ARGENTINA-POPULATION: Traditional Family in Retreat

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 1 1997 (IPS) - Take three of the most quoted anecdotes of the day in Argentina: President Carlos Menem will seek a third term of office is his daughter approves the plan; a State Governor confesses that he avoids any political statement that might cause a rift with his wife and soccer superstar Diego Maradona will resume his soccer career – if asked to do so by his daughters.

All these stories would appear to show that the family unit is as strong as ever in Argentina, right?. Wrong, say the sociologists, psychologists, demographers and even parents and children: family life is in crisis!

Statistics show that the number of marriages and legal births is steadily declining in Argentina while divorce, extra-marital unions, and children born out of wedlock are on the increase. The number of unmarried, grown children still living with their parents is also on the rise.

According to the census of 1980 and 1991, the number of couples who opt for marriage has declined by 9.6 per cent, while unofficial unions have risen by 55 per cent. Furthermore, a large number of those who do marry, admit that they lived together first.

The average age of Argentines who decided to marry jumped from 25.9 to 28.2 between 1980 and 1995. The number of never-marrieds between ages 20 to 24 rose five per cent in the same period, and rose six per cent for those between 25 and 29. Even so, those who live alone are a clear minority.

The number of unmarried adult children who live with their parents rose 49 per cent between 1980 and 1991. But the chief reason for protracted family union is not love of one’s kin. Rather, the lack of well-paying jobs – 42 percent of all youths aged 15-19 are unemployed – and certain permissiveness are behind the trend.

As lawyer Jorge Aronian, 52, put it: “In my time, if you wanted to have sex, you had to do it furtively – in seedy hotels or the back seats of cars. Now, when I get up in the morning, I bump into my kids and their companions.”

The children who used to make up the middle-class Argentine family, so well represented by “Mafalda” – the celebrated comic book character created 33 years ago – are getting married less frequently than they used to.

In 1980, there were 25 births for every 1,000 inhabitants, a figure which fell to 19.3 birth per 1,000 by 1995. Children born out of wedlock, who numbered 29 per cent of all births in 1980, rose to 43.6 per cent in 1995. Nevertheless, demographer Susana Torrado says that the average size of families is on the way down.

Imnproved contraceptive techniques, an increase in the number of couples who don’t want children, economic reasons that delay the period between one child and another, and the increasing age of women when they first give birth, are all factors that influence the decline.

In the 1970s, women produced an average 3.1 children in Argentina. Today the average has fallen to 2.6, barely the number required to replace the population.

Sociologist Silvia Chester declared that “the family is “leaking” on all sides.

She told IPS that feminist politics of recent years have overthrown some formerly unquestioned “truths,” while highlighting the weaknesses and hypocrisy of family life. Domestic violence, incest and marital infidelity all raise doubts about the idea of the family as some sort of refuge.

Chester underscored that “one proof of the declining ‘family ideal’ is the growing number of women who head households. In fact, it is no longer even necessary for a man to be part of a family.”

The percentage of families headed by women was 16.9 in 1970, a percentage that currently stands at 23. The rise is attributable to the increase in divorced and separated women who raise children alone, or with outside financial support.

Referring to individuals who have reformed families with children engendered by prior spouses, Chester explains that “the paradigm of the traditional family is disappearing, and is being replaced by the rise of households with people from different families.”

In these newly formed households, the presence of children by former marriages is not constant.

A 36 year old psychologist, Susana Repeto, says: “Laura, my daughter by my ex-husband, used to come on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. But we recently changed this schedule so that she can come on Saturdays when she has a chance to play with my other daughter of the same age who visits her father on Sundays.”

The fanning out of relatives connected to these multifaceted families is even greater when one takes into account uncles and grand-parents. It used to be that these relatives were unique and irreplaceable. Until just a few decades ago, it was possible to live in nuclear families made up of parents and children.

Today, with life expectancy at 73 years, it is uncommon for elders living in the home to participate in the raising of grandchildren and great-grandchildren as was commonplace at mid-century.

Sociologists beleive that today “Householders want a house to themselves” and older people are not comfortable visiting their hyper-busy children.

Economic upheaval and steep unemployment in Argentina for the last five years have been decisive factors in persuading many couples to postpone marriage and childbearing. Economic, cultural and social factors all interact to create new family forms. The ideal family – one of the most influential social institutions in Argentina – is no longer what it used to be, sociologists and others agree.