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Would you say this is the trend in most of Europe?
Are the exceptions mostly the Anglo-nations, Northern Europe.etc?
Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonborn
Northern European countries (even the UK) are culturally very similar. That does not surprise me. Families tend to stick together more in southern European countries.
A NY times' blog just had this article about historical cultural norms for family organization. There's an interesting map of western Europe by family types -- Anglo-Saxon culture belongs to the absolute nuclear family type.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Stumbler.
A NY times' blog just had this article about historical cultural norms for family organization. There's an interesting map of western Europe by family types -- Anglo-Saxon culture belongs to the absolute nuclear family type.
Strangely enough though and perhaps ironically, I've read that the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) language is thought by many historical linguists, to have a lot of terms for extended family that disappeared/were replaced after the Norman conquest (for example, Old English had a separate word for maternal uncle, Eam, and paternal uncle, Fædera, but both these words were replaced by the general term Uncle, borrowed from French Oncle).
How much that change in language actually represents or says anything about changes in attitudes (or the relative importance of extended kin) in Medieval times is debatable though.
And it seems that trying to claim that nuclear families "started" already in Medieval times is a bit of a stretch for many scholars to accept, but there does seem to be some things written on the idea that northern Europe was already a bit more liberal in family ties than southern Europe, even before the industrial age, and that this helped them actually industrialize/create the modern detached type of lifestyle more quickly.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if these claims are accurate or not.
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Interesting article. In Medieval times you had a lot more people living under roof, I think there might've been arrangements like the nuclear family in some cases but I don't think it was the norm.
This is one thing I never got used to while living in Italy. I would meet women who were in their 30's and still lived with their parents. That in itself is not such a big deal but some had to ask permission to be out until a certain hour or shared a bedroom with their sibling(s). It was pretty surreal. But I do envy how close their families are, especially around the holidays and other big events.
I saw in the figures above that Slovenians and Slovaks are the last to move out
One of the reason in Slovenia is the income and the cost of living but the major one are the benefits of "Hotel Mama". Without renting costs you can live a good life with the average Slovenian income. You can afford to have a better car, motorbike, you can travel in exotic destination etc.
Another reason is taht lot of Slovenian own too big houses for one family (two or more apartments in one house). In the 70ies and 80ies a major part of non urban population build a big house. When the children get older or when they get married they simply move to their own apartment in the same house.
I know in the Anglo countries it's more expected that you're not living with mummy and daddy past the age of about 25 unless you have a good reason to. Those over this age are sometimes considered 'losers.' I notice more and more people here doing that, due to the price of housing/rents, and it's no longer see as a 'rite of passage' to leave at age 18, 21.
Anglo countries have developed this trend (children acquiring their independence very soon) because they could afford to. Independence is a luxury. It means you have personal resources to pay for everything on your own. That's either personal funds (good salary relative to cost of living) or access to credit.
For a long time, the economy in these countries was in such ways that it allowed young people to go out on their own, get their own apartments, get cars, get whatever they needed for a solo life. So it became the norm and anyone deviating from it was a "loser".
Even living with a room-mate is still more expensive than living with family - because room-mates only share the space, but they do no help each other with myriad things and reciprocal support available in a household for everyone.
The world is getting bigger, the space is running out, the resources are becoming more scarce.
Even developed Westerners are not exempt from ecological realities.
They will adapt their culture and learn to live with their families when alternatives will slowly be getting more and more out of reach for the average person.
I never understood the Western arrogance in absolutely refusing to acknowledge that pretty much everything in their culture that appears "oh, so civilized" compared to other parts of the world, is due to the fact that, historically, they got their dirty hands on global resources FIRST - the most important of these resource being livable space.
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