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and traditional attitudes underlining child-centeredness and solidarity
within the nuclear family are other factors to be taken into account. The
presence of children is dominant along with the focus on the partner,
even if in this country the latter tie is not as central as in the other two,
possibly due to very high levels of divorce, migration, and lone parent-
hood. Relatives in ascending line, such as parents and grandparents, are
also salient, but friendship ties are almost absent from Lithuanian net-
works, thereby revealing individuals’ prioritization and ultimate reliance
on close kin, in particular those who have been living in the same
household.
In contrast, personal networks in Switzerland are of average size and
reveal strong involvement not only of friends but also of co-workers and
ex-partners. This means that proximity is built up across several house-
holds and relies on criteria other than co-residence history, such as long-
standing friendship, post-divorce family obligations, or electivity focusing
on horizontal kin relationships such as siblings. Another distinctive fea-
ture is that networks are strongly partner-centred and that sons, daugh-
ters, and grandchildren are less well represented in personal networks in
Switzerland than in the other two national contexts. Moreover,
Switzerland is the country with the highest proportion of empty net-
works, meaning that some individuals (mostly men) do not have any
meaningful or important personal relationships. In a country with high
living standards, low unemployment levels across all age groups and nor-
mative orientations that promote individuals’ and couples’ autonomy
and self-reliance, the weaker presence of children and grandchildren may
be related to lower levels of intergenerational support as well as the lower
relevance of child-centeredness values, reinforced by postponement of
the transition to parenthood, compared to the two other countries. The
absence of grandchildren in Swiss networks is indeed linked to calendar
issues and to the demographic reservoir, but it is also rooted in weaker
connections between grandparents and grandchildren, resulting from
lower normative pressure on family and intergenerational obligations.
Portuguese networks, despite the predominance of kinship bonds, are
moderately open to the integration of non-kin, especially friends, thereby
occupying a middle position between the closure of Lithuanian networks
and the openness of Swiss networks. Portugal also has the largest personal
K. Wall et al.