This book provides an up-to-date survey on the nature, causes, and patterns of family change. The traditional nuclear family has been replaced by a multiplicity of other forms, as widespread cohabitation, high levels of divorce and union dissolution, rising childlessness, and far below replacement fertility have emerged to an extent never before seen. Theoretical perspectives on this "Second Demographic Transition" are presented, highlighting the dramatic changes in gender roles. New methodological strategies for assessing family dynamics are presented, from multistate models of marriage and divorce combined with fertility to improved techniques for combining census and survey data on the family to a new approach for disentangling age, period, and cohort effects. While the volume emphasizes Western nations, insightful case studies range from analyzing family complexity in cohorts of parents and children in the UK to the impact of interpartner violence on family formation, to the emergence of a "gender war" in South Korea. By providing new insights into where we are today and how we got here, the book will be of value to all those interested in the contemporary family.

"Delayed Fertility as a Driver of Fertility Decline?" available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Autorentext

Robert Schoen received a 1972 Ph.D. degree in Demography from the Uni­ver­sity of California, Berkeley, USA. He has been a Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Johns Hopkins University, and Penn State Univer­sity, where he was the inaugural Hoffman Professor of Family Sociology and Demography. In 2004, he received the Mindel Sheps Award in Mathematical Demography/Demographic Methods from the Population Association of America.