Modern Sweden: The declining importance of marriage

Scandinavian Review, Autumn 1998 by Tomasson, Richard F

Another special term exists when the opposite situation obtains. Sarbor (singular, sarbo) is a couple who live apart but have a marriagelike relationship. It is a more inclusive term than the American "commuter marriage." Widowed or divorced persons who have a relationship, but keep their own separate residences, might be sarbor. Some married couples who might be called "separated" in English would be sarbor in Swedish. It is more of a descriptive term than the more loaded "seperated," as it does not have the suggestion of interpersonal difficulties. The kind of a relationship signified by sarbor is everywhere acknowledged in Sweden. Most countries don't have an acceptable word for it. The Dutch call it a LAT, an acronym for Living Apart Together.

n recent years, as the importance of heterosexual marriage has declined in Sweden, there has been a partly successful movement for legal marriage rights for homosexuals. A law allowing the registration of partnership took effect January 1, 1995. Partnership is a marriage-like relationship with the same legal rights and duties as legal heterosexual marriage. The most important, and disputed, exception specified in the law is the right to adopt children. During 1995 498 men and 167 women registered their partnership; in 1996 201 men and 118 women did the same. Sweden was not the first country to introduce partnership legislation. That distinction belongs to Denmark which did so in 1989; Norway followed in 1993. Easily Accepting Nonmarital Births

n increasing proportion of nonmarital births is an indirect measure of the changing importance of marriage. It is particularly so in a population such as the Swedish in which contraception is efficiently practiced and abortion is readily available. Consider the fact that in 1996 the average age at marriage for Swedish women was 29.3 while their average age at the birth of their first child was 27.5. The link between marriage and childbirth, if not fully cast asunder, has become greatly attenuated.

Between 1950 and 1996 the proportion of nonmarital births increased from 10% to 54% of all births. But it was during the eight years between 1965 and 1973, when the great increase took off, when nonmarital births rocketed from 14% to 28%. In the following thirteenyear period,1973 to 1986, the percentages went from 28% to 48%. Over the decade 1986 to 1996 the rate of increase slowed, but in the latter year it reached a record-breaking 54%. he great majority of nonmarital births, it is important to emphasize, are to two-parent households. The family status of births are classified from the birth registration forms by Statistics Sweden into three family relationships: those in which the parents are married, those in which the parents are unmarried to each other but are listed as living at the same address (sambor), and those in which the parents are listed as living at different addresses (single parent). The boundary between sambo and single parent is not clear-cut. Some unknown percentage of persons continue to keep their old address after establishing a samboende (living together) relationship. And there is movement from samboende to single parent status. On balance, the extent of single parent births is almost certainly less than 16%.