ABSTRACT
The decline in nuptiality from the 1960s to the beginning of the 1980s can be illustrated by means of the nuptiality table. The increasing number of marriages since 1982 has been caused by a realization of postponed marriages. In 1974, the number of consensual unions amounted to more than 100,000, corresponding to 8–9 percent of all legal and consensual unions. The changing role of females in society is probably a major factor as far as new trends in family formation are concerned. The ability to have stable cohabitation without the risk of unwanted children was greatly improved during this period by the introduction and development of effective methods of family planning. Even though recent developments in industrialized countries have generally tended to change the role of females in society, there is no country—other than Sweden and Iceland—in which the incidence of consensual unions is as high as in Denmark.
