In 2007, the women who have put a child in the world had an average 29.9 years old. “The trend observed over the past thirty years to have her children always later continues,” notes the demographer Gilles Pison in Population and societies (” The Population of France in 2007 “, march 2008, no. 443). In 1977, the average age of women at childbirth was 26.5 years. Today, more than a new-born child in five (21.1 %) had a mother aged over 35 years.
While marriage continues to decline, the annual number of pacs has increased more than fivefold, from 20,000 in 2001 to over 100,000 in 2007. This increase is related to the increase of the pacs signed by homosexual couples (+ 50 %), but especially to the success of the pacs among heterosexual couples : in six years, their number has been multiplied by six. “In 2007, we get closer to a pacs for two marriages, note Gilles Pison.
The triumph of the pacs is undoubtedly related to the fact that it is gradually reconciled to the marriage : in 2005, the tax benefits granted to a civil partnership have been aligned on those of married couples. Its flexibility – it can be dissolved following a simple written statement – also seems to correspond to the requests of couples today. A professor in Sociology of the family (6th edition, 2007) reminds us that today, you can not force a couple to last, trend is the relationship of pure as it has been theorized by Giddens in The transformation of intimacy, in 1991, which tends to happen, even if a realistic sociological of good quality should remind us of the limitations of this model. In this respect, it is necessary to read the article Singly “context of marital Intimacy and the personal privacy” in the online journal Sociologie et sociétés, 2003.
In 2007, nearly half of all babies are born within an unmarried couple, compared to only 6 % in 1970. “These births, so rare and poorly collected, were classified officially as “natural” or ” illegitimate “, says Gilles Pison. But the social norm has changed and they are now at parity with the births among married couples. “