Familie#
Family: The development of the family in Austria follows the trends prevalent in affluent Western, industrialised societies in the 20th century. Along with the drastic reduction in the numbers of workers in the agricultural sector in relation to the remaining population, the number of traditional family-run businesses has also dropped dramatically, as well as the value of the family as a production factor. Socialisation has become the predominant function of the family, a function schools are beginning to adopt more and more in the general educational process as well. For women there is an increasing separation between the two aspects of life, work and the family. The family has also increasingly become a place to spend leisure time.
In what is known as the "demographic transition", a decrease in the
death rate is followed by a drop in the birth rate, albeit in
different phases. As life expectancy rises, a new phase of the life
cycle has emerged, where elderly people share a household. Two-person
or one-person households with elderly persons have become increasingly
common in the last few decades. As marriage gradually becomes less of
an institution, step-families, families with single parents and
families with unwedded partners are becoming more widespread as new
family constellations. The number of children per family has dropped
to a record low, and the average number of persons per family
household is also decreasing. As in many other large Western cities,
Vienna has a greater number of one-person households than family
households; these statistics also include the "singles" phenomenon, a
clear indication of the trend towards putting more emphasis on the
individual.
A special feature of the family constellation in Austria in the past
is the extraordinarily high percentage of out-of-wedlock births. The
illegitimate birth rate in Carinthia, Upper Styria, in Lungau, Pongau,
Pinzgau in the province of Salzburg and in western Tirol exceeded that
of the rest of Europe. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the
extraordinarily high number of farm hands employed in agricultural
families. Although the need for farm hands has since diminished,
former attitudes toward illegitimacy have remained in these regions.