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Family, kinship and welfare provision in Europe, past and present: commonalities and divergences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2010

PIER PAOLO VIAZZO
PIER PAOLO VIAZZO
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and Historical Geography, University of Turin.
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Abstract

The realization that European family forms are failing to converge as predicted by modernization theory has led many scholars to suspect that the broad regional differences detected by historians persist in the present and are likely to influence future developments. This article outlines some relevant hypotheses prompted by historical studies about the role of family and kinship as sources of social security and analyses the results of comparative work on contemporary Europe, paying special attention to the relative weight of cultural and structural factors. Although differences still appear to predominate over commonalities, it is not inconceivable that in certain important respects European countries might paradoxically converge, owing to the generalized decline of the welfare state, towards forms of welfare provision that are closer to the ‘familialistic’ models of southern and eastern Europe than to the ‘modern’ models of Scandinavia and north-western Europe.

Famille, parenté, mesures de protection sociale et bien-être dans l'europe d'hier et d'aujourd'hui: convergences et divergences

En constatant que différentes formes que connaît la famille européenne n'ont pas tendu vers un modèle commun comme le prévoyait la théorie de la modernisation, de nombreux chercheurs en sont venus à penser que les profondes différences entre régions qu'ont constatées les historiens persistent encore et qu'elles affectent vraisemblablement les développements à venir. Nous relevons ici des hypothèses que la recherche historique a formulées quant au rôle que famille et parenté ont joué pour apporter une sécurité sociale; nous analysons d'autre part les travaux comparatifs traitant de l'Europe contemporaine, avec une attention particulière pour le poids des facteurs structurels et culturels. Bien qu'apparemment les divergences entre régions européennes l'emportent encore sur les convergences, il n'est pas inconcevable qu'au moins sous certains aspects, et paradoxalement, les modèles européens puissent converger, étant donné le déclin généralisé de l'état-providence, vers des mesures susceptibles d'assurer le bien-être, plus proches des modèles de la ‘famille traditionnelle’ du Sud et de l'Est de l'Europe que de ceux, ‘modernes’ de la Scandinavie et de l'Europe du Nord-Ouest.

Familie, verwandtschaft und wohlfahrtsleistungen in europa in vergangenheit und gegenwart: gemeinsamkeiten und abweichungen

Nachdem klar geworden ist, dass sich die europäischen Familienformen nicht angeglichen haben, wie es von der Modernisierungstheorie vorhergesagt worden war, sind viele Gelehrte zu der Vernutung gelangt, dass die deutlichen regionalen Unterschiede, die von Historikern ausfindig gemacht worden sind, in der Gegenwart fortbestehen und vermutlich auch künftige Entwicklungen beeinflussen werden. Dieser Beitrag skizziert einige der relevanten Hypothesen über die Rolle der Familie und der Verwandtschaft als Quellen der sozialen Sicherheit, die durch historische Studien aufgeworfen worden sind, und analysiert die Ergebnisse vergleichender Arbeiten zum gegenwärtigen Europa, wobei dem relativen Gewicht kultureller und struktureller Faktoren besondere Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt wird. Obwohl die Unterschiede offenbar noch immer größer sind als die Gemeinsamkeiten, ist es nicht undenkbar, so paradox es klingen mag, dass sich die europäischen Gesellschaften auf Grund des allgemeinen Rückgangs des Sozialstaats auf bestimmten wichtigen Gebieten angleichen werden, und zwar in Richtung von Wohlfahrtsleistungen, die den ‘familiaristischen’ Modellen des südlichen und östlichen Europas näher stehen als den ‘modernen’ Modellen Skandinaviens und Norwesteuropas.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 25 , Special Issue 1: SPECIAL ISSUE ON KINSHIP IN BRITAIN AND BEYOND FROM THE EARLY MODERN TO THE PRESENT , May 2010 , pp. 137 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

ENDNOTES

1 ‘Kinship: historical and contemporary frontiers’, Workshop at the European University Institute (EUI), Fiesole/Florence. The organizers were Giulia Calvi (historian), Martin Kohli (sociologist) and Sigrid Weigel (literary critic). The document is available at http://www.iue.it/SPS/Research/SPS_AY0708_Workshops_F07.html.

2 A clear account of the resurgence in kinship studies witnessed over the past two decades is provided in J. Carsten, After kinship (Cambridge, 2004), 1–30. See also M. Segalen, ‘Kinship ties in European families’, in D. I. Kertzer and M. Barbagli eds., The history of the European family, vol. 3 (New Haven, 2003), 350–76.

3 C. Bonvalet, ‘La famille-entourage locale’, Population 58 (2003), 10 (my translation).

4 Ibid.

5 R. Wall, J. Robin and P. Laslett eds., Family forms in historic Europe (Cambridge, 1983).

6 For a classic survey of the anthropological evidence, see R. Linton, The study of man (New York, 1936), 152–72. A recent assessment is offered in P. P. Viazzo and F. Remotti, ‘La famiglia: uno sguardo antropologico’, in P. P. Viazzo et al., La famiglia (Milan, 2007), 40–65.

7 A. Burguière and F. Lebrun, ‘The one hundred and one families of Europe’, in A. Burguière, C. Klapisch-Zuber, M. Segalen and F. Zonabend eds., A history of the family, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1996), 19.

8 This prediction is critically recalled in M. Segalen's ‘Introduction’ to M. Gullestad and M. Segalen eds., Family and kinship in Europe (London, 1997), 1.

9 A. Macfarlane, ‘Demographic structures and cultural regions in Europe’, Cambridge Anthropology 6, 1–2 (1980), 1–17.

10 Macfarlane, ‘Demographic structures’, 4.

11 Ibid.

12 Macfarlane, ‘Demographic structures’, 5.

13 R. M. Smith, ‘The people of Tuscany and their families in the fifteenth century: medieval or “Mediterranean”?’, Journal of Family History 6 (1981), 107–28.

14 J. Hajnal, ‘Two kinds of preindustrial household formation system’, Population and Development Review 8 (1982), 449–94.

15 P. Laslett, ‘Family and household as work group and kin group: areas of traditional Europe compared’, in R. Wall, J. Robin and P. Laslett eds., Family forms in historic Europe (Cambridge, 1983), 516–35.

16 Macfarlane, ‘Demographic structures’, 1.

17 P. Laslett, ‘Family and collectivity’, Sociology and Social Research 63 (1979), 432–42.

18 P. Laslett, ‘Family, kinship and collectivity as systems of support in pre-industrial Europe: a consideration of the nuclear-hardship hypothesis’, Continuity and Change 3 (1988), 153–75.

19 P. Horden, ‘Family history and hospital history in the Middle Ages’, in E. Sonnino ed., Living in the city (Rome, 2004), 260. For a critical discussion of the relationships between historical studies of domestic arrangements and welfare systems see also P. Horden, ‘Household care and informal networks: comparisons and continuities from antiquity to the present’, in P. Horden and R. Smith eds., The locus of care: families, communities, institutions, and the provision of welfare since antiquity (London, 1998), 24–5.

20 D. I. Kertzer, Family life in Central Italy, 1880–1910 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1984), 95–7.

21 See e.g. P. Bourdelais, ‘Vieillir en famille dans la France des ménages complexes: l'exemple de Prayssans, 1836–1911’, Annales de Démographie Historique 22 (1985), 21–38.

22 The debate is reviewed in P. P. Viazzo, ‘What's so special about the Mediterranean? Thirty years of research on household and family in Italy’, Continuity and Change 18 (2003), 114–21.

23 Kertzer, D. I., ‘Household history and sociological theory’, Annual Review of Sociology 17 (1991), 156CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 See especially Horden, ‘Household care’, 24–31, and S. Cavallo, ‘Family obligations and inequalities in access to care in northern Italy, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in P. Horden and R. Smith eds., The locus of care (London, 1998), 90–110.

25 Reher, D. S., ‘Family ties in Western Europe: persistent contrasts’, Population and Development Review 24 (1998), 203–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 See Viazzo, ‘What's so special’, 122–9.

27 Reher, ‘Family ties’, 209.

28 See e.g. K. A. Lynch, Individuals, families, and communities in Europe, 1200–1800 (Cambridge, 2003), 11–12.

29 See e.g. S. Cavallo, ‘L'importanza della “famiglia orizzontale” nella storia della famiglia italiana’, in I. Fazio and D. Lombardi eds., Generazioni: legami di parentela tra passato e presente (Rome, 2006), 68–72.

30 M. Barbagli, M. Castiglioni and G. Dalla Zuanna, Fare famiglia in Italia (Bologna, 2003); G. Therborn, Between sex and power: family in the world, 1900–2000 (London and New York, 2004); G. Dalla Zuanna and G. A. Micheli eds., Strong family and low fertility: a paradox? (Dordrecht, 2004).

31 F. G. Castles ed., Families of nations: patterns of public policy in Western democracies (Aldershot, 1993).

32 Carried out between 2000 and 2003, this project studied informal and formal social care arrangements in five European countries selected to represent a wide spectrum of religious and cultural traditions: Finland, France, Italy, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Details are available at http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/sospol/soccare/.

33 Eurostat, The life of women and men in Europe, 1980–2000: a statistical portrait (Luxembourg, 2002). An updated edition was published in 2008.

34 Eleven countries have contributed data to the 2004 SHARE baseline study: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Further data have been collected at later stages and new waves have been announced. See A. Börsch-Supan, K. Hank and H. Jürges, ‘A new comprehensive and international view on ageing: introducing the “Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe”’, European Journal of Ageing 2 (2005), 245–53, and the information available at http://www.share-project.org/t3/share.

35 Funded by the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme, this project has been coordinated by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle, Germany) and has covered eight European countries: Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia and Sweden. Details are available at http://www.eth.mpg.de/kass/.

36 See e.g. A. Pfenning and T. Bahle eds., Families and family policies in Europe (Frankfurt, 2000), and M. Naldini, The family in the Mediterranean welfare states (London, 2003).

37 Therborn, Between sex and power. I am grateful to Professor Chiara Saraceno for directing my attention to this book and its implications.

38 M. Kohli, H. Künemund and J. Ludicke, ‘Family structure, proximity and contact’, in A. Börsch-Supan et al. eds., Health, ageing and retirement in Europe – first results from SHARE (Mannheim, 2006), 170.

39 See e.g. J. Finch, ‘Kinship and friendship’, in R. Jowell, S. Witherspoon and L. Brook eds., British social attitudes (Aldershot, 1989), 89–92, and Höllinger, F. and Haller, M., (1990), ‘Kinship and social networks in modern societies: a cross-cultural comparison among seven nations’, European Sociological Review 6 (1990), 108–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar (both based on the 1986 ISSP survey); and Jylhä, M. and Jokela, J., ‘Individual experiences as cultural: a cross-cultural study of loneliness among the elderly’, Ageing and Society 10 (1990), 300–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar (based on the eleven-country study on health care of the elderly of 1979–1980).

40 K. Hank, Spatial proximity and contacts between elderly parents and their adult children: a European comparison, Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Discussions Papers 510 (Berlin, 2005), 9. See also Ogg, J. and Renaut, S., ‘The support of parents in old age by those born during 1945–1954: a European perspective’, Ageing and Society 26 (2006), 723–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 C. Attias-Donfut, J. Ogg and F.-C. Wolff, ‘Family support’, in Börsch-Supan et al. eds., Health, ageing and retirement, 177.

42 See Attias-Donfut, C., Ogg, J. and Wolff, F.-C., ‘European patterns of intergenerational financial and time transfers’, European Journal of Ageing 2 (2005), 161–73CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, and also Albertini, M., Kohli, M. and Vogel, C., ‘Intergenerational transfers of time and money in European families: common patterns – different regimes?’, Journal of European Social Policy 17 (2007), 319–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 The six countries investigated by ICE are France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic; details are available at http://www.fondazionenordest.net/Immigrazione.31.0.html. For a recent analysis of ICE data on patterns of residential proximity between young adults and their mothers, see G. Dalla Zuanna, F. Michielin and F. Bordignon, ‘Prossimità abitativa dei giovani adulti con le loro madri: un confronto europeo’, in A. Rosina and P. P. Viazzo eds., Oltre le mura domestiche: famiglia e legami intergenerazionali dall'Unità d'Italia ad oggi (Udine, 2008), 45–68.

44 Daatland, S. O. and Herlofson, K., ‘“Lost solidarity” or “changed solidarity”: a comparative European view of normative family solidarity’, Ageing and Society 23 (2003), 540CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 M. Barbagli, Sotto lo stesso tetto: mutamenti della famiglia in Italia dal XV al XX secolo, 2nd edn (Bologna, 2000), 117.

46 Barbagli, Castiglioni and Dalla Zuanna, Fare famiglia in Italia, 13–73, 173–235.

47 Attias-Donfut, Ogg and Wolff, ‘Financial transfers’, in Börsch-Supan et al. eds., Health, ageing and retirement, 182. Similar findings are reported in T. Kröger, Comparative research on social care: the state of the art, SOCCARE Project Report 1 (Brussels, 2001).

48 Therborn, Between sex and power, 297.

49 Ibid., 305.

50 Ibid., 220–2.

51 Ibid., 11.

52 Ibid., 243.

53 Bengtson, V. L., ‘Beyond the nuclear family: the increasing importance of multigenerational bonds’, Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (2001), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Ibid.

55 Gaggio, D., ‘Cinquant'anni dopo Banfield: come ripensare il ruolo della cultura nella storia economica?’, Contemporanea 10 (2007), 712Google Scholar. Although the semiotic definition of culture proposed by Gaggio draws heavily on C. Geertz, The interpretation of cultures (New York, 1973), the contrast with behavioural norms it entails is reminiscent of the distinction suggested by Laslett between ‘ethical rules’, enforceable by legal sanctions, and ‘noumenal normative rules’, thus defined in opposition to ‘phenomenal’ and believed to be culturally specific regulations embedded in collective attitudes and capable of unconsciously dictating the parameters within which conscious choices are made: see P. Laslett, ‘Demographic and microstructural history in relation to human adaptation’, in D. J. Ortner ed., How humans adapt: a biocultural odyssey (Washington, 1983), 353–6.

56 The results of these socio-historical investigations are presented in H. Grandits ed., Family, kinship and state during the century of welfare (Kinship and social security in contemporary Europe, vol. 1, forthcoming).

57 D. Gaunt, ‘Strengthening weak ties: Swedish welfare and kinship’, in Grandits ed., Family, kinship and state.

58 Ibid.

59 H. Rosenbaum and E. Timm, ‘The relationships between family, kin and social security in twentieth-century Germany’, in Grandits ed., Family, kinship and state.

60 See J. Millar and A. Warman, Family obligations in Europe (London, 1996), 36, and also Naldini, The family, 122–5.

61 Millar and Warman, Family obligations, 41.

62 E. Durkheim, Professional ethics and civil morals (London, 1957), 213–14.

63 Although some crucial aspects of wealth transfers have gained attention in sociological scholarship only recently, there is now a range of countries for which transfer studies based on nationally representative survey data are available. These studies suggest that the aggregate wealth of contemporary cohorts due to bequests and inter vivos transfers, though probably less than before the industrial revolution, is much more than sociological lore would have us believe. In particular, they show that inter vivos transfers occur at a considerable rate and flow mainly from the older to the younger generations, and that bequests have increased for younger cohorts. See Kohli, M., ‘Intergenerational transfers and inheritance: a comparative view’, Annual Review of Gerontology and Geriatrics 24 (2004), 266–89Google Scholar, and also J. Beckert, ‘Inheritance’, in J. Beckert and M. Zafirovski eds., International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology (London, 2006), 355–60.

64 M. Segalen, ‘The modern reality of kinship: sources and significance of new kinship forms in contemporary Europe’, in P. Heady and M. Kohli eds., Counting the consequences: alternative approaches to the political economy of kinship (Kinship and social security in contemporary Europe, vol. 3, forthcoming).

65 Cf. H. Marks and D. Gaunt, ‘Two Swedish localities’ and C. Capello and N. Colclough, ‘A moral familism? Family clusters, neighbourhood and social welfare in a South Italian community’, in P. Heady and P. Schweizer eds., Family, kinship and community at the start of the 21st century (Kinship and social security in contemporary Europe, vol. 2, forthcoming).

66 See e.g. Daatland and Herlofson, ‘“Lost solidarity”’, and in particular Jylhä and Jokela, ‘Individual experiences’, on the contrast, respectively, between Norway and Spain and between urban Finland and rural Greece.

67 See e.g. Segalen, ‘Modern reality of kinship’ (on Vällingby vs. Tramonti), and also Daatland and Herlofson, ‘“Lost solidarity”’, 550–1 (on Norway vs. Spain).

68 Segalen, ‘Kinship ties’, 370–1.

69 Therborn, Between sex and power, 190–1.

70 On path dependence see P. David, ‘Path dependence, its critics and the quest for “historical economics”’, in P. Garrouste and S. Ioannides eds., Evolution and path dependence in economic ideas: past and present (Cheltenham, 2001), 15–40.

71 Kalmijn, M. and Saraceno, C., ‘A comparative perspective on intergeneration support: responsiveness to parental needs in individualistic and familialistic countries’, European Societies 10 (2008), 479–508CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Ibid., 504.

73 Marks and Gaunt, ‘Two Swedish localities’.

74 B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London, 1922), 17.

75 Marks and Gaunt, ‘Two Swedish localities’.