41Lithuanians tend to assume a more traditional stance, with an over-
whelming majority agreeing that a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his
or her mother works full time. Likewise, the Portuguese are also likely to
believe that full-time female employment is detrimental to small chil-
dren. Strikingly, these attitudes, which are adopted by individuals from
countries with high rates of full-time female employment, are in sharp
contrast to the less traditional views of the Swiss, where full-time female
employment is much less common. On the one hand, this could be inter-
preted as a sign of ambivalence towards female employment on the part
of both Lithuanians and Portuguese. On the other hand, this may be
associated with the different work and welfare arrangements across the
three countries. Relevant gender effects were found in Lithuania, where
more women tend to consider female employment as detrimental to
child well-being, and in Switzerland, where men are more likely to state
that female employment causes suffering to small children.
The impact of children on an individual’s identity stands out as one of
the more contrasting attitudes in these countries. In Lithuania, most
individuals consider that a person has to have children in order to feel ful-
filled. On the other hand, the Swiss are very unlikely to agree that becom-
ing a parent has any bearing on personal fulfilment. Among the
Portuguese, this seems to be a more divisive topic, even though roughly
two out of five individuals agree with this statement. Furthermore, this is
seemingly an issue that clearly divides Portuguese cohorts, as seen by the
sharp decline in the agreement between cohorts. Regardless of country,
this is the least divisive issue between genders.
Among other things, divorce rates indicate whether individuals rely on
long-term commitments within marriage. In these countries, there are
different scenarios concerning marriage and divorce. High divorce rates
have been observed in Lithuania since the early 1970s and in Switzerland
since the early 1990s. In Portugal, divorce was only legalised for Catholic
marriages after 1975, and divorce rates have soared over the last two
decades (Guerreiro et al. 2007 ). In our research we specifically assessed
attitudes towards divorce and its consequences for children. We asked for
reactions to the statement When children are young it’s bad if the couple gets
a divorce. Lithuanians and Portuguese from both cohorts agree strongly
that divorce is harmful to small children and that parents should there-
Contextualising Personal Networks Across Birth Cohorts...