Volume IV, Issue 2, 2010
Abstract
The aim of this research was to compare partnership stability particularly the stability of first marriage – between Hungary and Hungarian speaking people living in Transylvania being the Western region of Romania. The data come from two surveys: first we utilized the second wave of Hungarian panel survey titled Turning Points of the Life Course carried out in 2004/2005; secondly we used the same questionnaire as applied in Transylvania in 2006. There are statistically significant differences between the proportion of dissolved marriages in the two samples: it was 18% in Hungary and 7% in Transylvania. The risk of divorce was analysed by event history analysis. In Hungary and also in Transylvania the risk of divorce is affected by the number of common children and religiosity: marriages without child(ren) and where the couple is not religious are more often broken up, than those having one or more children and/or being religious. The negative effect of parental divorce, marriage in very young ages and cohabitation before the marriage was found only in Hungary only, while the calendar period-effect was experienced in Transylvania only. In Transylvania the Hungarian-Romanian marriages were much less stable than marriages in other ethnic composition.
Keywords
First marriage, divorce, event history analysis, Hungary, Transylvania.
Abstract
The studies about the sexual and reproductive attitudes and behaviours of young people are still rare in Romania. The results of the four successive Reproductive Health Surveys carried out in Romania between 1993 and 2004 have shed light on the changes in the sexual behaviour of young people after the fall of the communism: the diminution of the age at first intercourse and the increase in the use of modern contraception. However, little is known about the individual and social factors that influence the sexual behaviour and about the manner in which young people interpret their own feelings and sexual experiences. This study is based on two focus groups with female students in the first and second year of study at the Department of Sociology and Social Work from Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, and it aims at enriching data about certain uncovered subjects on the Romanian youths sexuality.
Keywords
First sexual intercourse, contraception, focus group, sex education.
Abstract
One important demographic change that followed the fall of the communist regime in Romania has been the increase of non-marital childbearing. Throughout this article we want to see whether this behaviour is an expression of the second demographic transition and its forerunners are high educated women, or it is a pattern of disadvantage that characterises rather low educated persons. We conduct our analysis on Generations and Gender Survey data and we approach the topic from the life course perspective. The rich data that we use allow us to reconstruct the partnership and fertility histories of 6,001 women. We use the technique of event history analysis and investigate the influence of different background factors and personal characteristic on the transition to the first nonmarital birth. Our results indicate that childbearing outside marriage in Romania is rather a pattern of disadvantage.
Keywords
Nonmarital childbearing, cohabitation, single mothers, education, Romania.
Abstract
The succession of the generations is taking place in very different economic, demographic and political contexts, specific for each period. In Romania, the generations of 50 years and more have spent most of their lives under the communist regime. All their moral and social values, their conceptions, attitudes and perceptions are profoundly marked by the ideology of the communist period. On the contrary, the generations who have reached their twenties starting with 2006-2008 have new values, attitudes and perceptions, frequently very different from those of their parents and grandparents. These generations will become the active adults by 2015 and will have to sustain the elderly in a difficult context of rising dependency ratios. This will be the most obvious consequence of the Romanian population ageing, which has strongly accelerated starting with 1990, because of significant migration, a severe decrease in fertility and recently, the increase in life expectancy. In this context, the question raised is how the young people today see their relationship with the elderly. For the ones already retired, is it rather the state or the family (thus the adults and the young) who will help them? How do the young people see the role of the elderly in the society and what are the values transmitted from one generation to the other? The answers to these questions and others regarding this issue were obtained with the help of a survey developed in 2008 on a sample of 2324 respondent students (aged 19-21 years) from various universities in Bucharest.
Keywords
Ageing, young people, intergenerational relationship, pension funding, aged people, family.
Abstract
Public health element in hârtibaciu valley region – current status, malfunctions and strategic aspects. The state of health of any particular nation is a reliable measure of its level of development and culture. Following its accession to the European Union, Romania has been trying to make up for the substantial shortcomings that separate it from the more developed European states. A valid analysis of the Public Health element must be based on a series of objective indicators that accurately reflect the current state of affairs: the presence and the number of institutions which operate in the field; the number of employees in the medical field and their level of preparation; the most widely spread diseases and their consequences (main medical indicators); the most important demographical indicators, and so on. The situation in the region under our examination reveals strong similarities with the national average, public health-wise, as well as a number of weaknesses which most EU members have overcome. This paper is set out to thoroughly scan the public health element in the aforementioned region, and to make suggestions which could lead to significant improvement if implemented as soon as possible.
Keywords
Public health, territorial development, medical staff, health infrastructure, diseases.
Abstract
The present paper brings into light the French word maisnie, currently used in the Social Sciences by scholars dedicated to the study of households units, especially from the South – East European region.
In 1974, the Romania originated French anthropologist Paul Henri Stahl is the first one to introduce this 11th century French word into the Social Sciences. His choice came as a response to a translation dilemma he found himself confronted with, while writing his studies regarding the South – East European social units: the inexistence in the currently French language of a word able to designate the smallest social unit, as he called the household. Instead of creating a new word (as in the well known case of the zadruga), he propose one which had actually been used in the different regional French dialects in the Middle Ages, maisnie. This word used to designate a social unit very similar to the Romanian gospodărie, the Bulgarian druina or kupčina, the Serbo-Croatian domačinstvo, the Albanian shtëpi or the Greek mikokiato.
Starting by specifying the particular context in which this word made its entrance in the vocabulary of the Social Sciences, the paper continues by focusing on the social reality hidden behind this complex notion. In the last part conclusions are drawn with regard to the applicability of the ancient French notion of maisnie to comparable social units from the South – East European region.
Keywords
Household, maisnie, social units, family, domestic group.
Abstract
The formula The family the base cell of the society has never been more meaningful than during the communist period. The state policy regarding the family, meant to charge it with the responsibilities of giving birth to and educating the new man, regulated the life of individuals down to the details regarding their intimate life citizens turned into comrades. The present study follows the evolution of the laws regarding the family throughout the whole communist period (1948 1989) in two aspects: on one hand it analyzes the laws and their features and, on another hand, it integrates the communist laws in the Romanian pre- and post-communist legislative context. Such a structure serves our intention of not just drawing the particular context of the studied period, but to reveal, on a long term, the features of this system which worked for more than 50 years, features which brought the Romanian communist society its undesired fame and made it unique.
Keywords
Communist family, Civil Code of 1865, Family Code of 1954, marriage, divorce, abortion, children’s allowance, maternal leave, child care system.
Abstract
In this paper we are focusing on correlation between economic capital and social capital: in many circumstances, building of economic capital can determine the formation of a social network, which can in turn further develop the economic capital or on the contrary lead to its decrease. Family businesses cover a big proportion of the economic space, while they have also a great specificity. This specificity is largely due to the subtle game between family commitment and individual interests or cliques, domestic subgroups. The last part of the paper presents the results of a study on mono-parental families from Transylvanias urban and rural areas and also focuses on the forms of intergenerational exchange. Preliminary data on urban/rural mono-parental family comparative research suggests a sensible difference between the support received both in terms of the source of support as well as content of support. Using a multivariable and indicators analysis (poverty, level of education, external migration) we have interpreted the results through a variety of explicative models (such as the opportunity cost model). Empirical studies looking at the community level, formal and informal social capital, structured or circumstantial show that in community life, during the crises situation of the family in need, social capital potential is quickly transformed into a manifest and efficient solidarity. But this transformation is not enough for the mono-parental families in poverty situation. In this context, the existence of a structured form of social capital (and its permanent functioning) is crucial. Informal type of social capital is present in the extended family and kinship, while the formal type of social capital is present in the state and NGOs programs and policies, but not yet at the degree that would be needed.
Keywords
Formal and informal social capital; structured and circumstantial social capital; social trust; kinship; familial solidarity; intergenerational exchange.