LOCAL DIAGNOSIS OF FAMILY AND PROFESSIONAL LIFE CONCILIATION IN ESTONIA

Foundation TuuruMare Ellen9.07.2007

Traditional family• Legal status (registered marriage)• Clear distribution of roles and responsibilities in a familyFather Secure economic managingMother Management of a household Raising children Helping older members of family in need and closer relatives

Traditional family with high stability with wife depending on husband and society code and values

Divorces very exceptional

Father-mother figure

•Growing into mother-father is a long and complicated process that starts in a childhood home aside ones mother and father.

•Family researches stress that demands for being a good parent are cultural-specific and due to that the creed and understanding of a good mother and a good father differ in different cultures and are changing in time.

Ideal Father

Every person has different idea of ideal father based on personal subjective experience, stereotypes and ideals.

A kid has its own father idealWoman looks at a man as a potential father of her children or future childrenMan sees himself as a potential father, the figure of which he has taken from his childhood or constructed it all by himself

Family as a virtue

•Women valued family more than work, men valued work more.

•Status of a parent raise the importance of a family.

•Unmarried people value learning free time and friends.

Changing family in Europe and Estonia

Family definition – the basis for common understanding

•Family from the start of life on Earth

•Family from the childhood

•Family in present life

•Future family

•Family as the symbol of values

Most important spheres of life

62 36 11

48 33 9 10

48 50 2

30 49 10 11

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

with children

no children

women

with children

no children

men

family work studying friends andf free time

Family after WW II

Change of traditional family status and role of parents

• Women started working and became economically more independent

• Role of men as family provide became smaller

• Diminish of birth rate

• Growth of divorces

• Children raised in a single parent family or non-biological parents family

Family in the 60-ies

• Acceptance of premarital sexual relations

• Growth of common-law marriages as alternative family

• Traditional family still as common model

Family in the 80-ies

• In 1980ies revaluation of traditional family values

• Multitude of family models (“bond between two or more people who live together, take care of each other and take care of their dependant family members” Wood (1995).

Common-law marriages; Childless family; Single parent + infant family; Same gender family

Decrease of the relative importance of traditional family (mother+father+children)

Estonian family today

• 7 children out of 10 have 2 parents;

• 25% of the parents are legally not married;

• One-parent family - usually mother and child;

• 38% single mothers with infant children are not married, 49% divorced and 13% widows;

• 2% single fathers with infant children

Estonian family todayChart2

couple54%

single mother27%

common-law couple17%

single father2%

Fatherhood and role of a father

• Being a father and demand to fathers are culture-specific (stereotypes of an ideal father)

• Everyone has individual conception of an ideal fatherthat is based on individual subjective experience

Father as head of the family

• Father figure as the provider for family - historically and nowadays (20 % of the questionned women and 37% of men, others think it is up to both)

• 2/3 of the women admit that men earn and donate more to family budget

• 84% take mutual decision about increase in the family, 14 % only woman and 2% only man

Father as representative of the family outside home

• Financial arrangements of a family (communication with banks, insurance etc.) fathers (40%) and mothers (46%)

• Management of public business (accordingly 32% and 27%).

• Communication with kindergarten and school – mothers 58% and fathers 6%.

Father as authority and role model.

• Raise of the number of active fathers – participate more in homeworks and raising children: This way mother get better conditions for reconciliation of work and family life

• In Estonia relative importance of fathers who considered their task taking children to school, kindergarten or hobby centres was 8% in 2005 and 34%, mothers.

• Traditsioonal concept of father as bigger authority was accepted by 1/3 of mothers and 40% of fathers.

Father and childcare vacation

• Equal possibility in Estonia to have childcare vacation for 18 months

• 58% of mothers and 66% fathers think that fathers have to provide for the family and mother has to stay at home with children

• 38% of fathers and 49% of mothers thought that the father- child relations will improve in case fathers stay at childcare vacation

Separately living father

• Mostly father leaves the family

• In Estonia the number of irresponsible separately living fathers is quite big

• Joint custody that is common in Europe should be more used in Estonia

• State policy for alimony should be set up

Future of the FAMILY• Family has changed and is still changing

• Together with family also the role of a father is changing

• Times of traditional family with only one family model dominated, are over

• Career as well as family have become equally important to both fathers and mothers

• It is considered normal that fathers and motehrs share family responsibilities

• Multitude of family steretypes will remain

Children should not suffer from the multiple stereotypes of future family models

References

(“2005 year Gender Equality monitoring”)

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