Céline Clément

Stepfamilies and Residential Rootedness

Housing and living arrangements have important implications for stepfamilies. The aim of this research was to rephrase questions on housing and living arrangements in terms of “life spaces”. Qualitative interviews show that stepfamilies combine social ties and space by integrating and sharing them but also sometimes by keeping them distinct and in competition with each other. In these types of families, there are spaces where parents and children gather, some locations even allowing relations with the former stepfamily to continue. Moreover, despite the separation of the parental couple, there are places where “family histories” can be constructed, such as in second homes.

The Baby Boomers’ Childhood

This chapter retraces the childhood of the baby boomers. It shows how the children of the baby boom were brought up in a context of housing shortages and a general lack of material comfort. However, significant improvements in social conditions were made during their childhood, such as the arrival of household appliances. The chapter demonstrates the authoritarian upbringing of the baby boomers and notably the strict education in France. The greater accessibility of education during the period of the baby boomers’ childhood is also presented. In summary, the baby boomers’ youth was the product of these breaks and continuities with the past that occurred in the course of their parents’ and grandparents’ lives. Emerging from a period of austerity, the baby boomers contributed to the consumer society, becoming the founding members of a youth culture. After a comfortable adolescence, they entered the adult world with confidence in their strength and number.

Caught Between Parents and Children

This chapter examines the pivotal place of the baby boomers in the family generational structure. It shows how baby boomer parents remain closely involved in their adult childrens’ lives. At the same time, difficulties for children in establishing themselves into adult life impact on family relationships. Parents experience ‘boomerang’ children, who return to live in the parental home after having encountered difficulties in finding work and accommodation. The baby boomers remain closely involved in the lives of their ageing parents, although mostly through a sense of duty and obligation. Different types of relationships between the baby boomers and their ageing parents are presented, where some are actively involved in caring for their parents, whilst others are disengaged.

The Family in Perpetual Motion

This chapter deals with period of the 1960s. It first addresses the sudden reversal of the baby boom demographic trends and the trends of falling fertility and rising divorce. The chapter shows how some explanations for these trends can be found in the fact that the baby boomers started to hanker after a new society—one with greater freedom, especially sexual freedom, and sought to move beyond the narrow confines of traditional family life. Particular attention is given to the rise of protest movements in France and the events of May, 1968. For some baby boomers, the family, especially the couple, was public enemy number one and many needed to escape its clutches in order to invent and experience new, freer and more egalitarian forms of communal living. Some of these movements represented a challenge to very basis of family life.

Life outside the Family: Working Women

This chapter addresses the central role that women in the baby boomer generation played in renewing the family. It demonstrates how women were both the chief beneficiaries and main protagonists in these transformations. Women contributed to the rise in student numbers, the growth in the economically active population and the increase in service-sector jobs, as well as major demographic changes such as the decline in marriage rates and fertility, and the rise in divorce rates. The chapter shows how women’s trajectories veered between the two extremes of family and employment, swerving between the models of stay-at-home mother and working woman. The generations of women born after the war witnessed the emergence of the latter and, with that, the virtual demise of the former, as the ideology that had marked their mothers’ and grandmothers’ lives was replaced by another, equally normative and stigmatizing one that placed them in a highly stressful position.

Baby Boomers and Their Family Entourage

In this chapter, we present the different types of family configurations that have emerged in contemporary society. Local family circles involve close relationships and reciprocal help between family members. These families are also characterised by close geographical proximity. Dispersed family circles also maintain close family contacts but relationships are moderated through larger geographical distances. Finally isolated families, where kinship ties are weak are identified. The chapter concludes with the observation that the rise in individualism, which characterises modern societies, has not jeopardised the intensity of intergenerational bonds or the existence of family groups.

The Family Wins Through

In this chapter, we examine the multiple and different trajectories that the baby boomers’ adult lives have taken and how these trajectories have impacted on their family lives. Different types of living arrangements, including leaving the parental home to live alone, living together before marrying, staying married and separating are examined through the narratives of the baby boomer informants. The chapter shows how new family configurations such as solo parenting, and recomposed families have been adopted by the baby boomers. The chapter shows how the ‘we’ of the family has gradually been replaced by a ‘me’, and although the family group still matters, its role has developed so as to allow each of its members to achieve self-fulfilment. The baby boomers have contributed to this revolution by introducing a different conception of the family from that of their parents, and the large and stable family has been replaced by a less stable, two-child family. This trend towards families with just two children and the sharp decline in large families above all reflects how the child’s place has changed. Henceforth desired and planned, it is the child that makes the family, for as more and more births occur out of wedlock, they embody the partners’ long-term commitment to each other. Since the 1970s, children’s status has therefore changed considerably as a result of growing individualism. Parents, whether they are married, in recomposed relationships or going solo, have had to invent new ways of interacting with their offspring.

The Baby Boom Phenomenon

In this chapter, the question of why the baby boom occurred is addressed. The chapter presents the many different explanations that have been advanced to explain the baby boom. Demographic data demonstrating the recovery of the birth rate after the Second World War are presented. The chapter deals with the social, economic and political factors that help to explain the phenomenon of the baby boom. The baby boomers are situated within the context of their mother’s and grandmother’s generations. The importance of youth movements in the formation of the baby boomer’s mother’s education is addressed and the chapter demonstrates how the future mothers of the baby boomers already had gained a taste of autonomy.