Spain: Short on children and short on family policies

Abstract

Spain’s total fertility rate has more than halved since 1975, when it was 2.8, to the present 1.3 (the lowest rate on record, 1.2, was reached in 1995). At the same time, the mean age at first childbirth has grown continually, seriously hindering any sustained recovery of fertility. Cohort fertility, in turn, has declined uninterruptedly since the 1941 cohort, and according to all estimates, this will drop to 1.6 for women born in the 1960s. A downturn in nuptiality, which has not been offset by a rise in consensual unions, along with the prevalence of contraceptives and abortion, have contributed substantially to falling fertility. Underlying this decrease is the profound cultural, social, and economic change that has raised the perceived costs of leaving the parental home and having children. The lack of any explicit family policy or transfers to compensate for such costs has reinforced that perception

Attitudes Toward Parenthood, Partnership, and Social Rights for Diverse Families: Evidence From a Pilot Study in Five Countries

“…On the one hand, institutions in the form of policies and regulations not only define the set of opportunities and constraints in which women, men, and couples act but also their beliefs, contributing to dominant interpretations of gender, family, and parenthood. There is indeed evidence that the enactment of legislation that provides equal rights to married and unmarried parents has contributed both to an increase in nonmarital childbearing and to a wider acceptance of this phenomenon (Delgado, Meil, & Zamora-López, 2008). Similarly, there is evidence that the opening up of marriage and other legal arrangements to two persons of the same sex in a growing number of countries has changed the visibility and acceptance of homosexuality and homosexual families, including homosexual parenthood (Waaldijk, 2013).…”

Cohort fertility decline in low fertility countries: Decomposition using parity progression ratios

“…Subsequently, in the 1950s and 1960s cohorts, rising women's employment in combination with precarious labour market conditions, limited work flexibility for women, and traditional gender roles within the family depressed second-birth rates (Adserà 2011) and fuelled further decline in third and higher-order birth rates to very low levels (Delgado, Meil, and Zamora López 2008;De Rose, Racioppi, and Zanatta 2008).…”

Overview Chapter 6: The diverse faces of the Second Demographic Transition in Europe

“…However, a common direction of changes can be clearly detected across all countries (perhaps with the exception of Albania), which is generally in agreement with the second demographic transition hypothesis: -a move towards tolerant and generally positive attitudes regarding intimate relationships among unmarried and un-partnered people, including young adults and teenagers -a positive regard for cohabitation as a specific premarital stage, and its rising recognition as an alternative to marriage -a higher tolerance of non-family living arrangements and voluntary childlessness Marriage and childbearing have increasingly become optional parts of individual biographies, even in countries that have been until recently considered rather 'conservative.' For example, the Spain chapter emphasises the increasing freedom in the design of individual life projects: "inherited models of family organization have ceased to be binding; the form that family life eventually adopts have thus come to depend on the negotiation" (Delgado et al 2008(Delgado et al :1087. These shifts do not imply, however, that family has become an obsolete institution.…”