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Main Characteristics of the post-WWII Cohorts
The previous section gave us a broad understanding of the structural,
social, and political contexts in which individuals were socialised and
experienced the most significant life transitions. Our depiction of the
historical and social background roughly covered the lifespan of the
cohorts selected for our research. In fact, individuals from these cohorts
were both spectators and protagonists of the previously described
changes.
The following sections provide a brief outline of relevant features of
the actual cohort samples of 1950–1955 and 1970–1975 from Lithuania,
Portugal, and Switzerland. We address features that we consider relevant
for understanding how families and personal networks are shaped within
these generational contexts. We will assess the normative framework and
the biographical circumstances of each cohort, namely by looking at the
main features of individuals’ occupational trajectories.
Normative Frameworks
We start by considering the normative frameworks of Lithuanians,
Portuguese, and Swiss belonging to these cohorts. To do so, we resort to
a series of indicators that were included in the three surveys (for a sum-
mary see Table 2.2). We are aware that larger datasets, namely from com-
parative surveys (such as ISSP or ESS), would allow more freedom and
permit broader comparisons, and even enable us to identify the underly-
ing structures of attitudinal patterns. However, our objective is to com-
pare the prevailing attitudes of individuals exclusively from these cohorts,
aiming to establish linkages between those outlooks on life and actual
biographical patterns and networks. Our comparison is therefore con-
fined to a small number of comparable attitudinal indicators used in the
three national surveys, even though relevant additional non-shared indi-
cators were used in all of them. Our analysis starts with a brief portrayal
of attitudes towards family life and gender roles, highlighting both com-
monalities and differences between the three countries. We also look
closely at cohort and gender effects.
V. Ramos et al.