320 CHRISTOPHER NEUMAIER AND ANDREAS LUDWIG
law on illegitimate children, for instance, granted children born outside
of wedlock the same rights as children born within a marriage. The re-
formed abortion law established a legal time frame for abortions; abor-
tions within the fi rst twelve weeks, with the consultation of a physician,
were no longer supposed to be punishable by law. In the end, however,
a decision passed by the Federal Constitutional Court led to a weakening
of these provisions, determining that abortions would only be tolerated
in exceptional cases. The amendment of the custody laws replaced the
traditional term of “parental authority” (elterliche Gewalt) with “parental
custody” (elterliche Sorge). All of these reforms sought to promote other
types of families alongside the traditional nuclear family while trying to
live up to the promise of emancipation.^129
Comparable public debates such as those that surrounded the reform
of the West German laws on divorce did not emerge in the GDR. As of
1965, the Family Code established a consensus rule that applied to di-
vorces, and claims for alimony or material support did not really play a
role because the courts assumed that both partners in a marriage had
jobs. Over the course of the 1970s, however, a paradigm shift occurred
in the GDR’s women’s and family policy.^130 Whereas the government’s
earlier political measures sought to increase the female employment
quota and the professional qualifi cations of women, they now sought to
boost the birth rate, too. In 1972, maternity leave pay was extended from
fourteen to eighteen weeks, and a reduced forty-hour workweek was in-
troduced for mothers of three or more children under sixteen who were
working full time.^131
The Transformation of Family LifeBetween the 1960s and the 1990s, family roles and practices changed
in both German states, as did child-rearing methods. The bodily punish-
ments and authoritarian parenting styles that had been typical up to the
1960s clearly went out of favor. Parallel to this shift, the goals for parent-
ing changed, bringing in the idea of the “emancipation of the child.”^132
This fostered a stronger emotional relationship between parents and
children. In West Germany, norms such as obedience, good manners,
cleanliness, and order lost ground to the aims of encouraging children to
develop a sense of self-determination, independence, and responsibility.
The goals related to cultivating “an appreciation for orderliness and hard
work,” on the other hand, were still highly valued. According to social
science research, parenting remained more consistent in the GDR. On
the one hand, the traditional primary virtues were still emphasized, but,
on the other hand, parenting goals were geared more strongly at develop-