Separate shelves in the refrigerator, eating from separate pots, the real possibility at any time of day to pack a suitcase and slam the door - this is what for long decades young Europeans shaped the image of new family relationships. The woman pretended that in this way she was asserting herself as an independent person, paying for her own ticket to the theater, cinema, and also a trip to a restaurant. And the man was quite satisfied with this system, in which he freed himself from any obligations, saved money, and most importantly - could at any moment get rid of a boring girlfriend, getting off in the worst case with a scandal.
In reality, in each of the partners all this time various feelings were fighting, the main one being a deeply hidden chagrin: the heart of even the most emancipated woman still beats a little faster when she hears an official marriage proposal. For a man, such a step is costly and means only one thing - he seems to become an adult and makes an attempt to take official responsibility for his family.
Over the past decade, European demographers have more than once reported with alarm: almost everywhere the number of registered marriages is catastrophically declining. Accordingly, the already low birth rate is falling. Young couples live together, buy rings, bracelets and silverware. But such unions have nothing in common with the institution of the family as a primary unit of society. Since nothing could be done, all that remained was to observe and record changes.
And they happened! For the first time in the last decade, the rate of officially registered marriages has increased in the largest European countries. Moreover, this happened at the same time, almost synchronously. What's the matter? Why did fashionable free unions suddenly crack? Family experts immediately concluded: all last decade women never ceased to be women and always dreamed of getting married. Men hesitated, but they had nowhere to go anyway. It's just that both sides somewhat pushed back the age of official marriage. Twenty years ago, for example, the average age for a European man to marry was 25, and for a woman to marry was 23. Now both figures have increased by five years.
These additional years allow, first of all, to start a career, to establish oneself at work, so that later the birth of children cannot interfere with the professional growth of parents. By the time of marriage, a European couple usually arrives with a fairly solid financial position, and the current state of medicine in the European Union countries allows women to give birth for the first time after 30 without fear. And yet, why couldn't the same thing be achieved within a free union?
It is well known that for a long time now in developed Western European countries, society is absolutely normal about single mothers and free families with children, without discriminating against them in any way. However, numerous surveys have revealed another trend. Many women believe that legal marriage and everything connected with its conclusion (official ceremony, church wedding, wedding celebration), like any other public event, gives it more weight and solidity, and therefore more strength. Other women prefer to give birth and raise children only in legal marriage, no matter what, because only then can a child be fully protected not only socially, but also legally - property, inheritance, and so on.
That is why, according to research by the British University of Essex, 70% of cohabiting couples by 2002 moved into the category of officially married. They simply all grew up, decided to have children - and there you have the result. It is noteworthy that in all the surveys conducted by the university, mainly women participated. This suggests that it was they who decided whether or not to have a traditional family.
Similar processes are occurring not only in Great Britain, but also in Southern European countries - in Spain, Greece, Portugal, where traditionally society welcomed established family stereotypes: a woman stays at home and looks after the children, and a man earns money, which makes him the real head of the family.
Recently, the situation in these countries has changed. Women literally rushed to study and work, career motives became paramount for them. Hence - all the same late marriages and children after 30, more balanced in socio-economic terms relations between husband and wife, when both in the family claim the role of breadwinner. These countries also passed the test of free unions and, just like their neighbors, happily enter into marriages as they approach mature age.
At the same time, we must not forget another advantage of modern life. Representatives of the fair sex, having more opportunities to take care of themselves, eat well and fully rest, at 30 look completely different from their mothers and grandmothers. Then age really mattered a lot. The younger the bride, the greater the chances of getting married. Fortunately, nowadays women have broader opportunities in this regard as well.
Men have been affected to a lesser extent. Due to the widespread prevalence of later marriages, only the first critical age has moved back - that is, the age after which he will never agree to marry for anything in the world. If earlier it was believed that after 28 he would never go down the aisle, now we are talking about 32 years. A second marriage is usually concluded around 50-55 years, when men sometimes make a desperate attempt to catch up with youth in the form of an 18-year-old fairy.
It is also noteworthy that women played a more active role in shaping this trend. One gets the impression that the final decision on whether to marry and what the marriage should be like still belongs to them. Scientists explain this phenomenon in their own way. The fact is that it is the woman who is responsible for preserving genes, while the man merely adds information about the present to the genotype. That is, it is he who contributes to evolutionary changes that, of course, improve the human race, but without which, in principle, one can do without. A woman, unlike a man, cannot take risks. Being responsible for the foundation rather than the superstructure, she is forced, purely physiologically, to be more conservative. Hence her desire to preserve traditional forms of marriage as the basis for stable procreation.
Changes have occurred only in terms of psychological and social attitudes toward the legally formalized union between a man and a woman. If earlier, according to French scientists from the School of Higher Education in Paris, marriage was needed as a way of establishing social order, now it is largely perceived as a pact of solidarity between two people.
In all European countries today, steps are being taken to facilitate marriage. It may seem strange, but in Germany, with its traditional respect for family values, the very procedure for entering into an official marriage is so bureaucratically complicated that young couples often go to a neighboring country and go through all the formalities there. In contrast, in the UK, the government is developing rules that should simplify as much as possible all the formalities accompanying marriage. For example, there is a proposal to allow applications to marry to be sent via the Internet or to hold the entire ceremony anywhere, including swimming pools and stadiums, with one tricky formulation: 'if this does not harm the dignity of the ceremony itself.'
Of course, a wedding can be lavish and noisy, and a marriage unsuccessful, and vice versa. One can marry in church and then still not love each other. Marriage and love, unfortunately, still remain concepts that do not always coincide. And official attributes are needed, probably, to convince oneself at least once in a lifetime, in the presence of witnesses, that one is not afraid of responsibility toward one's other half and that one truly believes: it is possible to remain true to one person for a lifetime.