Germany

If one compares the relationship of family life and family policies in the states of Europe (Kaufmann 1997; Kaufmann et al. 2002) the specific traits of family life and family structure under the West German family policy profile (which is now valid for the united Germany) are evident. In Europe, Germany is the unique case of a society with a traditional family policy profile (still supporting the traditional bourgeois family) and a shrinking family sector (by increasing lifetime childlessness) which is still mainly traditional. In other words, most families have two or more children, most mothers of these children are not gainfully employed, and an increasing number of women remain childless. Modernization of the forms of private life happens on top of this basic structure.

After the mid-1960s, the normal family pattern has lost some of its popularity throughout Europe, and there has been decline of marriages and births, increasing cohabitation, and an increase of single as well as working mothers. Some interpret such cross-national variation as a sign of a second demographic transition (van de Kaa 1987). The first transition, completed in the 1920s, had led to a balance of births and deaths, the second transition, after the 1960s, has changed the character of the family, from an institution, inevitable in a normal individual life, to a matter of rational individual decisions. The variations in the structures of private life and in family forms in the states in Europe may be understood as indications of different stages of a linear development towards more individualization and self-fulfillment. The end of this process may be the dissolution of the traditional family. Although the traditional bourgeois family was the family form optimally adjusted to modern industrial society, Swiss sociologist Hoffmann-Nowotny hypothesizes the family form which will best meet the mobility and flexibility requirements of the individualized postmodern, postindustrial societies of the West will be the unmarried, noncoresident couple sharing a mobile child growing up in two homes with two single parents.

The second demographic transition concept is too superficial. Demographic indicators throughout the countries of Europe do, indeed, move in the same direction over time. Nevertheless, the structures of family life and their development over time are profoundly different. For example, in Denmark, the "land of the vanishing housewife" (Knudsen 1997), the traditional family has practically ceased to exist; whereas in West Germany or Switzerland, where the majority of mothers of two children are housewives, it is still the dominant family type. The Netherlands left this traditional cluster after 1990 and have rapidly been moving towards Scandinavian standards as to mothers' in the labor force. In terms of marriage, there are other remarkable differences. In Scandinavia, the unmarried cohabiting couple with children has become the most common family structure. In Italy and in the other countries of southern Europe there is practically no cohabitation. The majority of young women live with their parents before they get married. In West Germany cohabitation is a premarital arrangement which, with the first child, is transformed into marriage.

There are distinct paths of family development in Europe framed by different national cultural traditions and by different policy profiles. Such national policy profiles are parameters of individual life decisions.

The pro-natalist French profile gives substantial financial support to large families and also supports working mothers by good day-care provisions. The Anglo-Saxon profile (prevalent in Britain and Ireland), on the contrary, regards family life as a private matter and only contains a few rudimentary measures against poverty. The Nordic profile of the Scandinavian countries emphasizes gender equality and the quality of educational standards available to children, provided by the quantitative and qualitative standards of their systems of day care and by flexible parental leave regulations for working parents. The German profile factually supports the traditional family. Germany has the most restrictive policy as to the compatibility of gainful employment and family life (which is only supported in a sequential but not a simultaneous mode), most of the states' expenditures in the area go to the financial support of marriage via tax reductions for married couples, regardless if they have children or not, and into family allowances. In West Germany there is practically no day care for children under three years of age. Finally, the southern European policy profile, like the Anglo-Saxon, is characterized by little state support for families, as the state trusts in functioning extended family networks. Such national policy profiles affect individual life decisions as images of what is considered the normal socially approved mode of family life in the respective countries (Strohmeier 2002). Individual actors and couples treat them as invariant parameters of the irreversible decision to enter parenthood.

In accordance with the German policy profile, a young woman, when she reaches the age at which she may leave school, knows that, if she wishes to have children (which most of them do), she will—irrespective of her vocational training and qualification—almost certainly end up as a housewife after she has given birth to her second child. Her chances of re-entering the labor market are uncertain. She may be better off hiring private support or having her own mother look after her children. If we compare this situation to the one of a Danish or Swedish woman of equal age, the difference is striking. The young Scandinavian can expect a family life with simultaneous life-long employment. The Scandinavian policy profile goes with a different family pattern, characterized by more independence for women and more flexibility in the fulfilment of family tasks and parental obligations by women and men (Knudsen 1997; Meisaari-Polsa 1997) and it goes with higher average numbers of children, and fewer childless persons.