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The low importance of marriage in eastern Germany - social norms and the role of peoples’ perceptions of the past

“…Klüsener, Perelli-Harris, and Sanchez Gassen (2013: 142) argue that " [t]hese state institutions may have allowed women to become less reliant on the institution of marriage and instead more willing to have children outside of marriage." In effect, these policies not only strengthened legal acceptance of non-marital childbearing and cohabitation by largely eliminating legal discrimination of non-marital unions and nonmarital births (McDonald 2006;Perelli-Harris and Sánchez Gassen 2012;Klüsener, Perelli-Harris, and Sánchez Gassen 2013) but also reflected and promoted social acceptance of new family forms such as cohabitation and single parenting (Axinn and Thornton 2000;Barlow 2004;Barlow and Probert 2004;Beck-Gernsheim 2012;Bowman 2010;Levin 2004;Nazio and Blossfeld 2003). However, it is unclear if the policies changed union formation behavior or if they were a response to changes in union formation.…”

“…Eastern Germany, which was formerly the socialist state of the German Democratic Republic, is a special case of partnership change where the decoupling of marriage and childbearing is very advanced. Eastern Germany has one of the world's highest percentages of non-marital births: in 2012 over 60% of births in eastern Germany were non-marital (see Section 3, and Nazio and Blossfeld 2003;Konietzka and Kreyenfeld 2002;Klüsener and Kreyenfeld 2009;Klüsener, Perelli-Harris, and Sánchez Gassen 2013;Kreyenfeld and Konietzka 2008). This extraordinarily high proportion of non-marital births is the reason why this region deserves a closer look.…”

The reproductive context of cohabitation in comparative perspective

“…Levels of cohabitation in France are lower than the Nordic countries but remain well above Eastern and Southern Europe (Köppen 2010;Potârcă, Mills, and Lesnard 2013). Although cohabitation remains relatively uncommon in Italy (Nazio and Blossfeld 2003), recent evidence suggests that a dramatic change in patterns of union formation may be unfolding in Spain (Dominguez-Folgueras and Castro-Martin 2013). These shifting patterns of family formation raise fundamental questions about how cohabiting unions fit into the broader landscape of family life.…”

Exploring social norms around cohabitation: The life course, individualization, and culture

“…While such a methodological approach is necessary for measuring the distribution and variation in partnership formation, as well as determinants such as socioeconomic background, it constrains the possibilities of research to predetermined categories and limits the understanding of variation in the meaning of partnership formation. This approach often concludes that differences across countries are simply due to the process of diffusion of a similar type of behavior (Nazio and Blossfeld 2003;Liefbroer and Dourlejin 2006), without understanding the nuances and complexities of partnerships in different contexts. In addition, such methodology is insufficient to provide substantive interpretations of social norms, attitudes, and meanings related to partnership.…”