As we approach Un International Day of Families, only the foolhardy would endeavor and predict the future of family groups. Previous attempts have, in fact, failed. William J Goode, writing in the early 1960s during the "golden age of union", saw convergence towards the western-style conjugal family every bit an inevitable result of industrialisation. No sooner had his seminal book Globe Revolution and Family Patterns been published than divorce rates started increasing, and married women began moving into the labour force.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, even so. And at that place are some articulate clues we can draw on to judge at how family life might change in Europe over the years.

From the early 1970s, marriage and childbearing began to exist postponed and cohabitation and non-marital childbearing started to increase. The trend is articulate in the nautical chart below.

births-outside-marriage-percentage-chart

Image: Part for National Statistics

Demographers Dirk Van de Kaa and Ron Lesthaeghe interpreted these changes as the issue of changing values, increased self-fulfilment and individualism. They suggested that all European countries would experience a "2nd demographic transition". Union, sexual activity and parenthood would be separated, and we would run across a convergence to sustained depression fertility and a new fix of family unit forms: not-marital fertility, lone parenthood, cohabiting couple families.

There has been move in about countries towards new family forms such as cohabitation and not-marital childbearing. Even in what are generally considered to be more than religious countries in Southern Europe. In Espana, births outside matrimony rose from 2% in 1972 to 39% in 2012.

Countries still differ, though, in the way in which cohabitation, marriage and childbearing are related. The extent to which governments have acted to recognise and regulate non-marital cohabiting unions and aforementioned-sexual activity couples suggests that the acceptance of new family forms will continue to vary profoundly between countries.

Poverty furnishings

Equally family biographies have get de-standardised, so at that place has been a "convergence towards diverseness". In other words, people today feel a greater range of ways to organise their family lives, and nosotros wait such diversity to characterise future families. Yet, co-ordinate to The states scholar Sara McLanahan, socio-economical differences in the types of parenting structures and behaviour in evidence tin can be seen equally fuelling poverty past creating "diverging destinies" for children.

Partly in response to economic precariousness and reduced gains to matrimony, less well educated people are more than likely to enter partnerships at an earlier age and to have children exterior marriage. They are also more likely to see their relationships fail, or to go through pregnancy with multiple partners, compared to those with higher levels of education in the Usa and mayhap as well in the Uk.

Y'all tin also see the show of persistent diversity in large cross-national differences in the level of childbearing. Equally can be seen in the chart below, in that location is persistently low fertility (effectually i.3 to 1.4 births per woman) in Southern Europe and the German-speaking countries, compared to much college fertility (betwixt 1.eight and 2 children per adult female) in Nordic countries and Western Europe.

Childbearing is college in countries with higher levels of female person labour force participation, economic development, generosity of paid parental exit provision for mothers and paternity get out.

fertility-rate-europe-chart

Paradigm: 2014 European Data Sheet

Drivers of change

In that location are several factors likely to bear upon how families are structured and organised, and which could affect on shaping the future families. These include increasing longevity which has important implications for how we programme our lives, care needs and inter-generational relations.

Increased international migration will create more transnational families – especially since for the showtime time women business relationship for more 50% of all international migrants. Engineering is likely to influence the future of families too. Equally mobility increases, family members are increasingly geographically separated, but more than continued via mobile technologies. Flexible working becomes more than possible, allowing men and women to meliorate combine their work and family roles.

Home life will ascertain family of the future

Another commuter of change in future families is gender equality. The Un 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets, amongst others, the goal of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. But which blazon of gender equality matters for the hereafter of families?

The adaptation of women to their new part in traditionally male activities in the public sphere and the acceptance of their new roles equally equal or chief earners has been faster than the adaptation of men to traditionally female person roles as intendance providers.

Men's share of housework and childcare is highest in gender-egalitarian countries such as the Nordic ones, and lowest in areas of depression gender equality such as Southern and Eastern Europe.

weekly-housework-hours-gender-country

Epitome: GESIS 2012, own analyses, Writer provided

However, look at the chart above and you tin see that in all countries women still devote more than time than men in housework activities. The gender revolution is far from being fully completed, fifty-fifty in the gender-egalitarian Nordic countries.

Sharing the load

Proponents of the gender revolution theory predict a happy ending for the family of the futurity. One time gender equality in all spheres of life is reached, a new model of the family will get widespread, with higher fertility and more stable unions.

However, current data highlight striking differences across social classes: gender-egalitarian ideologies and decreased risk of divorce are a prerogative of the highly educated. Whether the gender revolution will interpret into a positive result for families in the futurity may depend on whether and how fast men, specially from lower social classes, cover gender equality in the home.

This is the equality that seems to matter nigh for promoting more stable families and higher fertility. The hope has to exist that attitudes towards an equal segmentation of tasks in and outside the dwelling will continue to spread until we arrive at a new model of the family where partners go increasingly more similar in terms of their employment and caring responsibilities.

This article has been co-published with The Conversation.