The size and structure of families are changing dramatically and will do so even more in the coming years. “The number of relatives a person has will decrease by 35% towards the end of the century; The probability that a baby will have siblings or cousins will be very low and, on the other hand, it is easy for him to have his four grandparents and five or six great-grandparents alive, although that does not mean that they will help in his care, because the difference in The age between generations is increasing and the dependency linked to aging is also increasing,” explains Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany who published a study a few weeks ago on the evolution of human kinship relations from historical and projected data on world population from the United Nations.
This projection reveals a phenomenon that demographers and sociologists have been warning about for some time in Spain: families are getting smaller, longer and narrower, and this will have consequences on relationships, health, the economy and public policies, among other areas.
Luis Ayuso, a professor at the University of Malaga specialized in family sociology, assures that the biggest change will be the decrease in support networks. “Spain is a family-oriented country where the family is an invisible but very important network: it helps us find work, it is an economic and emotional cushion when circumstances go badly, it is the basis of caring for children and the elderly... And That is going to change because we are moving towards families with greater care needs and fewer potential caregivers, both because there will be fewer members and because of changes in social roles, especially for women,” says Ayuso.
One of the phenomena that will disappear, for example, will be that of grandparents waiting at the school door to pick up their grandchildren. Pau Miret, researcher at the Center d'Estudis Demogràfics (CED) of the UAB, emphasizes that life expectancy is lengthening but life expectancy without dependency is not so much, which added to the fact that for some time now more and more children have been born. Later, it will cause many grandparents to be elderly people who, more than caring, will need to be cared for or who will be caring for their own parents, the great-grandparents.
He emphasizes that, in any case, there will be few grandchildren because the birth rate is at a minimum (almost a quarter of the generation born in the 80s has not had children), and on the other hand there will be more elderly people. According to INE projections, in 2072, 12% of the population will be 80 years old or older and the number of centenarians, now 14,287 people, will be around 227,000.
And many of those people will need help and not all of them will have children, nephews or brothers to take care of them. And those who do may not be able to count on being cared for either because the social model and family roles have changed. “The role of supermom, superdaughter or supergrandmother is being lost,” Ayuso agrees.
Eduardo Bericat, professor of Sociology at the University of Seville and researcher of social values, assures that the demographic factor “is just one more effect of the individualization process in which we are immersed: our fertility rates decrease to the same extent and pace. to which our desire to lead a life free of social conditioning increases.”
And it predicts another consequence of the reduction of family networks: the increase in unwanted loneliness, which is associated with a reduction in emotional well-being, a greater risk of depression, and which various investigations also relate to worse physical health. Therefore, as families have fewer members and they lead a more independent and autonomous life, public and private policies will have to change to reinforce formal care systems and address the multiple mental health problems that will affect the population. reflects Bericat.
Alburez-Gutierrez explains that projections on kinship relations reveal that each person will not only have fewer people with similar ages to them in the family due to lack of siblings and cousins, but they will also be further away from their relatives of other generations because The age at which children are born has been delayed for decades and continues to do so.
“What is going to happen is that we are going to lose many strong ties, a lot of blood family, and we are going to incorporate weak ties into our network, those of friends, neighbors and other people in the environment,” says Ayuso. And he points out that the blood family is going to give way to the digital family and the emotional family.
“We are a very social country and as family ties disappear we will create others: friends from daycare and school will be like your cousins; Many older people are already doing it and when they are asked who makes up their family, they include their caregivers,” she exemplifies.
Alburez-Gutierrez believes that emotional family is not comparable to kinship. “It is thought that friends will replace relatives, but as you age your friendship network diminishes because there are fewer friends alive,” she warns.
The loss of real relatives also implies a drastic reduction in intergenerational relationships. Sociological surveys indicate that less than 40% of older people maintain friendships with someone under 35 years of age. And young people do not deal with seniors beyond their parents or grandparents either.
“The family is the space where intergenerational coexistence took place, where adults and children share experiences and opinions in a safe environment, and that has benefits because it avoids isolation and mental health problems, but it also affects education and transmission. of information,” comments the demographer from the Max Planck Institute.
And he emphasizes that, by losing relatives, the person also loses diversity, heterogeneity and perspectives in the ideas and knowledge they receive. “In extended families there is a diversity of opinion and people are exposed to ideas that are not necessarily theirs (just think of the controversial uncle, cousin or brother-in-law every Christmas) and as the members become smaller we will be less exposed to other forms of to think that they reflect reality, something that can be more or less serious depending on the person's ability to access information,” reasons Alburez-Gutierrez.
The reduction of family will also have notable consequences from an economic point of view. Demographer and researcher Diego Alburez-Gutierrez comments that the fact that families become smaller and longer affects the distribution of wealth in society. “As people who have a higher economic status have fewer siblings, they receive more resources from their parents, and perhaps even from a childless uncle, and that wealth is divided less than in families with more members, so that contributes to greater concentration of wealth.
“Maybe the new generations are not going to live worse than their parents, as they say; There are few grandchildren and in the future there will be even fewer and they will receive a very large estate,” says sociologist Luis Ayuso.
And he emphasizes that not long ago grandparents had ten or fifteen grandchildren and now they have one or two, so there will be young people who combine the assets of their four grandparents (89% of the population over 65 years of age has housing in property, according to the INE) because they will not have uncles or they will not have had children.
“Now the baby boom generation is reaching retirement, which among many other changes was the protagonist of the phenomenon of second homes and has significant real estate assets; and that heritage will be inherited by generations that have many fewer children, so instead of being divided, as happened before, it will tend to be concentrated because, in addition, some of those heirs will also receive the legacy of uncles who have not had children," he exemplifies. Ayuso, author of the research Inheritances in the digital society. Family management of intergenerational transfers and wealth in 21st century Spain.
Sociologist Eduardo Bericat emphasizes that the reduction in family size will remodel the nature of all the social ties established between its members and that will impact intergenerational transfers.
“A child is much more valuable today, if only because of its relative scarcity or because of the immense emotional cost that its loss would imply; and in the same way, the bonds that grandchildren and grandparents maintain have been greatly reinforced not only because today they interact for many more years, but also because their roles complement each other much better, nurturing reciprocal affection and mutual help," he points out.
