In Europe, unmarried parents on rise

[EMTL]

In Europe, unmarried parents on rise

By Peter Ford, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor Mon Apr 17, 4:00 AM ET

PARIS - Germany's Bild newspaper has called it "the Steffi Graf trend." And though a pregnant Ms. Graf ended up marrying Andre Agassi a few days before their son, Jaden, was born, Bild has a point.

Across Europe, the number of children born to unmarried couples has risen sixfold over the past 35 years to nearly 1 in 3 of all babies, altering the face of the European family beyond recognition - and beyond recall - say demographers and social analysts.
While most governments have regarded the transformation as simply a sign of the times, some experts are sounding the alarm.

Given the relative fragility of de facto unions - and the social implications of single-parent families - "the rise in births outside marriage is a real cause for concern" warns John Ermisch, an economics professor at the University of Essex in England.

If Prof. Ermisch's findings that de facto British unions break up more quickly and more often than marriages apply throughout the continent, points out Dr. Peter Brierley of the Christian Research group in London, the increasing numbers of single-parent families in Europe will mean governments will have to rethink policy on a wide range of issues.

More housing will be needed for more families, more childcare facilities will have to be provided, more thought will have to be given to employing single mothers, and more attention paid to the particular social and educational needs of youngsters brought up by only one parent. All this, with many European countries already faltering under the strain of generous state welfare programs.

Reflecting different social, religious, and economic traditions that have shaped the 25 countries in the Eu ropean Union (EU), the number of births outside marriage varies widely from one end of the Continent to the other.


In Sweden, the figure is 56 percent. In Greece it is 4 percent. In between come France with 48 percent, Britain at 42 percent and Germany at 28 percent, according to the EU's official statistics branch, Eurostat.

percent of women favor marriage
But nearly all nations share two salient factors in common: the numbers have skyrocketed in recent decades, and the increase is due to children born to co-habitating couples, not to single mothers.

"Marriage is no longer considered an indispensable preliminary to welcoming a child" found a recent French parliamentary report on the family, which noted that "free unions" have become much more common - and not just for very young people.

In Germany, a recent Federal Statistics Office survey reached similar conclusions: only 38 percent of women and 30 percent of men see marriage as a necessary part of living together.

In Britain, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found in 1999 that cohabiting couples accounted for 24 percent of the men living in any kind of partnership and 25 percent of women - double the rates prevalent in 1986.

"People these days don't expect their marriages to last, so they think 'why get married in the first place if weddings are expensive and divorce complicated?' " says Dr. Brierley, whose organization provides information to help British church leaders make informed policy decisions.

And where there are cohabiting partnerships, there are babies. "One of the important engines behind the rise in non-marital childbearing," said the ONS study of European trends, "is the rise in cohabitation that has occurred, particularly since the 1980s, in many European countries."

Why a sixfold jump in unwed parents since the 1970s?
Ermisch, the University of Essex professor, sees the origins of the trend in the contraceptive pill, which began to enjoy wide popularity in Europe in the 1970s. "It used to be very costly to delay marriage," he argues.

"Either you didn't have sex or you risked having an illegitimate baby. The pill made delay less costly," he says, and as live-in couples formed - and firmed up - increasingly they decided to start a family.

At the same time, suggests Dirk Konietzka, coauthor of a German study carried out in 2003 by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, "much of it has to do with the modernization of womens' role, and also that women who have children can work. There are fewer reasons to get married."

Changing social mores in societies where religion and churches have suffered declining influence have also had an impact. "It is clearly apparent in all the countries that those who became mothers within marriage were more religious than their counterparts who had their first child in other contexts," says the ONS report, drawing on United nations figure.

In France, where church-going is rare, "society draws no distinction between couples that are married and those that aren't," points out France Prioux, research director at the National Institute for Demographic Studies. "There is no social disapproval."

Nor are there any legal differences in France between married and unmarried couples when it comes to matters such as inheritance or parental rights. (In Britain, however, unmarried fathers have no legal parental rights if they separate from their child's mother.)

This year's French parliamentary report expressed no concern about the surging trend toward families headed by unwed parents. It pointed out that 92 percent of children born to such couples are acknowledged by both parents by their first birthdays, which suggests that they are born into stable unions.

Evidence emerging in Britain and France, however, suggests that de facto unions are not as stable as those bound by a legal contract, and that in their wake they leave more children living with only one parent, with all the social, economic, and educational disadvantages that is widely acknowledged to bring.

Ermisch's research, for example, has found that the average duration of a cohabiting union in Britain (though growing longer year by year) is between three and four years - though this is partly explained by the fact that 40 percent of them turn into marriages.

Nonetheless, he calculates, only 35 percent of British babies born to cohabiting parents will live with both of them until their 16th birthday. Seventy percent of children born to married couples will do so, Ermisch says. Children born in cohabiting unions will spend an average of 4.7 years of their childhood with only one parent, compared with 1.6 years for those born in marriage, he says.

While the number of informal partnerships that turn into marriages varies considerably from one country to another (in Italy, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland it is around 70 percent, while in France it is only 32 percent, the ONS found), Ermisch's figures appear to find some echo in France.

In France, free unions may break up at twice the rate of marriages.
There, Ms. Prioux says, only 10 percent of marriages break up within the first five years, compared with 18 percent of free unions. That explains, she adds, why in 1999, 7 percent of 5-year-olds born to married couples had seen their parents break up, compared with 15 percent of children of unmarried couples.

Interestingly, however, that ratio narrowed considerably for French children who had been born 10 years earlier: 20 percent of 15-year-olds born to married parents had seen them divorce, while 25 percent of those born to unmarried parents had experienced their break-up.

"Those informal unions that last seem to last much longer nowadays," suggests Prioux, though she says insufficient research has been done to fully explain the figures.

Whichever way the statistics break down, however, "the trend towards more children being born outside marriage ... will continue unless there is a radical change of heart in the whole of society towards the issue," says Brierley. "I don't think you are going to stop that."

• Andreas Tzortzis in Berlin contributed to this article

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20060417/wl_csm/ochildren

--
"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing"

Our beloved Prophet, Muhammad (SAW), was reported to have said:

"The Hour (The Doomday) will not be established" or said: "From among the portents of the Hour is that the religious knowledge will be taken away (by the death of religious Scholars) and general ignorance (of religion) will appear; and the drinking of alcoholic drinks will be very common, and (open) illegal sexual intercourse will prevail, and men will decrease in number while women will increase so much so that, for fifty women there will only be one man to look after them." (Bukhari 8.800A)

[alhaji_aminu]

Salam

EMTL I think it is better for us to concentrate on our own problems here at home. Europeans have a very generous, if archaic, social system that ensures no citizen is left in poverty.

Now contrast that with what we have here in Nigeria where divorced women are left to fend for themselves. Even the old  family based social secuirty is becoming less common as a result of the pathetic umemployment and poverty plaughing our dear nation. No wonder the increase in beggars is coming from able bodied (or is it marri-able) women.

As secularists, european don't really find any problems with unmarried mothers. I guess they are more worried about the socio-economic implications of this than they are of its moral aspects. Productivity falls as a result of this because well trained people are frequently on maternity leave etc.

Quite honestly, I think it is none of our business. If that is what they choose so be it. After all, haven't we been told lukum deenikum waliya deen?

A huta lafiya!

[neozizo]

Salam

EMTL I think it is better for us to concentrate on our own problems here at home. Europeans have a very generous, if archaic, social system that ensures no citizen is left in poverty.

Now contrast that with what we have here in Nigeria where divorced women are left to fend for themselves. Even the old family based social secuirty is becoming less common as a result of the pathetic umemployment and poverty plaughing our dear nation. No wonder the increase in beggars is coming from able bodied (or is it marri-able) women.

As secularists, european don't really find any problems with unmarried mothers. I guess they are more worried about the socio-economic implications of this than they are of its moral aspects. Productivity falls as a result of this because well trained people are frequently on maternity leave etc.

Quite honestly, I think it is none of our business. If that is what they choose so be it. After all, haven't we been told lukum deenikum waliya deen?

[/quote]You are right but i think it wil do us great good to know the truth about the situations of the europeans cos most of us believe they have the ideal way of life and we continually aspire to imitate and be like them

[dan mama]

i personally agree with u alhaji_aminu. its really non of our business wether the europeans have that problem. ours is much worse than theirs. what have u got to say about the issue of us giving birth to children in matrimony(wedlock) and making them live less than animals by throwing them on the streets to fend for themselve all in the name of studying and learning the koran?(almajiranchi) ?what have u got to say about the high rate of divorce we have here too, which makes women turn into beggers because the system is dead and they dont have any body to take care of them after losing their husbands through divorce there by turning them into beggers? they give birth to children the wrong way(that is outside wedlock) but the children are doing much more better than ours here. at least the have all the basic nessecieties of life which ours lack completely. they take care of them very very well while we here throw ours on the streets  and have nothing to give them ,so what are u talking about? lets mind our own business. am not saying they are doing the right thing neither am I in support of what they are doing but the truth is an average european child is far far far better than an average nigerian child in terms of being taken care of by his or her parent. they give birth to childern outside wedlock but they take very good care of them, we give birth to childern inside wedlock but we end up destroying them so what are u talking about let  us mind our own business akache leifi tudu ne, sai ka hange na wani ka manta da naka.

[Dave_McEwan_Hill]

I am encouraged by the sensible remarks made on this topic. In UK even if the father of a child is not married to its mother he is legally obliged to give financial support to that mother and child through a body called CSA. Many try to avoid this but they can be charged iin court if they do not pay up.

The welfare of the child is the important issue - not the morals of the parents. Many couples in Europe now agree to stay together as partners for life without a formal or religious marriage ceremony.
This is not common, however, in Catholic countries like Italy, Spain, Ireland etc where marriage is still important.

Jesas said that we should try  to judge other people kindly in the hope that when it comes to the final judgement God will be kind to us.
I think people should try to remember that before they rush to criticise other people they do not even know.

[_Waziri_]

Assalamu Alaikum,

My good people, I think EMTL has the right to discuss whatever he may want to discuss on board here in as much as he does not identify with the profane.

True to God it is always what happens to other people or countries in the world that will happen to Nigeria. History of Nigeria can never be written independent of the history of the world. As such I believe whatever it is  happening in other parts of the world should be much a topic of discussion here as any other thing happening in Nigeria.

We should also keep in mind that some of us here are Muslims who believe in their Islamness first than their Nigerianess. To these people issues regarding Muslims across the globe are more important to them than issues of Nigeria as a common and recently "invented" geographical demarcation.

I think, it is even unethical of any human being, unhuman for that matter, to say they cannot discuss anything apart from what happens in their country. If we take to identify with this understanding we will begin to ask ourselves questions like why Mr. David Hill, a non-Nigerian, is here discussing Nigeria with us. What is his business with our problems when his country has more than enough problems to tackle.

No, ma gud ppl, it just doesn't fit in the string well, let just discuss anything that can lead to the solution of the problems plaguing the entire human race. We are international citizens in practice , we are Nigerian citizens only in theory.

[alhaji_aminu]

Salam

Waziri I am trying hard to see the connection between what I wrote (and many shared the same sentiment) with what you are contending. I don't believe there is one of us, on the forum, who chastised EMTL for bringing up the issue. The way I see it, problems rich Europeans are suffering from should be at the bottom of our concerns at the moment.

Also, the idea that  EMTL ( who is from a city a cherish too much - Funtua) has the right to discuss whatever he may want to discuss on board here in as much as he does not identify with the profane. is not totally true either. I mean, how many times did admin censor ( and I support some of the decisions) sammy (and others like him) for introducing posts that people consider profane? What we consider profane others dont- which is exactly why they post them . I should add that I dont think EMTL's post should be axed.
But I digress.......

I do agree with you that we cannot be an isolated place where all issues are local. Globalization has`destroyed that reality and I doubt anything can be done to stop it. I do, however, feel that the issue of unwed mothers adds absolutely nothing to the myriad of problems we have in Nigeria- or in the World for that matter.

We are here to discuss issues with practical relevance. Unwed mothers in Europe is not!

Shikenan.

[Dave_McEwan_Hill]

Waziri

As EMTL decided to discuss unwed mothers and other issues about my country I feel I am entitled to respond.
I did not discuss any Nigerian problem at all in my post so I do not appreciate your rude remark.

I did spend a very large part of my life in Kano so I am no stranger.

David McEwan Hill

[dan mama]

Assalamaliakum

   

We should also keep in mind that some of us here are Muslims who believe in their Islamness first than their Nigerianess. To these people issues regarding Muslims across the globe are more important to them than issues of Nigeria as a common and recently "invented" geographical demarcation

waziri what is this u are talking about. nobody said that what ETML wrote is bad . all what we are saying is that its not really what u ought to be worried about at the moment and coming to talk about islam , isnt Islam against almagiranchi and divorce and giving birth to children u cant take care of? why do our people still do that? u stand there and talk that we belive in Islamness more than our Nigerianess. why do we as moslems engage in such things that Islam is against? if u dont have any better thing to talk about then pls let it go

[Ete]

I must say that I am in total agreement with Aminu and Dan Mama's view that this issue is of no relevance to Nigeria/Nigerians.  I also commend both Aminu and Dan Mama for challenging contributors in this forum to dicuss practical issues that affect Nigerians rather than chasing after shadows. I have read several of EMTL's commentaries and he strikes me as a saddist. All his posts are either aimed at attacking Western Europe/America or christianity. I have never read any objective piece from him, and it sad to see that at a time when our Nigeria really needs to come together to tackle the humongous problems facing us a nation, there are still the likes of EMTL  that are so caught up their religious and ethnic warfare almost to the point of paranoia.

I would encourage EMTL to be a man for once and take logical positions on issues rather then be blinded constantly and as such always missing the point on several vital issues.  I again stress my agreement with some of the repondents that domestic relationships in Europe is of little relevance to Nigeria.  It would have been a lot more interesting if the issue here was about the welfare of Nigerian immigrants in Europe and the challenges they are face, and what can be done. That would have been relevant, not this nonsense.

[neozizo]

I strongly believe it is relevant and useful for us to be aware of problems of others, problems that affect us indirectly or which we are likely to face in future so as to adequately prepare for them.
We should always be willing to learn from the mistakes of others.
It is not out of place to be informed of state of affairs of others despite the disgraceful and hopeless state of ours.

It is this attitude of the US that has made them the sole super power of the world today-they are continually expending lots of time and resources just to be current on issues and situations of  even the most insignificant state which they store in their large database for the eventuality of when it may become the useful and decisive piece of information that may help them achieve say a regime change in that country hundred years from now.

[HUSNAA]

I strongly believe it is relevant and useful for us to be aware of problems of others, problems that affect us indirectly or which we are likely to face in future so as to adequately prepare for them.
We should always be willing to learn from the mistakes of others.
It is not out of place to be informed of state of affairs of others despite the disgraceful and hopeless state of ours.

It is this attitude of the US that has made them the sole super power of the world today-they are continually expending lots of time and resources just to be current on issues and situations of  even the most insignificant state which they store in their large database for the eventuality of when it may become the useful and decisive piece of information that may help them achieve say a regime change in that country hundred years from now.

HEAR HEAR Zizo. I think you have said some sensible things in this discussion. Knowledge is power as the saying goes.  I am also of the opinion that we should learn from others' mistakes. At least the reasons why zina is haram in Islam are being glaringly displayed in the western world. Its not only the act itself but the consequences of the act that Islam tries to warn us about, hence all the talk about social structure within an Islamic society.
Having said that, we should  look at the social behaviour of western ppl  in a dispassionate way, not in a condemnatory light, because it is not something any of us can do anything about. None of us has any jurisdiction religious or secular over them. So let them be. Its really NONE OF OUR BIZNES

[HUSNAA]

Also how many marriages in Islam are truly halal these days, when you have the issue of men divorcing their wives and taking them back more than the stipulated number of times, because some mallam has found a loop hole that makes it 'OK' for the man to take back the woman?  
Or when women who have been divorced three times by the same man, arrange a marriage and a divorce with someone else so that they can go back to their former husband?
Or when a woman  tana zaman 'ya'ya ne kurum, but the husband co habits with her anyway?  
Or when a just divorced woman starts enterntaining  potential suitors before the end of her idda period?
Or when some men decide they wont marry a divorcee without first cohabiting with her?
Or when a cohabiting couple decide to marry without fulfilling the terms of  istibra'i?  
Or when a man talks a married woman out of her marriage with promises of wedding her instead, and actually does so?
Or where some rich men and our emirs still think its ok to have concubines?

[_Waziri_]

Salam,

Tis like some did not like what I said or atleast how I said it. And since it is a reality that there is nothing wrong to say under the sun but evrything wrong on how one says it, I am inclined towards apologising for I do not like the idea of people like Mr. David believing me to be rude in anyway.

But sincerely speaking I still identify with what I said earlier on this issue. We have to understand that this place is not a conference table where we discuss issues following a particular schedule and defined area of interest.  This is a board with every contributor having right to bring any issue he believes to be relevant and in line with the objectives of human sojourn on earth. And in this no any other forumnite is compelled to respond to what another poster puts since we vary in exposure and area of choice and interest in the affairs of humankind.

My major problem comes where others  try to choose for others what to discuss using a standard they alone believe to be the right standard. No.

You can discuss different forms of jokes here.
You can discuss the afairs of Nigeria.
Others can discuss the affairs of Europe alone.
Also some like Moray would insist on discussing Roman Catholic Church and child abuse.
Some like Amin may want to discuss New York City with Naijagal, as I saw it happenning some months back.
Some like Barde may want to discuss Christianity and Islam.
Danmama wants to discuss Almajranchi in Northern Nigeria.
Husna may prefer discussing women and divorce in the Muslim Nigeria.
ETC, ECT, ETC.


And you will agree with me in principle that all these add to our problems today. But then we have to understand the truth that the fact that EMTL discusses the social problems of Europe will not in anyway stop any other person from discussing what he believes to be the BETTER thing to discuss on the board. Then why tell EMTL what you feel he should discuss?

Also this is directly to HUSNAA. It is not those things we have jurisdiction over, religious or secular we discuss. No. It is those things we have stakes in we discuss. And I know you will agree with me that we have stake in whatever it is that is happening in Europe and other parts of the world. It is our business as much.  

But then, dear forumnites, if you insist on identifying with your sentiment, there is nothing I can do save  allow you be different from me and learn to live with you that way. For it is written in the book of life that it will always be: "Different people, different strokes". We cannot impose our priorities on others. We live with people just the way they are.  So please let EMTL be, you can initiate a discussion about Almajiranchi or Divorce or even NewYork as Amin and Naijagal may prefer, and you will certainly find Waziri responding if he feels he has the required expertise or interest to speak.

Jazakumurahman!!!!

[mallamt]

_waziri_
you may want to discuss these particular veiws you have on freedom to discuss any topic here with admin