ABSTRACT
In the eight new European Union (EU) member states of the former eastern bloc, childbearing behavior has changed radically as a result of the rapid societal changes—or more precisely, changes of gear—that took place from 1990 onward. The family model that had emerged and prevailed during the Communist era disappeared quite quickly after the transformation of the political, economic and institutional regimes of the former Communist countries—a transformation that can be characterized as ‘catching-up modernization’ (in German, nachholende Modernisierung) (Zapf, 1996; Adamski et al., 2002).
