Radical changes in family life
The major changes affecting family life in most large Western countries are fully in evidence in France: more unmarried couples, more separations and births outside marriage. Household size continues to decline: more than 30% of households now consist of a single person, and an equal number of just two persons. The number of children per family has fallen from 2.2 to 1.8 in thirty years, as the number of large families has collapsed and a new standard of two children has emerged.
At the same time, family structures have greatly changed. In the late 1960s, one family in ten was headed by a single parent, mostly because of widowhood. By 2005, this proportion had doubled, as the number of divorces and separations increased. The most basic and rapid change concerns births. Whereas in the 1970s fewer than 10% of children were born outside marriage, this is now the case for more than half of all children. Before, you had to marry to have a child, but now over half the time the child comes before the wedding.
This change in behaviour has involved the general acceptance of types of family that were once considered eccentric, unusual or indeed scandalous. Second families have been recognised by social legislation (with family allowances, for example, divided). Singlesex two-parent families have eventually been accepted by all political parties as a reality the law must support.
These changes in marriage and couples have paralleled a decline in religious practice, particularly of Catholicism. From 1975 to 2000, the number of christenings fell from 600,000 to 400,000 and of church weddings from 282,000 to 122,000. Only 48% of people living in France now state that they believe in God, 42% in life after death, 20% in Hell and 30% in Heaven. Perhaps we simply prefer to believe in the least disagreeable things!
Source : France 2008, La Documentation française
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