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Theories of the Family and Policy

V e r o n i c a J a c o b s e n , L i n d y F u r s m a n ,

J o h n B r y a n t , M e g a n C l a r i d g e

a n d B e n e d i k t e J e n s e n

N E W Z E A L A N D T R E A S U R Y

W O R K I N G P A P E R 0 4 / 0 2

M A R C H 2 0 0 4

N Z T R E A S U R Y 0 4 / 0 2

Theories of the Family and Policy

M O N T H / Y E A R March 2004

C O R R E S P O N D I N G

A U T H O R

Veronica Jacobsen New Zealand Treasury PO Box 3724 Wellington 6000 NEW ZEALAND Email Telephone Fax

veronica.jacobsen@treasury.govt.nz 64-4-471- 64-4-472-

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S The authors are grateful to Paul Christoffel, Duncan Mills, and Susan Robertson for their assistance in the preparation of this paper. The paper has benefited from comments received at the 32 nd^ conference of the Economics Society of Australia, Canberra, 29 September-2 October 2003 and from participants at Treasury seminars. Particular thanks are due to Jan Pryor, John Creedy, Chris Pinfield, Grant Scobie and Bronwyn Croxson for specific comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.

N Z T R E A S U R Y New Zealand Treasury PO Box 3724 Wellington 6000 NEW ZEALAND Email Telephone Website

information@treasury.govt.nz 64-4-472 2733 www.treasury.govt.nz

D I S C L A I M E R The views, opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Working Paper are strictly those of the author(s). They do not necessarily reflect the views of the New Zealand Treasury. The New Zealand Treasury takes no responsibility for any errors or omissions in, or for the correctness of, the information contained in this Working Paper. The paper is presented not as policy, but to inform and stimulate wider debate.

W P 0 4 / 0 2 | T H E O R I E S O F T H E F A M I L Y A N D P O L I C Y i i

T a b l e o f C o n t e n t s

Abstract ............................................................................................................................... i

Table of Contents ..............................................................................................................ii

List of Tables..................................................................................................................... iii

• 1 Introduction List of Figures iii
• 2 History and demography
  • 2.1 The Western European family ........................................................................................
  • 2.2 The New Zealand family to 1945 ....................................................................................
  • 2.3 The New Zealand family from 1946..............................................................................
• 3 Anthropology
  • 3.1 Explanatory framework .................................................................................................
  • 3.2 Family formation and structure: Family systems ..........................................................
  • 3.3 Family dissolution and reformation...............................................................................
  • 3.4 Family behaviour...........................................................................................................
  • 3.5 Family pathology...........................................................................................................
  • 3.6 The changing family......................................................................................................
  • 3.7 Critiques .......................................................................................................................
  • 3.8 The family, policy and the state ....................................................................................
• 4 Sociology
  • 4.1 Explanatory framework .................................................................................................
  • 4.2 Family formation ...........................................................................................................
  • 4.3 Family structure ............................................................................................................
  • 4.4 Family behaviour...........................................................................................................
  • 4.5 Family dissolution and reformation...............................................................................
  • 4.6 Family pathology...........................................................................................................
  • 4.7 The changing family......................................................................................................
  • 4.8 Critiques .......................................................................................................................
  • 4.9 The family, policy and the state ....................................................................................
• 5 Psychology
  • 5.1 Explanatory frameworks ...............................................................................................
  • 5.2 Family formation ...........................................................................................................
  • 5.3 Family structure ............................................................................................................
  • 5.4 Family behaviour...........................................................................................................
  • 5.5 Family dissolution and reformation...............................................................................
  • 5.6 Family pathology...........................................................................................................
  • 5.7 The family, policy and the state ....................................................................................
• 6 Economics
  • 6.1 Explanatory framework .................................................................................................
  • 6.2 Family formation ...........................................................................................................
  • 6.3 Family structure ............................................................................................................
  • 6.4 Family behaviour...........................................................................................................
  • 6.5 Family dissolution and reformation...............................................................................
  • 6.6 Family pathology...........................................................................................................
  • 6.7 The changing family......................................................................................................
  • 6.8 Critiques .......................................................................................................................
  • 6.9 The family, policy and the state .................................................................................... W P 0 4 / 0 2 | T H E O R I E S O F T H E F A M I L Y A N D P O L I C Y i i i
• 7 Biology
  • 7.1 Explanatory framework .................................................................................................
  • 7.2 Family formation ...........................................................................................................
  • 7.3 Family structure ............................................................................................................
  • 7.4 Family behaviour...........................................................................................................
  • 7.5 Family dissolution and reformation...............................................................................
  • 7.6 Family pathology...........................................................................................................
  • 7.7 The changing family......................................................................................................
  • 7.8 Critiques .......................................................................................................................
  • 7.9 The family, policy and the state ....................................................................................
• 8 Implications for policy
  • 8.1 The contribution of different disciplines ........................................................................
  • 8.2 Applying theories of the family to policy issues ............................................................
  • 8.3 Lessons for policy .........................................................................................................
• 9 Conclusion..............................................................................................................
• References
• Table 1 – Marriage, fertility, and labour force participation during the baby boom and after ........... L i s t o f T a b l e s
• Table 2 – Percent of households by type..........................................................................................
• Table 3 – Living arrangements of people aged 65 and over, 1996 ..................................................
• Table 4 – How New Zealanders aged 12 and over spend the average day.....................................
• Table 5 – Models of the Family .........................................................................................................
• Figure 1 – Total population and Maori population, 1858-2000 ........................................................... L i s t o f F i g u r e s
• Figure 2 – Labour force participation rates, 1874-2001......................................................................
• Figure 3 – Median age at first marriage, 1935-2000.........................................................................
• Figure 4 – Percent of population in legal and de facto marriages, 1981 and 2002 ..........................
• Figure 5 – Percent of age group who have ever been legally married, 2001 ...................................
• Figure 6 – Cumulative percentage of marriages dissolved within the indicated period....................
• Figure 7 – Total fertility rate, Maori population and total population, 1900-2000..............................
• Figure 8 – Age-specific fertility rates .................................................................................................
• Figure 9 – Percent of live births to married mothers .........................................................................

ask what implications each has for explaining family and individual behaviour and analysing the rationale and effects of any policy intervention.

This paper seeks to describe the key features of different theories of the family that arise from different disciplines and to explore whether a multidisciplinary approach could be useful in policy formation. It draws on insights from five disciplines: anthropology, sociology, psychology, economics and biology. A number of questions are addressed in considering the theory of the family expressed in each discipline. What is the underlying explanatory framework? How do families form? How are families structured? How do families and in the individuals within them behave? How are families dissolved? Which behaviour in families is pathological? How have families changed over time? What are the critiques of the theory? What are the implications for policy? The answers to these questions provide an overview of the main features of the theory of the family within each discipline and promote an understanding of their policy implications for families and more broadly, for individuals.

The discussion of each discipline is by no means exhaustive. Many of the finer points are necessarily omitted in a brief summary that concentrates on the relevance of the discipline to the family. Rather, it provides an overview of the principal features of each of these disciplines in explaining how and why families form; how families are structured; how families and the individuals within them behave and make decisions; how and why families are dissolved; how and why people and families behave in ways that are socially undesirable or harmful; and how families respond to change.

Family structures in New Zealand are dominated by the traditions of Western Europe, particularly those of the British Isles, and of Maori society, as discussed in Section 2, which provides the historical and demographic context of the modern New Zealand family. Anthropology and sociology focus on social systems, including the family, rather than on individuals. The anthropological literature discussed in Section 3 provides evidence of the enormous variation that exists in the formation, structure and behaviour of families. The principal theoretical traditions of the sociology of the family, which examines the social causes and consequences of human behaviour in relatively modern, urbanised societies, are presented in Section 4.

Psychology and economics differ from sociology and anthropology in their focus on the individual. Social psychology and developmental psychology, the main theoretical fields of psychology that are relevant to the study of the family, are discussed in Section 5. The economics of the family, which applies economic theory to family issues such as marriage, divorce and fertility, is discussed in Section 6. The evolutionary biology literature focuses on the role of genes and their reproduction in driving human behaviour as discussed in Section 7.

Section 8 discusses the implications of using the insights of different theories of the family for policy-making. Conclusions are presented in Section 9.

2 H i s t o r y a n d d e m o g r a p h y

Much of the debate over the significance of families to government policy involves some implicit assumptions about the role of families in the past. This section examines the role and structure of the family in an historical and anthropological context. It begins by sketching the history of the western European family over the last 500 years, in order to provide a backdrop to New Zealand’s European (predominantly British) roots. It then

summarises key demographic changes to the New Zealand Maori and Pakeha 1 families during the 19 th^ and 20 th^ centuries.

2. 1 T h e W e s t e r n E u r o p e a n f a m i l y

2. 1. 1 F a m i l y c o m p l e x i t y

The history of the Western European family shows the endurance of the nuclear family. In England in the early 1500s, the average household contained immediate parents and children and perhaps one or two servants. Families typically were not large, and did not contain ageing parents (Laslett 2000). Early mortality often relieved the necessity of supporting aging parents who supported themselves or relied on the parish for sustenance.

Laslett has suggested that the nuclear family is one of the most distinctive elements of Northern and Western European experience (Anderson 1995). His analysis of parish records found that the average household size was only 5, although there was a long distribution, and diversity between social strata (Laslett and Wall 1972). Work by Laslett and colleagues broke down the long-dominant assumptions that households were historically large, multi-generational and complex and that nuclear families were the historical consequence of the industrial revolution, urbanisation and modernisation of society. They had been there before the industrial revolution.

2. 1. 2 M a r r i a g e a n d f e r t i l i t y

The importance of independent nuclear families in Western Europe also drove marriage and fertility decisions. People would delay marriage until either they or their spouse (preferably both) had access to an independent income stream. For the lower classes this meant going into service and saving to afford their own piece of land or cottage industry. For the middle and upper classes this meant that economic factors had a significant effect on the choice of marriage partner. Marriage, after all, was the most important vehicle for the transfer of property. It was far more important than the purchase and sale of property on the open market (Stone 1990). It is not surprising that the choice of marriage partner was a topic that dominated early modern literature. For these reasons, from 1600 until the late 19 th^ century, Western Europe had an unusual marriage pattern in world history. Marriage was typically quite late (at age 28 for men, and 27 for women). A significant proportion of the population (between 10 and 20%) never married (Anderson 1995).

The rise of an urban industrial workforce increased the earnings potential of people from an earlier age, and created the possibility of marrying earlier, and having children at an earlier age. This had less effect on the number of children, and more effect on their distribution over the lifecycle. Families started to use early forms of contraception to limit child rearing into the early years of marriage. In the 18th^ century the average woman lived for barely 20 years from conceiving her last child. By the 20 th^ century early fertility, family limitation and reduced mortality allowed women to live for 50 years following the birth of their last child. Average family size in England fell from five in the late 19 th^ century to about four in 1900 and three by 1910 (Anderson 1995).

(^1) “Pakeha” is a widely-used Maori term for non-Maori.

families and kin groups—building social, economic and political ties—that meant that kin had a vested interest in maintaining marriages. Thirdly, the Church could force couples to stay together. Finally, legal constraints made it virtually impossible to divorce, although there is little evidence that variations in the strictness of divorce laws influenced the degree of marital breakdown.

The decline in mortality probably played a role in increasing divorce rates after 1860, simply because it prolonged the duration of marriage. Although divorce was rare, remarriage was nevertheless common due to high mortality, particularly of women during childbirth. Reconstituted families were commonplace.

Changes in notions of marriage also affected attitudes towards marital dissolution. As romance and sexual attraction became more important over the centuries, these changes in the mode of spouse selection made it more likely that marriage partners would become disappointed and seek dissolution when their spouses did not live up to their romantic ideals. The increasingly individualistic emphasis in religious, philosophical and political thought resulted in changes to popular attitudes towards individual rights and roles. People began to demand the right to alter their destiny including the ability to separate from their spouses. It was only long after shifts in values and behaviour had taken place that the legislature slowly moved to alter the law.

2. 2 T h e N e w Z e a l a n d f a m i l y t o 1 9 4 5

The population of New Zealand as measured by census data has been largely non-Maori for the latter part of the 19 th^ and all of the 20 th^ century as shown in Figure 1. Statistics on the “total population” for much of the period therefore refer essentially to the Pakeha or non-Maori population.

Figure 1 – Total population and Maori population, 1858-

Source: Census data, presented in Statistics New Zealand (2001b: Table 1.02)

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2. 2. 1 T h e M a o r i f a m i l y

Most available information on the pre-contact Maori family comes from Maori oral traditions, from archaeological evidence and from accounts from early explorers and from settlers who lived among the Maori. There is considerable uncertainty and complexity in the picture.

The main units of pre-contact Maori social organisation were whanau, hapu, iwi and waka 2

. Whanau , like the English word “family”, could include just parents and children or a wider group (just as, in English, a “family” get-together may include aunts, uncles and cousins). The whanau was the basic domestic unit, whether in the form of a nuclear or an extended family.

The wider social unit consisted of hapu —numbering from a dozen to possibly over 100 people—who combined in a variety of economic pursuits, sometimes in conjunction with other hapu depending on the scale of the activity. Belich (1996) includes this as an additional classification—the hapu grouping. The pattern of kin affiliations meant that an individual could have links with multiple hapu , and the distinctions between hapu could disappear over time. Alternatively, part of a hapu could break away and form a separate hapu group. Iwi were collections of hapu or hapu groupings, inter-related by lineage and custom. In many cases hapu had multiple iwi links.

The nuclear family—parents in an exclusive sexual relationship plus their children— played a role in the system. However, the core domestic unit commonly contained other members either un-related, such as servants, or related, such as parents. Fertility has been estimated to be 4-5 births per woman before 1840 (Pool 1991:48).

Marriages were frequently used to further alliances between whanau and hapu , although there is evidence of marriage based on mutual affection. Polygyny was common among high status males (Orbell 1978).

Perhaps the most noticeable factor affecting the Maori family in the 19th^ century was the increase in mortality due to warfare and lack of immunity to introduced diseases. The resulting decline in population was rapid until the 1870s when it slowed and eventually reversed in the 1890s. Maori made up less than 6% of the total population by 1901, from over 50% in 1858. Accelerating the decline was the fact that many women failed to reach childbearing age. Even in 1900 when the population was increasing, female life expectancy at birth was estimated at 30 years, although women who reached the age of 15 could expect to live to 50 (Pool 1991:48).

The fall in population was initially greatest in those areas in which Maori had come into greatest contact with Pakeha. It was in these areas that the population also began to recover the most quickly, presumably because of the build up of resistance to disease.

In the 1870s Maori women gave birth to as many children as European women, but many Maori children did not survive into adulthood. In subsequent decades, birth rates increased gradually and mortality rates declined, leading to a gradual increase in population. This population increase was interrupted by the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed an estimated 4% of the Maori population (Pool 1991:117).

Nineteenth century land losses put pressure on the increasing Maori population, leading to greater mobility and a gradual drift to towns and cities. However, until the late 1930s

(^2) This description draws primarily on Belich (1996:83-89).

2. 2. 3 T h e m o t h e r s ’ m u t i n y

The European population went through a dramatic demographic change from around

1880. At that time European and Maori birth rates were similar on the available evidence. The European birth rate dropped dramatically after that time while the Maori rate remained high for almost another century.

In 1876, the “total fertility rate” was 7 births per woman, among European New Zealanders. (The total fertility rate is the number of births the average woman would have over her life if prevailing age-specific fertility rates were to be maintained indefinitely.) By 1901 the European total fertility rate had fallen to 3.5. The decline continued at a slower rate until it reached 2.2 in 1935. The change was part of an international trend that would have come to New Zealand through migration. However Pool (1991:105) claims that, in its early stages, the Pakeha “baby bust” was far more dramatic than in other countries. Belich (1996) labels the trend “the mothers’ mutiny”.

The reasons for the fertility decline are still debated. Initially it coincided with a rise in the age of first marriage as the excess of females in the population declined. In 1876, 83% of women aged 25-29 were married, in 1900 just 58%. However, the marriage rate increased from 1900 and the age of first marriage fell, as did the age of first childbirth from about 1914. The continued fall in fertility rates was therefore a result of parents choosing to limit family sizes, despite the rudimentary contraception available. Depressions in the 1880s and 1930s, and a slump in the 1920s, may all have contributed to reduced childbearing. But the fall continued in good times as well as bad.

Figure 2 – Labour force participation rates, 1874-

Note: The labour force participation rate is defined here as the number people aged 15 and over in full time employment or unemployed, divided by the number of people aged 15 and over. Only from 1951 does it include Maori. For the period 1874 to 1981, full time employment was defined as 20 or more hours a week, while from 1986 onwards, it was defined as 30 or more hours per week. Sources: 1874-1891 – Olsen and Levesque (1978: Table 1.3); 1896-1996 – Statistics New Zealand (1998b: 306); 2001 - Census 2001 data from Statistics New Zealand online database.

Improved job opportunities for women played a role, particularly from the 1890s with the expanding role of government. Jobs in shops, offices, schools and hospitals gradually replaced those in domestic service and factories. Female participation in the full-time workforce increased, reaching a peak of 21% in 1921, a level not surpassed again until

1966. However, these changes in the main followed the initial fertility decline rather than

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preceding it. In addition, women tended to leave the workforce once they married—in 1921 only 9% of the full-time female workforce was married.

The explanation favoured by Belich (1996) and Thomson (1998) is the increasing cost of having children brought about by governmental and social changes. The most obvious of these is the introduction of compulsory education in 1877 and the rapid expansion of education thereafter. While education was nominally free, clearly there are costs associated with it—in school materials and more importantly in the opportunity costs. A child in school is unable to work on the farm or in a factory, or contribute to housework. There were just 55,000 school children in 1875. Numbers increased to 97,000 in 1880, 136,000 in 1890 and 222,000 by 1915 (the modern baby bust from the mid-1970s also appears to have been correlated with a big expansion in educational participation).

In the late 1800s the government legislated to restrict child labour, and inventions such as milking machines helped reduce the necessity for large families. In addition, social movements such as the “cult of domesticity” discussed below helped reduced the birth rate. According to Thomson (1998:158) “Parents’ expectations of what they could and should give their offspring rose—more education, more goods, more care, time and attention—and in response they sought fewer, “quality” children”.

2. 2. 4 G o v e r n m e n t a n d s o c i a l i n f l u e n c e s

What modern historians refer to as the “cult of domesticity” had its origins in the late 1800s. The key features were an increasingly “scientific” approach to keeping house and raising children and an emphasis on the home environment as a place to improve community morals through the purifying influence of women. Culturally the movement had links with early feminism and the related temperance and prohibition movements. The scientific approach is exemplified by the foundation in 1907 by Frederic Truby King of the Plunket Society, and the institution of home science from 1912 as a degree course at Otago University.

As noted above, the cult of domesticity did nothing to raise the birth rate and probably contributed to its further decline as women devoted more time and effort to their existing household rather than to producing more children. In addition, urbanisation (the population was 68% urban by 1926) brought with it opportunities for activities outside the home and an apparent change in social attitudes. Love and companionship became more explicitly reasons for marrying (Olsen and Levesque 1978).

The expanding state increasingly took over the role of child rearing. At the turn of the 19 th century only primary schooling was free. From 1903 the number of state-funded secondary places was progressively expanded until secondary schooling was predominantly free by 1916. The government also established institutions for deviant youth, whose care would previously have been left to the extended family.

Governments expressed concern about the falling Pakeha birth rate, and introduced a number of pro-natalist policies. Lower tax rates for families with dependent children were introduced in 1914. In 1911 a benefit for sole mothers, the Widow’s Pension, was introduced for mothers with dependent children under 14 whose husband had died. The State Advances Act of 1913 consolidated earlier legislation providing cheap government finance for houses and farms. Lending to low-income families expanded considerably under this Act. In 1926 the first family allowances were introduced for low-income families with more than two children, although unwed mothers and those of bad character were excluded.

extremely low for a predominately European population. From the mid-1970s, however, the median ages had begun to climb.

Figure 3 – Median age at first marriage, 1935-

Source: Statistics New Zealand (2001b: Table 3.05)

At the same time as the median age of those who did marry was rising, a growing proportion of New Zealanders were not marrying at all. This is apparent from the data on proportions legally married shown in Figure 4. The figure also gives estimate for the proportion of people in de facto marriages. De facto marriages became more common between 1981 and 2001. The increase in de facto marriages was not been sufficient, however, to offset the decrease in legal marriages, so that the proportion of people in either de facto or legal marriages fell.

Figure 4 – Percent of population in legal and de facto marriages, 1981 and 2002

Note: The figure shows estimates for the combined male and female population Sources: Calculated from 1981 Census data presented in Statistics New Zealand (Statistics New Zealand No date: Tables 14, 15) and 2001 Census data from Statistics New Zealand’s online database (http://xtabs.stats.govt.nz/eng/TableViewer/wdsview/dispviewp.asp)

Legal marriage is now less common among Maori than among non-Maori, as can be seen in Figure 5. The estimates for people aged 60 and over are, however, an exception. Maori in this age group—who would have been entering the main marriage ages during

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the baby boom—appear to have just as high a probability of ever marrying as other New Zealanders of the same age. Maori in earlier periods had not seen any great need to ask non-Maori officials to provide legal sanction for their marriages (Pool 1991: 109) so the baby boom may well have been the high water mark for legal marriage among Maori.

Figure 5 – Percent of age group who have ever been legally married, 2001

Source: Calculated from 2001 Census data, available from Statistics New Zealand website

Across the whole population, legal marriages have become somewhat less enduring over recent decades (comparable data is not available for de facto marriages). Figure 6 gives estimates of the proportion of marriages dissolved within 5 years, 10 years, and 20 years. The figure shows, for instance, that a couple marrying in 1967 had only a 2% chance of divorcing one another within 5 years, an 8% chance of divorcing within 10 years, and a 21% chance of divorcing within 20 years. Couples marrying in later years have experienced steadily higher probabilities of dissolving their marriages within the durations given.

Baby boom marriages were not just early but also fertile. As Figure 7 shows, fertility was higher in 1960 than at any time during the twentieth century. The fertility indicator shown in Figure 7 is the “total fertility rate”. This is the sum of the age-specific fertility rates for the year; it can be interpreted as the average number of children a woman would bear over her lifetime if prevailing fertility rates were to obtain indefinitely. Fertility rates for the whole population declined rapidly after 1960; rates for the Maori population declined precipitously.

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Besides having fewer babies than during the baby boom, most New Zealand women also now have them later. As Figure 8 shows, the peak childbearing years for the population as a whole has moved back by several years. The shift is, however, much less marked for Maori women.

Figure 8 – Age-specific fertility rates

Source: Statistics New Zealand (2001b: Table 2.11)

The data on the marital status of mothers shown in Figure 9 imply that there has been a steady decline during recent decades in the proportion of babies born to mothers who were legally married at the time of the birth. Childbearing has become less tightly linked to legal marriage. An unintended pregnancy is now much less likely to precipitate a formal marriage, and a formal marriage is no longer a prerequisite to intentionally becoming pregnant (Dickson, Ball, Edmeades, Hanson and Pool 1997: 221-5).

Figure 9 – Percent of live births to married mothers

Source: Statistics New Zealand (2001b: Table 2.04)

One final contrast between the baby boom and after is the degree to which women participate in the labour force. Figure 2 presented estimates of male and female labour force participation. The estimates extend back to the 1870s, but to achieve some comparability across time it has been necessary to use a slightly unusual definition of labour force participation. As with standard definitions, the labour force participation rate is calculated as the number of working age people who are employed or unemployed but looking for work, divided by the number of working age people. However, whereas most modern series usually include part-time workers as employed, this series does not. Up

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until 1976, full-time work is defined as 20 or more hours per week; from 1986 it is defined as 30 or more hours. The working age population is defined as ages 15 and higher.

Figure 2 shows women’s labour force participation increasing slowly between the 1970s and 1960s, and then increasing somewhat more quickly afterwards. Interpretation of post-1960s trend is made more difficult by the definitional change between 1976 and 1986, which would have reduced measured labour force participation. Even allowing for the definitional change, the estimates for both males and females 1986 appear anomalous. The message is, nevertheless clear: female labour force participation has moved to historically high rates since the baby boom. Although participation rates for men appear to have moved around over time, no long term trend up or down comparable to that women is apparent from the figure.

Over recent decades, women’s hourly earnings have gradually been converging with those of men. Hourly earnings for women were 73% of those of men in 1974, and 86% in 2001 (Ministry of Women's Affairs 2002: Figure 1).

Interpreting and explaining the trends outlined above is difficult and contentious, and this section aims only to make a few basic observations. An overview of existing analyses of the New Zealand family is provided by Shirley, Koopman-Boyden, Pool and St John (1997).

Many social commentators regard the family of the baby boom era as the prototypical “traditional” family. There is some justification for doing so. The baby boom era marked the end of a long period when many features of the contemporary family such as de facto marriages, significant divorce rates, and women in the workforce were still rare. But, at least for Pakeha, the baby boom was itself something of an innovation. As illustrated by Figures 3 and 6, the Pakeha baby boom generations married exceptionally early and had exceptionally many children compared to generations before them.

A second point to note is that in New Zealand, as in other countries, the various features of the baby boom family such as those listed in Table 1 were mutually reinforcing (Lee and Casterline 1996). High fertility, for instance, required low labour force participation by women, which made them dependent on men. This dependence was made less risky by the use of a legally sanctioned marriage contract with a relatively low probability of divorce. Change in one part of the system implied change in the other parts. Lower fertility, for instance, freed up women to enter the labour force, which made them less dependent on men, and helped make possible the rise of divorce and de facto relationships. Causation also ran in the opposite direction: an increase in the probability of divorce made it more risky to withdraw from the labour force and have children.

Changes in the family were of course bound up with wider changes in society. One such change was the rise and fall of a wide range of government policies, from family benefits to controlled interest rates, favouring young families (Thomson 1996). Another was the temporary return of the “cult of domesticity” described in Section 2.2.4. The decades since World War II have seen particularly dramatic changes in Maori society, from urbanisation, the rise in formal employment and the rapid reduction in childhood mortality rates. This helps explain why many features of Maori family life, such as fertility levels, were so rapidly transformed.