The Social Meaning of Children and Fertility Change in Europe

Anne Lise Ellingsaeter, An-Magritt Jensen, Merete Lie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135092139
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Antropología cultural y social

Low fertility in Europe has given rise to the notion of a 'fertility crisis'. This book shifts the attention from fertility decline to why people do have children, asking what children mean to them. It investigates what role children play in how young adults plan their lives, and why and how young adults make the choices they do.

The book aims to expand our comprehension of the complex structures and cultures that influence reproductive choice, and explores three key aspects of fertility choices:

• the processes towards having (or not having) children, and how they are underpinned by negotiations and ambivalences
• how family policies, labour markets and personal relations interact in young adults' fertility choices
• social differentiation in fertility choice: how fertility rationales and reasoning may differ among women and men, and across social classes

Based on empirical studies from six nations – France, Scandinavia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Italy (representing the high and low end of European variation in fertility rates) – the book shows how different economic, political and cultural contexts interact in young adults' fertility rationales. It will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, anthropology, demography and gender studies.

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The social meaning of children and fertility change

Anne Lise Ellingsæter, An-Magritt Jensen and Merete Lie

Fertility is crucial to the economic and social future of Europe. For more than three decades declining fertility has occupied scholarly and public debates – in the mid-2000s no country had fertility at or above population replacement level. The inability to reproduce Europe’s population is expected to have grave consequences for the future. The prospect of decreasing working-age populations and increasing burdens on welfare states has given rise to the notion of a ‘fertility crisis’. Massive research efforts have accordingly been directed to explain the decline in fertility. Two recent trends pose new questions for research, however. One trend is growing differences in national fertility levels (e.g. Frejka and Sobotka 2008). A seeming paradox is that cross country variation in fertility levels increases even though the main changes in family formation patterns are remarkably similar: later first births, ever more children born outside marriage and growing childlessness. A second trend is an unpredicted, although slight, reversal of fertility decline noted in several countries (Myrskylä et al. 2009). The hypothesis is that fertility may increase again as ‘human development’ reaches the highest current level in both the economic and the social fields.¹ To contribute to current research endeavours in order to understand these new developments is a main aim of this edited volume.

A myriad of fertility decisions taken by individuals and couples generate a society’s fertility rates (Testa et al. 2011). Hence the challenge is to expand the comprehension of the complex structures and cultures that influence reproductive choice. Our analytic approach is a means to that end, featuring three key dimensions of fertility choices: meaning making, economic and social context, and socio-economic differentiation. First, our empirical studies of the transition to parenthood in Europe are embedded with the notion of the ‘social meaning of children’. This means shifting the attention from fertility decline to why people do have children and asking what children mean to them. It implies investigating what role children play in young adults’ life planning, and why and how young adults make the choices they do. What meaning do young adults attribute to their own choices? How are different concerns balanced? A strength of this approach is the ability to study decisions as processes; the negotiations, ambivalences and stepwise processes towards having (or not having) children. Qualitative data on individual reasoning and rationales are the primary source, while quantitative data supplement the picture. Second, to better understand the complexity of fertility choice, the significance of social context for individual fertility rationales is obvious. The chapters in this book are based on empirical studies from six nations that represent the high and low end of European variation in fertility rates: the relatively high fertility of France and Scandinavia, i.e. Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and the low fertility of Germany and Italy. A main point to investigate is the different economic, political and cultural contexts, and how these interact in young adults’ fertility rationales in the different societies. Our case studies include the contexts of economic institutions, i.e. labour markets and family policy, and the contexts of social relations, including partners, family and friends. Third, studying social differentiation in fertility choice further adds to the objective of understanding the complexity of fertility processes. Economic institutions and social relations may mean different things to different social groups, and our main emphasis is on how fertility rationales and reasoning may differ among women and men and across social classes.

In the following, we position our analytical approach in relation to current and previous research on fertility development. The first section discusses recent fertility trends in Europe and implications for the study of fertility. The second addresses central theoretical perspectives on fertility. The third section presents the notion of ‘the social meaning of children’ and our analytical approach. Finally, the contributions from the individual chapters are outlined.

Variation in European fertility regimes

Fertility levels, trends and prospects are a cause of concern in European countries. In the 1990s many European countries experienced a decline in the total fertility rate (TFR) to ‘very low’ (below 1.5) or ‘lowest low’ levels (below 1.3). In 2002, 16 out of 39 European countries recorded total fertility rates below 1.3 and 25 countries’ rates below 1.5 (Frejka and Sobotka 2008). Some scholars have suggested that Europe is caught in a ‘low fertility trap’ (Lutz et al. 2006). A main question has been why we are witnessing ‘a unique historical turn to deliberate, peacetime below-reproduction fertility among the world’s leading countries’ (Therborn 2004: 294). The question now is whether this analysis is too bleak. The regional variation has been widening. A ‘higher fertility belt’ in some western and northern European countries, with total fertility rates ranging from 1.7 to 2.0, is observed. While other countries continue to have very low fertility ranging between 1.2 and 1.5, and even here, signs of a turning point is observed as in the case for Germany and Italy.²

All over Europe different nations have been following the same trajectory of change in family formation patterns. A general transition towards a ‘late-childbearing regime’ is unfolding (Frejka and Sobotka 2008; Kohler et al. 2002). Furthermore, delayed union formation and later marriages, sharp declines in marriage rates, rises in unmarried cohabitation and in non-co-residential partnerships are seen across the continent (Sobotka and Toulemon 2008). Increases in births outside marriage have received particular attention. These changes have been seen as a result of women’s new position in society, spurred by increasing education and labour force participation. Initially these changes were thought to be a main cause of fertility decline, as a common assumption has been that a woman’s career conflicts with childbearing (Lesthaeghe 1995). But recent research raises new questions about the impact on fertility. The increase in child-bearing past the age of 28–30 differs greatly between countries. Countries with the highest ages of first motherhood in Europe (such as France and Sweden) have relatively stable levels of completed cohort fertility, close to the replacement level (Nicoletti and Tanturri 2008). In the Nordic countries, later births do not imply fewer children (Andersson et al. 2009). Women who have their first pregnancy late can still achieve their childbearing goals. Women’s education is often used to explain declining fertility. In the Scandinavian countries, educated women catch up by having children at a higher age; contributing to the fertility reversal. Likewise, positive impacts on fertility of new family patterns and women’s labour market participation have been reported (Billari and Kohler 2004; Vikat 2004). Hence, trends previously thought to cause fertility decline actually seem to have the opposite effect, generating close to replacement level fertility.

Similar trends in family change may have diverse consequences in different national contexts, resulting in increasing variation in fertility levels across countries. For example, when the percentages of births to mothers aged 30 and above exceed 40 per cent in Scandinavia and Italy, the impact on completed fertility is widely different in the two national contexts (Nicoletti and Tanturri 2008). Also, despite converging trends, family patterns remain differentiated across Europe. Some of the cleavages follow long established regional differences, with the persistence of more traditional or religious influences, affecting cohabitation, divorce and non-marital up-bringing of children in countries such as Italy and Germany.³ In northern, and some central regions, such as in Scandinavia and France, more liberal and secular attitudes prevail (Sobotka and Toulemon 2008; Therborn 2004).

Births have increased in countries most exposed to factors earlier associated with fertility decline, such as female employment and instable family patterns. While a conception of a ‘fertility crisis’ has characterised the European public debate, there may be less reason for alarm than previously suggested (Bloom and Souza-Poza 2010). The current economic recession seems to mark a halt to the previous decade of rising fertility rates, however. But research from earlier recessions indicates that this is likely to be transitory. Effects are usually small and of short durations, they often influence the timing of childbearing and, in most cases, they do not leave an imprint on cohort fertility levels (Sobotka et al. 2011).

The private and the public child

There are few fields where the private is so entangled with the public as in human reproduction. Reproduction is both a public concern and a private matter. At the individual level, reproduction is a result of the most intimate human behaviour. At the same time, the decision to have children is influenced by economic, social and cultural forces, as reflected in the systematic variation in fertility levels across countries, social groups and over time. Individual women and men may regard the possibility to choose the number of their children as a means to freedom and self-empowerment (Douglass 2005), but their fertility choices may, at the same time, contradict the interest of the state. In late modern societies rapid transformations in private life are attracting increasing public attention, and recent theories emphasise the interweaving of the private and the public. Feelings, bodies, sexualities and ways of thinking are patterned by different social conditions: our most intimate decisions are associated with and shaped by our most public institutions (Plummer 2003).

The intertwining of the public and political with the intimate, individual and biological is captured by the Foucaultian concept of biopolitics (Foucault 1979). Applying his genealogical approach, Foucault pointed out that since the eighteenth century, the exercise of political power has changed from the crude power of deciding over life and death to governing the vital processes of life – that is, the size and quality of the population; reproduction and human sexuality; conjugal, parental and familial relations; health and disease; birth and death (Rose 2001: 1). This power was exercised by disciplinary techniques and associated with new forms of knowledge; most important in this process were developments within the biomedical professions. The emerging biopolitics worked on two levels. One is the governmental level of regulating the population, with shifting politics of pronatalism versus policies to reduce the number of births. At the societal level today these means are, for example, social politics. At the individual level, people were disciplined to increase the quality of the population by means such as physical and nutritional education. The idea of the self-regulating individual has become a vital element in policies of human reproduction.

Building on the concept of biopolitics, historians have studied how the field of reproduction, during the last century, was transformed by processes of secularisation, scientification and governmental intervention (Melby and Rosenbeck 2009: 30). Human reproduction was increasingly dissociated from the natural as well as the sacral field – as God-given – and transferred to a public field of legal-isation, professionalisation and political measures. Public interest in the quantity and quality of the population was marked in the beginning of the twentieth century, in tandem with a cultural change whereby reproduction is perceived as under human control. Over time, and to a varying degree in different countries in Europe, sexuality has become dissociated from the institution of marriage, and from reproduction. Women’s control over their own bodies has been an important element in feminist struggles, particularly through the right to abortion and access to contraceptives.

In affluent Western societies, expectations of standardised life-course events such as marriage and children are replaced by an emphasis on individual choice (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001). The most important change that has taken place regarding fertility is that having children may be considered as a choice. Today, a person may choose not to have children, and pregnancies can be planned. The meaning of children for the individual has consequently gained more importance for understanding fertility trends. While public and private domains of reproduction are intersecting, societal and individual interests in children do not necessarily overlap.

The social meaning of children, gender and class

The concept of the ‘social meaning of children’ can be seen as a broadening of the well-established ‘value of children’ (VOC) concept. The VOC studies originated in the 1970s as demographers started to ask why children were born in high numbers in poor regions of the world, and in low numbers in the rich (Fawcett 1982; Bulatao and Lee 1983). A main finding was that parents in countries with high birth rates (poor countries) associated economic benefits with having (many) children. Where birth rates were low (rich countries), parents rather perceived children with emotional benefits but also emotional costs, like feelings of being tied down. This study was replicated recently (Nauck 2007; Nauck and Klaus 2007), and the original conclusions were basically confirmed: people have more children if they expect some benefits, in the short or long term. Our purpose, however, is to go beyond an analytical framework of costs and benefits to disclose young adults’ considerations and explore ways in which the social meaning of children is shaped by different institutional and relational contexts.

Moving from theories of the personal motives on childbearing, Folbre (1994) conceptualises children as ‘public goods’. In societies where children are regarded primarily as a private matter, she maintains, public transfers are generally far below actual costs of having children. She sees the balance between public investments and private costs of children as a key to understand variations in fertility levels (Folbre 2008). Recently, the assumption that generous public investments in children further fertility has had a breakthrough in international policies with Esping-Andersen (2009: 115) as a strong spokesman: ‘Investing well in our children will yield very large returns both for individuals’ life chances and for society at large’. In the policy making of the EU and the OECD, ‘investing’ in children is spreading as a new political paradigm. This line of reasoning is based within a cost-benefit approach. Investments depend on future returns. From a childhood perspective, a problem arises if ‘the returns’ of the investments are too small, Qvortrup (2009) claims. In the short run, societies may solve their needs through other ‘investments’ (such as immigration). It is a widespread idea that economy and sentiments belong to separate spheres but Zelizer (2005) disagrees. Economic rationality and personal sentiments are not ‘hostile worlds’, rather, in social life ‘people manage the mingling of monetary transactions with morally charged social relations’ (p. 196). Accordingly, we doubt that ‘investments’ loom large in people’s fertility choices. Nevertheless, if people do not think in terms of economy and investments, this does not imply that public investments in children are ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• 1 The social meaning of children and fertility change
• 2 The politics of parenting: the meaning of children, the meaning of work
• 3 Economic risk, fertility and the welfare state: understanding individual rationales
• 4 Flexible work: implications for the social meaning of children
• 5 Patterns of partnership and parenthood: experiences, approaches and readiness towards commitment and creating a family
• 6 The cultural ideal of the joint decision: illuminating values of individuality and relationality of the child choice
• 7 The non-modern child? Ambivalence about parenthood among young adults
• 8 Rising fertility, fewer fathers: crossroads of networks, gender and class
• 9 Changing fertility behaviour across two generations: the role of gender and class
• 10 From mothers to daughters: intergenerational transmission of fertility norms
• 11 The social meaning of children embedded in institutions and personal relations
• Index