Conference turris::scandia

186.0. "Swedish "family" breakup: a bug or a feature?" by TLE::SAVAGE (Neil, @Spit Brook) Fri Jan 30 1987 10:50

    The following is another article on Sweden from the Christian Science
    Monitor. As a country that often presages the direction that other
    western societies (including the United States) take, Sweden gets more
    than its share of negative media criticism . This article is in that
    vein, but is nevertheless very informative. As in the past, I hope to
    get some replies from Swedish citizens as to whether the issues raised
    in this article are fairly presented and balanced. 

               The State of Marriage in Sweden's Welfare State
                            By Rushworth M. Kidder

    Sweden, as most of the world knows, is a classic example of the welfare
    state. To the visitor, it is (to borrow a phrase from Ernest
    Hemmingway) a clean, well-lighted place. To its citizens, it's a nation
    where high levels of taxation provide cradle-to-grave benefits that
    cover housing, employment, health insurance, pensions, education,
    day-care, and much more. 

    Less widely recognized, however, are two other facts about Sweden. It
    has the lowest marriage rate, and the highest rate of non-marital
    cohabitation, of any nation in the industrial world. 

    Given Sweden's long tradition of permissiveness on questions of
    premarital sex, that's not surprising. What is surprising -- and
    potentially disruptive to the entire fabric of the welfare state -- is
    another fact just now beginning to surface: that Sweden appears to have
    the highest rate of family breakup in the Western world. 

    That's the conclusion reached by David Popenoe, a Rutgers University
    sociologist who has spent years studying the Swedish family. In an
    article scheduled for publication next month in the Journal of Marriage
    and the Family, he notes that while Swedes have labored to remove all
    legal distinctions between married and cohabiting couples -- so that,
    for example, children born to unmarried parents have the same legal
    footing as the children of married couples -- they [the Swedes] have
    yet to address themselves to the sometimes obscure and often agonizing
    problem of family dissolution. 

    In fact, [Popenoe] notes, it's a problem that Swedes don't even like to
    talk about. In a nation famous for convening commissions to study every
    conceivable social problem, this issue has never been the subject of a
    major government investigation. Yet there it is, staring the welfare
    state in the face. 

    Why so little discussion? Part of the reason, of course, is that the
    breakup rate for unmarried couples is devilishly hard to chart.
    Divorce, by contrast, involves the measurable and legal dissolution of
    a legally formed union. But measuring the unrecorded breakups of
    never-formalized unions is another story. According to Dr. Popenoe,
    unmarried couples now make up perhaps 25 percent of all Swedish couples
    (up from an estimated one percent in 1960), with the number rising
    steeply among the lower age cohorts. He also notes that 45 percent of
    the births in 1984 were to unmarried mothers. 

    Wrapping all this together with the results of a recent survey of 4,300
    Swedish women, Popenoe estimates that the dissolution rate for
    unmarried couples with one child is three times that of married
    couples. Combine that with the divorce rate (the second highest in the
    Western world, lagging behind only the United States), and, he says, it
    is "reasonable to put forth the ... proposition" that Sweden leads the
    Western world in family dissolution. 

    Popenoe admits that more data need to be collected on the subject
    before firm conclusions can be drawn. But look, for a moment, at the
    implications of his study. What troubles him is that, as he says, "a
    society so resolutely devoted to social welfare and the good life
    should have achieved such a position." What are the ramifications of
    this position? 

    There are those who try to argue, of course, that Sweden is even now
    preserving the "good life"; and that marriage, which is not a necessary
    to the "good life," is instead an outdated, useless custom deserving
    the "deinstitutionalization" it is now experiencing. As it happens,
    that sad and narrow line of reasoning is irrelevant. The issue here is
    not marriage but family -- however the family may have been formed. 

    And is the family irrelevant to the "good life"? Few Swedes, it seems,
    would agree to that. They still seem eager to form households and have
    children -- suggesting that, like the rest of the world, they hold the
    institution of family in high regard. 

    Then what's happening in Sweden? Is the challenge of family dissolution
    -- which, for the children of married and unmarried couples alike,
    carries some heavy emotional burdens -- the price that must be paid for
    the advanced welfare state? Is welfare statism, providing so much of
    what families once had to provide for themselves, rendering the family
    obsolete and making family stability harder instead of easier? Have the
    best-intentioned governmental programs wrought unseen havoc in the most
    valued of human institutions? If so, is this an unforeseen side effect
    that can be corrected - or the logical and inevitable consequence of
    the welfare state? 

    As the rest of the industrial world moves in varying degrees down the
    paths of social welfare, these are vital questions. That they are only
    now coming to light is, in a way, horrifying. But that even the Swedes
    are showing a willingness to face them -- as evidenced by the fact that
    Popenoe's article has been excerpted by the official Swedish
    Information Service -- is a good sign. 

    The more clarity here, the better for us all. 

	 This is  definitely  a  bug.   If nothing is done about this, there
	 will probably be a fatal bugcheck soon.

	 Seriously, this is a VERY, VERY serious problem.  It is hard to say
	 whether  the situation actually is a result of the establishment of
	 the  "welfare  state"  - we don't know what it would be like if the
	 political  situation  had  taken a different turn back in the 30's,
	 when the "Social Democrats" first came to power.

	 The breakup  of  the family is a result of a gradual move towards a
	 society  where  traditions,  ideals and rules of conduct are looked
	 upon as something evil.  People are not encouraged to use their own
	 abilities  anymore, instead they get used to depend on the state to
	 take  care  of  them.  This is no more evident than in the care and
	 bringing  up of children - they are dumped in a (state-run) daycare
	 centre  in  the  daytime while the parents work.  For the children,
	 the  parents  are reduced to being "the persons who drive us to the
	 daycare centre".

	 I think  the  article  is  well  balanced and objective.  Alas, our
	 present  government  is  not at all responsive to arguments in this
	 issue.   The  Swedish  people  are  becoming  partitioned  into two
	 groups,  the  ones  who  join the flock of sheep (the majority) and
	 those  who  don't.   It becomes more and more difficult NOT to join
	 the flock, as time passes.

	 /POL

    I have done both and am on my second marriage.. the first lasted
    4 years and this one 15+.  I also cohabited a bit and enjoyed it.
    
    I think that we as humans have a responsibility to raising our own
    children and I think that when we cohabit we should be responsible
    enough to prevent pregnancies unless we intend to support the
    children..both man as well as woman.
    
    I like marriage and enjoy children, I have more children than I
    need but I am married to the mother.
    
    Dave
   

    A few thoughts just. Sweden is like any other nation in the world.
    There is nothing strange about us. There is VERY few unwanted children
    in Sweden. If a couple wants a child its almost always a wanted
    child.
    
    People are talking about responsibility for the children. I think
    the children get more damaged if the two parents who hate each other
    stays together, than if they separate and try to find another partner
    to share their lives with. But when people get children they always
    have the intention of life-long relations (of course!!!).
    
    Just because people divorce doesn't mean that they take less care
    of their children!!
    
    When Mr Litby says that traditions is looked at as something evil,
    that's not true. Maybe it was so 10 years ago, but today traditions
    is having a revival. More young couples gets married (for instance)
    than 10 years ago. People is starting to look back and take care
    of what's genuine and important.
    
    Many unmarried Swedish couple separates. Sure, but I think it's
    like this. Many people moves together as a test, if it works OK,
    but if it doesn't work and the love isn't what it was the first
    months, then its easier to withdraw without hurting each other to
    much. This way we don't get so many marriages that fails (Even though
    the divorce rate is high, but on its way down).
    
    Take for instance me and my girlfriend. We've been living together
    for a year now, we are engaged but have no intentions of getting
    married. We feel that we have given each other a promise that we
    should try to live together for the rest of our lives, BUT we don't
    have to get married to feel secure about the love of our partner.
    So why should we get married, if the relation should turn out to
    be a failure we could easily move apart from each other. This means
    that we don't have to hurt each other while we're trying to get
    a divorce. We doesn't have to mendle with the authorities. This
    means that we later on in life at least can be friends, without
    any hard feelings for each other .
    
    Think of that....

    Wait a minute...
    
    I just thought of another thing.
    186.1 ... You don't HAVE to put your children in a daytime nursery.
    As everything else you can make a choice. The normal thing though
    is that the man works fulltime , and the woman works halftime and
    takes care of the children the rest of the time.
    
    This means that the children get the best of being with other kids(he
    learns how to act with a group of people) and also having enough
    time with his/hers parents...