ABSTRACT
Drawing on the historical and contemporary materials presented earlier, this chapter suggests an explanation of Swedish family decline in terms of a set of social and cultural dimensions that characterize Swedish society today. Family decline is a very broad concept, and each of its many aspects may be the result of very different social forces. It is important to bear in mind that the causes of parental or marital dissolution, looked at on an international scale, are very numerous indeed. As anyone knows who has read one of the numerous reviews of research on the causes of divorce, a great many factors enter into the equation. In the United States, for example, key factors commonly cited as being most closely associated with divorce are brief courtships and early marriages, teenage pregnancies, poverty and income instability, interethnic and interfaith unions, and high residential mobility.
