316 CHRISTOPHER NEUMAIER AND ANDREAS LUDWIG
observations and interpretations made by contemporaries in the 1970s
and 1980s have to be taken with a grain of salt and evaluated within their
specifi c historical context. The collected aggregated data, however, can
still be used to analyze trends. It indicates an increase in the number of
singles, unmarried couples with and without children, couples without
children, and single parents, as well as a decline in the number of mar-
ried couples with children. Furthermore, they point to a “polarization of
lifestyles into a family and nonfamily sector,”^109 which was exemplifi ed in
the growth of childless familial arrangements.^110
Looking back, the changes that occurred between the 1970s and the
1990s can be interpreted as a “pluralization process within limits,”^111 a
kind of gentle pluralization in which not every form of cohabitation could
be freely chosen. The only age group in which most people could choose
from several diff erent lifestyles was that of the twenty- to thirty-fi ve-year-
olds. Thus, a signifi cant pluralization and individualization only unfolded
within a very narrowly defi ned social group. The majority of German cit-
izens, especially those younger than twenty and older than thirty-fi ve,
lived in a traditional-style family. At the same time, however, this devel-
opment does indicate that within this social group, desires and needs
were initially supposed to be met on an individual level, but then later in
the form of a family when they hit middle age.^112 This limited phase of
pluralization in midlife was thus sandwiched between homogenized pat-
terns of behavior in younger years and after starting a family.
A more diff erentiated perspective can also reveal the limits of this plu-
ralization. The growth of the “singles” group, for example, resulted in
part from increased life expectancy, especially because it counted a large
proportion of older widowed women. Despite the fact that the transfor-
mation of the family was discussed at all levels of society in the 1970s,
the majority of West Germans at the time still lived in a “traditional”
family. It was not until the 1980s and 1990s that the prevalence of this
kind of nuclear family shrank; by 2004, only 29 percent of families fi t
this model. Yet, it needs to be kept in mind that the category of “married
couples without children” included married couples who may have had
children (minors under 18) but, at the time of the survey, these children
had already reached adulthood. The changes refl ected in these statistics
in fact only provided a “snapshot” of the ways things were, because they
did not take into account the life cycle of a family.^113 If these points are
factored into the analysis, then 53 percent of West Germans still lived in a
nuclear family with children in 2005.^114 In this respect, the data collected
clearly indicates that the middle-class nuclear family remained the dom-
inant model well past the 1970s, although the public debates about the
family would seem to suggest the opposite.