Spain and Finland: The evolution of the family (1950-2000). From the traditional family to the new models of families.

UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND                                                                2012/2013[pic 1]

GENDER AND FINNISH CULTURE AND SOCIETY                    

JAANA VUORI                                                                              

UNIVERSITY OF LAS PALMAS                                                         ARENCIBIA NUEZ, ANA

UNIVERSITY OF ALCALA                                                       CAMPOS PEREZ, DAVID MARTIN

UNIVERSITY OF ALCALA                                                             GUTIERREZ OCAÑA, JULIA

UNIVERSITY OF LAS PALMAS                                                MORALES MARTIN, ERASMO

[pic 2][pic 3]

Contents:

• The emergence of the changes. The historical perspectives  (page: 3)

• Family diversity and new types of family (page: 4)

• Family care: an analysis in Spaniard and Finnish societies (page: 18)

• Conclusion (page:30)

• Bibliography (page:30)

INTRODUCTION

Analyze the family as a sign of the social ideology and the changes in the society, comparing the different measures regarding to the general policy in Spain and in Finland.

The emergence of the changes. The historical perspectives:

The Spaniard society has suffered during the last twenty years the most radical structural change in the whole of European Union, according to the study published in 2004 by World Values Survey: Spain was the country with the deepest socials changes between the eighty nations analyzed (Fundación BBVA,17). The study shows the Spaniards as a tolerant and secular society which transformed so quickly the ways of thinking and their religious behaviors, sexual and family concepts. According to the specialist Menéndez Álvarez-Dardet the family plurality process occurred at par in the majorities countries of Europe, but in Spain these plurality process have been accepted and created faster than in the rest of the European average (Menéndez,1-2).

         The putsch from the general Francisco Franco (who was in the power from 1939 until his death in 1975) became the Spanish nation in one dictatorship, called as National-Catholicism. During this time the families were conceived as the principal support of the new regimen, single and indivisibles, which was forbidden the divorce and the contraception.  

         In Spain, the called Transition (period started after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco) emerged the liberty wishes of the Spaniard. From 1960 to 1975 the new governments started to make laws which permitted to equate Spain to the rest of Europe. During this time were approved laws as the legal equality between genders, the divorce law and the legalization and developments in contraception, at par that was increasing the access to the woman to the labor market. All this laws changed abruptly the composition and the dynamic of the Spanish families (Menéndez, 1).

Although all the changes that the Spaniards families have suffered (ideological changes, economic transforms and division of functions), according to the specialist Menéndez Álvarez-Dardet “the Spanish families still currently too deep its roots in the past (...) the family is the principal institution for the members of them, the families are the principal support by the ties of loyalty and obligation that unite its members” (Menéndez, 17).

With the Spanish Constitution of 1978 changed the concept of the family: the freedom and equality between members of the family. It’s passed from the marriage based in the authority of the husband and the dependence of his wife to him to one marriage based in the equality of rights between the couple. This change caused a big transformation in the families relations and supposed a transcendental change in the women’ life. Also, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 finished with the discrimination to the children from parents not married (called, before this new law, as illegitimate children) which facilitated new types of conviviality and more plurality in the household.

After the dictator death, the economic changes that more have influenced in the transition of the families are the increasing of the educational level of the news generations and the access to the women to the labor market. Man and women are delaying their marriage and the birth- child, due to their studies, their news expectative of future and the difficulty for make compatible the family care (Fundación BBVA, 18).

Finland, like Spain, presents the same cases respect the marriage and the first childbirth. In Finland, in the beginning of 2000s the value of child allowance in real terms had dropped below the level in the early 1990s. Reason which the government increased the family benefits in the beginning of 2004 (Ministry of social affairs and health, 5). Due to these policies Finland currently presents high fertility rates, because of higher social spending in families, the assistance from public institutions and the existence of flexible or part-time contracts (Gómez, 1).

Family diversity and new types of families:

In every society family diversity and the perception of it differs. Family according to the Multilingual Demographic Dictionary of the United Nations (census perception), “generally consists of all members of a household who are related through blood, adoption or marriage”, understanding household as, “a socio-economic unit, consists of individuals who live together”.

On the other hand, a more opened definition, maybe because of its sociological perspective, proposed by the Vanier Institute of the Family of Canada defines Family as:

“Any combination of two or more persons who are bound together over time by ties of mutual consent, birth and/or adoption or placement and who, together, assume responsibilities for variant combinations of some of the following:

• Physical maintenance and care of group members
• Addition of new members through procreation or adoption
• Socialization of children
• Social control of members
• Production, consumption, distribution of goods and services
• Affective nurturance – love”

The fact that these definitions do not mention neither marriage nor legitimate filiations, it does not obviously mean that they have gone of social reality. It means only that they have ceased to be defining elements and, therefore, essential of the family unit.

Like any social system, the family is sensitive to changes which take place in their cultural and historical environment. According to the specialist Menéndez Álvarez-Dardet, therefore, over the ages, and far from being static and unchanging, families have been modified in line with the different changes (ideological, cultural, economic, etc.) that have encircled them, so that, synthesized, the progressive adaptation to these changes can be observed in three interrelated fronts: the members of the family, the roles they play, and the functions assigned to the family as a whole (Menéndez, 1). [pic 4]

The data provided by demographic and sociological studies illustrate how the family is experiencing in recent decades very striking changes in the composition or structure, which determines, among other things, that family diversity is ceasing to be the exception to become more and more the norm.

According to the study of Forssén, in Finland the most common type of family is still the married couples with children living at home but the numbers are falling continually. Reasons for the falling numbers are several: the rising divorce rate has contributed to the decrease in the number of wedded couples. The somewhat smaller number of children in the families likewise means that homes end up without children sooner than in the past. The housing conditions of the young have improved lately and young people leave their parents’ homes sooner than they used to do. On the other hand, there will be fewer new married couples with children, as the age groups forming families are small and couples often favor cohabitation. (Forssén, 9).[pic 5]

                                                              [pic 6]

As in Finland, the conventional family in Spain, is the prevailing and majority model family noted, the household consisting of a couple and their offspring but the percentages have decreased. This conventional model has experienced major family in recent decades very striking changes:        

The marriage rates in our country do not stop down, and is becoming increasingly common for couples to cohabit without legalizing their union, either temporarily or permanently. There are not accurate population estimation of this phenomenon, but we have some rough figures: according to data from CIS (1994), in Spain around 14% of the population claims to have lived or live with a partner unmarried, and exploitation of data from the 1991 shows that, of all households with children less than 18 years, cohabiting couples represent 2% (Menéndez, 4).

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