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  • The National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) is interested this Wednesday in the opinion of parents on the spouse of their child, from the beginning of the 20th century until today.

  • The two authors of the study, Sébastien Grobon and Milan Bouchet-Valat, rely on three surveys carried out over the past decades.

  • "We have left the society we call" traditional "and parents no longer directly control the choice of the spouse of their child as at the beginning of the century, even if the spouses continue to resemble each other socially", explains Sébastien Grobon to

    20 Minutes .

Never easy to be accepted by step-mom and step-dad.

But has it always been the case?

The INED is interested this Wednesday in the look and the weight that parents can have in the choice of the spouse of their child.

Was family influence much stronger at the start of the last century?

What criteria do parents put forward?

Sébastien Grobon, researcher at the Sorbonne Economic Center, at DARES and co-author of this work, answers

20 Minutes

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In 1919 in France, more than eight unions out of ten were favorably received by the parents of both spouses.

And this proportion was almost identical… in 2014. How to explain it?

In fact, in 1919, 81% of parents were in favor of choosing a spouse for their child.

This proportion decreased by 12 points until 1968, then rose again to become identical again in 2014. However, the world has changed.

We have left the so-called “traditional” society, where people depend a lot on the family for all their choices and stay where they were born all their lives.

We have entered a mobile and more individual society, where we have access to studies, and where the family lets all its members live their lives and express their opinions.

The very high rate of 1919 is explained by the fact that everything was controlled: the choice to go against the will of his parents was very risky.

Currently, children have the initiative to choose as they see fit, which does not exclude that they continue to choose someone who is not too far from the environment they have known.

You mentioned it: during the period 1960-1970, disagreements with parents on the choice of a spouse were more numerous.

Why ?

The disagreements increased as the family had less and less of a say in the choice of the child's spouse, and this peaked in the years 1960-1970.

It is a pivotal period.

Over the course of the century, society as a whole changes radically.

First of all because people are more and more mobile, but also because one meets less and less his spouse through his parents or in the neighborhood.

And then preferences change: we care about having common tastes more than being from the same social background.

When parents find themselves faced with a son-in-law or daughter-in-law who comes from an environment they do not know or understand, opinions are less often favorable.

Nevertheless, there is a gradual change in mentalities.

The generations who have known a marriage of "love" become more tolerant when they in turn become parents and find themselves facing the spouse of their child, whom they have not chosen.

What about the relationship to religion and the spouse's country of origin?

Parents seem more and more open to spouses coming from a different country or having a different religion.

We went from 50% favorable opinions on a spouse coming from abroad in 1920 to 75% in 2014. And on this date, the parents' opinions are on average no longer different depending on whether the spouse of their child is born. same country of birth or not.

It is one of the most spectacular evolutions, and it is of the same order concerning religion.

Here again, the change in mentalities accompanies profound changes in society.

As has been said, people are much more mobile, which favors multicultural encounters.

Moreover, the different religions are often more widespread than in the 1920s, when Catholicism was much more present.

In short, the choice of spouse has been recomposed throughout the century, from the direct influence of the traditional family to a choice of the child according to his preferences.

But once again, even if the choice is less "dictated" by the parents, the social constraint remains very present in the way in which the children choose their spouse on the basis of common tastes.

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