

births-outside-marriage-percentage-chart

Image: Part for National Statistics

Demographers Dirk Van de Kaa and Ron Lesthaeghe interpreted these changes as the result of changing values, increased self-fulfilment and individualism. They suggested that all European countries would experience a "second demographic transition". Marriage, sex and parenthood would be separated, and we would come across a convergence to sustained low fertility and a new fix of family forms: non-marital fertility, lone parenthood, cohabiting couple families.

There has been movement in well-nigh countries towards new family forms such as cohabitation and non-marital childbearing. Fifty-fifty in what are generally considered to be more religious countries in Southern Europe. In Spain, births exterior marriage rose from 2% in 1972 to 39% in 2012.

Countries still differ, though, in the way in which cohabitation, spousal relationship and childbearing are related. The extent to which governments have acted to recognise and regulate not-marital cohabiting unions and same-sexual activity couples suggests that the acceptance of new family forms will continue to vary greatly between countries.

Poverty effects

As family unit biographies have become de-standardised, and then at that place has been a "convergence towards diversity". In other words, people today experience a greater range of ways to organise their family lives, and we wait such diversity to characterise hereafter families. However, according to Us scholar Sara McLanahan, socio-economical differences in the types of parenting structures and behaviour in testify tin be seen equally fuelling poverty past creating "diverging destinies" for children.

Partly in response to economic precariousness and reduced gains to wedlock, less well educated people are more likely to enter partnerships at an earlier age and to have children outside marriage. They are also more likely to encounter their relationships fail, or to go through pregnancy with multiple partners, compared to those with higher levels of pedagogy in the US and possibly likewise in the U.k..

Yous tin can too run into the evidence of persistent diversity in large cross-national differences in the level of childbearing. Equally can be seen in the chart below, there is persistently depression fertility (around i.iii to i.4 births per woman) in Southern Europe and the German-speaking countries, compared to much higher fertility (between 1.viii and 2 children per adult female) in Nordic countries and Western Europe.

Childbearing is higher in countries with higher levels of female labour force participation, economic evolution, generosity of paid parental leave provision for mothers and paternity leave.

fertility-rate-europe-chart

Image: 2014 European Data Sheet

Drivers of modify

There are several factors likely to impact how families are structured and organised, and which could affect on shaping the future families. These include increasing longevity which has of import implications for how we program our lives, intendance needs and inter-generational relations.

Increased international migration will create more than transnational families – especially since for the first fourth dimension women business relationship for more than than 50% of all international migrants. Technology is likely to influence the future of families too. As mobility increases, family members are increasingly geographically separated, just more than connected via mobile technologies. Flexible working becomes more possible, allowing men and women to improve combine their work and family roles.

Home life will define family of the time to come

Another commuter of change in hereafter families is gender equality. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Evolution sets, among others, the goal of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. But which type of gender equality matters for the futurity of families?

The adaptation of women to their new role in traditionally male person activities in the public sphere and the acceptance of their new roles as equal or master earners has been faster than the adaptation of men to traditionally female roles as care providers.

Men'south share of housework and childcare is highest in gender-egalitarian countries such as the Nordic ones, and everyman in areas of low gender equality such as Southern and Eastern Europe.

weekly-housework-hours-gender-country

Prototype: GESIS 2012, own analyses, Author provided

However, expect at the chart above and you tin can see that in all countries women nevertheless devote more time than men in housework activities. The gender revolution is far from existence fully completed, even in the gender-egalitarian Nordic countries.

Sharing the load

Proponents of the gender revolution theory predict a happy catastrophe for the family of the future. Once gender equality in all spheres of life is reached, a new model of the family will go widespread, with higher fertility and more stable unions.

All the same, current data highlight hitting differences across social classes: gender-egalitarian ideologies and decreased gamble of divorce are a prerogative of the highly educated. Whether the gender revolution volition interpret into a positive outcome for families in the future may depend on whether and how fast men, particularly from lower social classes, encompass gender equality in the dwelling.

This is the equality that seems to matter most for promoting more than stable families and college fertility. The promise has to be that attitudes towards an equal division of tasks in and outside the domicile will keep to spread until we arrive at a new model of the family where partners become increasingly more similar in terms of their employment and caring responsibilities.

This article has been co-published with The Chat.