In an earlier post, we mentioned an apparent correlation between birth rates and ‘religiousness’. The European Union’s demographic statistics for 2004 suggest a slightly different correlation: that member states with high fertility rates also seem to have a high rate of births outside of wedlock.
Out of Wedlock Births drive EU Demographics?
November 29th, 2006 | Amir | Uncategorized
4 comments ↓
Of my friends here in Europe who have recently had children, 4 are not married and 3 are, and of the latter one only got married to make her father happy.
Yes, yes, anecdote is not the plural of data, etc.
If I had to guess, I’d say that there’s a certain proportion of people in each country that is family oriented and goes the traditional marriage and kids route for one reason or another. A lot of other people and even some married people don’t see marriage as that big a deal outside the legal advantages. My guess is that there are a number of people not all that interested in marriage who would like to have kids anyway or who decide to have one after an ‘accident,’ and that there is some combination of economic and acceptability issues driving these decisions. Really, in a lot of Europe it is just not a big deal to raise kids outside of wedlock.
My wife says that in the case of the UK it is because Richmond SuperKings arer the strongest fertility drug known to man, based on her observations working at a CostCutter in rural Devon, but I think she is just prejudiced.
PS Excellent comment engine and nice blog, just found you from ‘Aqoul.
There really isn’t an imperative to get married in most countries because defacto relationships provide pretty much the same benefits. The only reason is social or religious (to please parents or God) and for most of us they are not really compelling reasons at all.
Then there are my Dutch friends who got married after living together for 6 years so they’d have an excuse to throw a big party. Or so they said. They’ve cranked out 4 kids since then and the mom is stay at home, so they’ve ended up terribly traditional in that way, but rather by accident. Mom decided she just hated lawyering and liked mothering, but she could easily have been voted Least Likely To End Up Traditional Anything when she was younger.
I wonder why Iceland has so many births outside of marriage.
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