Demographic change and family obligations - Multilinks deliverable 4.2

This summary paper reviews some of the analyses of family obligations that have been carried out within the framework of the EU-FP7 Multilinks project (www.multilinks-project.eu), as part of work package 4. The aim of that work package is to gain insight in differential feelings of family obligations and to see how they are a function of, among other things, twists and turns in the linked life courses of Europeans in the 21st century. We first give a broad overview of differences in family obligations between European countries. We then continue with more in-depth analyses. To date, the more detailed analyses have been limited to the Netherlands. This country is widely acknowledged to be very individualized and considered ahead in terms of the second demographic transition. Fertility in the Netherlands continues to dwell below the replacement level since several decades, the age at first birth is very high, the proportion of births out of wedlock is comparatively high, divorce rates are also high and unmarried cohabitation is widely spread. In addition, there are two reasons for starting with the Netherlands: (1) the Dutch GGS data were already available at the start of the project and (2) the Dutch data have a multi-actor design, i.e. several people within the family network of the sample persons have been interviewed (see www.nkps.nl). During a later stage, some of the most salient issues will also be investigated in an international, comparative perspective using GGS data.We have tackled the following research questions with the Dutch data:
1) What preferences do people articulate in the Netherlands with respect to receiving and providing care? To what extent is providing care taken to be the responsibility of family and kin, the private market, and the public authorities? How strong are feelings of family obligations?
2) Where do family obligations come from? To what extent do people inherit them from their family of orientation? Is there a family effect and to what extent can it be explained?
3) To what extent are feelings of family obligations weakened by divorce? What are the effects of parental divorce on family obligations felt by adult children? And what about the effect of the divorce of an adult child?