Children and Parents Experience in Romania: a Life-Table Description
Children and Parents Experience in Romania: a Life-Table Description

Summary/Abstract: This study presents a life-table description of events related to the experience of children and of parents as they changed during the last two decencies, 1985-2005, in Romania. We consider the perspectives of men as well as of women and of couples as well as of children. The data we used stems from the Generations and Gender Survey carried out in Romania in 2005. We document for family behavioral changes that have accompanied the political and socio-economic transformation following the fall of the communist regime. We found that parenthood is still experienced very soon after entry into first marriage, and even slightly sooner when the first union starts as a cohabitation. However shotgun marriages, i.e. pregnancy followed by wedding, remain at the same level during the whole period. From children’s perspective the changes are related to a growing number and proportion born to cohabiting couples. Lone motherhood remains relatively rare. In post-socialist Romania fewer children experience parental disruptions than in the period of communist rule, and fewer children born to a lone mother experience a step father.

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