Within Europe there are many diverse patterns of marriage, parenting and household formation, as suggested by the cases of Norway, the former Czechoslovakia and the UK—though none of these is necessarily representative of a distinct ‘type’. Czechoslovakia, along with a number of other eastern European countries is characterized by earlier child-bearing than elsewhere in Europe but also, and more strikingly, by earlier marriage. In Czechoslovakia 32.2 per cent of brides are under 20 years old, while respective figures for Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania are 38 per cent, 27.5 per cent, 22 per cent and 29.8 per cent.8 Though almost a quarter of households in Czechoslovakia are headed by females, 59 per cent of these are widows, a higher proportion than in Japan or Singapore (United Nations 1989:1160). Argentinean data in Table 4.1 are remarkably similar to those of Czechoslovakia, save for the fact that there is a greater proportion of brides under 20 years old in the Eastern European case than the South American one.
In contrast, Norway, broadly in common with other Scandinavian countries, is characterized by later marriage and childbirth, though delay in birth of first child is shorter than in either Japan or Singapore. Particularly striking is the high proportion of all households in Norway that have female heads (37.6 per cent), a fifth of whom were single women. The proportion of all households headed by single women in Norway (8 per cent) is, however, considerably smaller than that in some Caribbean islands, suggesting a difference in histories of households and family formation between the two.9
Figures for the UK rest between some of the ‘extremes’ applying in other regions or countries and certainly in respect of the cases of Norway and Czechoslovakia (except as regards divorce). Haskey’s (1994) recent analysis of 1991 and 1971 census data, which disaggregates the broad category of lone parent on the basis of marital status, provides an indication of changing patterns and the complexity of changing needs.10
The steepest rise in family type was that headed by single lone mothers, which included 1.2 per cent of all families with dependent children in 1971 and 6.6 per cent twenty years later. But almost two — thirds of lone mothers in 1991 were formerly married, with about 36 per cent of lone mothers divorced, 22 per cent separated and 5 per cent widowed. The steepest decline across the twenty-year period was among widows, who had comprised 25 per cent of lone mothers in 1971 (Haskey 1994:7).
This is a pattern in marked contrast to Barbados, where most lone parents are single, and to India, where most are widows. If there is a signal of ‘weakening social fabric’ to be detected from the UK statistics, it is not by virtue of abandonment of marriage or a severing of the link between marriage and child-bearing but rather a greater tendency for a breakage of unions through divorce or separation, which may in practice lead to a less permanent status as lone parent than is the case for widows (or was indeed for widows in the UK in former decades). The social fabric appears to be changing shape rather than weakening.
VARIATION WITHIN COUNTRIES
Alongside those differences in marital status that describe the way in which people become lone parents, there are also other dimensions of variation within countries. Some of these will be explored through reference to the cases of the UK and Zambia. As well as representing countries at different levels of development, these two also illustrate different dominant factors of internal variation: ethnicity in the UK and rural-urban variation in Zambia.