Traditional Family Structure at Risk?

Around the world, in rich and poor countries alike, the structure of family life is undergoing extreme changes, a new analysis of research from numerous countries has concluded.

: "The idea that the family is a stable and orderly unit in which father serves as economic provider and mother serves as emotional care giver is a myth, " said Judith Bruce, a leading author of the study. "The reality is that trends like unmarried mothers, rising divorce rates and smaller households are not unique to America, but are occurring worldwide."

The report was released Tuesday by the Population Council, an international organization based in New York that studies issues related to child bearing. Its graphs combine information obtained from a variety of population and household studies from dozens of countries.

A summary of the major findings:

— Whether because of abandonment, separation, divorce or death of a spouse, marriages are dissolving with increasing frequency. In many developed countries, divorce rates doubled between 1970 and 1990, and in less-developed countries, about a quarter of first marriages end by the time women are in their 40s.

i — Parents in their prime working years face growing burdens caring for children, who need to be supported through more years of education, and for their own parents, who are living longer.

' — Unmarried mothers are increasingly common virtually everywhere, reaching as many as a third of all births in the north of Europe, for example.

i — Children in single-parent households — usually families with only a mother present — are much more likely to be overtaken by poverty than those who live with two parents, largely because of the loss of support from the fathers.

— Even in households where fathers are present, mothers are carrying increasing economic responsibility for children.

The theme that families are changing in similar ways, even in very different cultures, should bring about new thinking on social policy, experts say, and in particular an increase in the importance of families in the agenda of governments.

The Population Council report says women around the world tend to work longer hours than men, both at home and on the job. In studies of seventeen less-developed countries, women's work hours exceeded men's by 30 percent. Data from twelve industrialized countries found that women employed in regular jobs worked about 20 percent longer hours than regularly employed men.

Women's economic contributions also are becoming increasingly important. 1 3 In Ghana, the report said, a third of households with children are maintained primarily by women.

In the Philippines, women were found to contribute about a third of households' cash income, but 55 percent of household support if the economic value of their activities at home, such as growing food or gathering hay to feed the family donkey, is included.

In the United States, a survey released earlier this month found that nearly half of employed married women contribute half or more of their family's income.

While the reasons for entering the work force may vary from country to country, women everywhere are finding that to give their children an adequate life, getting a job is no longer optional. High rates of inflation may raise prices to the point where women are forced to earn money themselves.

In traditional Bangladesh, a woman may need to get a job weaving textiles because her husband was much older, and died while the children were still young, " Ms. Bruce said. "In Africa, an eighteen-year-old woman might need a job because she had a baby before marriage and has only a casual relationship with the father, or she might have a husband who goes on to another marriage and supports the children of that union. "

In Asia," she added, "the husband may have migrated for better economic opportu?nities and stopped sending money after a year or two. And everywhere, parents are finding that there are fewer jobs that pay enough to allow a family to scrape by financially." Even among rural people in less-developed countries, she said, the need for currency is becoming more urgent.

Parents all over the world have an increasing awareness of the importance of learning, and that their children will need to be able to read and write and use numbers, " Ms. Bruce said. "That means that instead of working with them in the fields, their 6- year-old is in school learning the alphabet and how to add and subtract. As there are usually no scholarships, the money to pay for school fees, uniforms, transportation and supplies must come from the parents' purse." The fact that many developing countries must trim money from public education as part of their debt-reduction plans creates further pressure on families, she said.

One apparent exception to the general trends is Japan, where single-parent households and unmarried mothers have remained relatively rare.

The Population Council report found that while most countries have done extensive research on women as mothers, men as fathers have been virtually invisible to researchers.

But studies have found that although fathers' income usually exceeds mothers' income, women usually contribute a larger proportion of their income to their household, while men keep more for their personal use, such as for entertainment.

Collecting child support (money paid by divorced fathers to support their children) is also difficult. Among divorced fathers, three quarters in Japan, almost two thirds in Argentina, half in Malaysia and two fifths in the United States do not pay child support, the report said.

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