43differences, Swiss women are much more likely than men to be in favour
of equal rights for gays and lesbians, whereas in the other countries men
and women have similar levels of (dis)agreement.
In sum, as far as normative frameworks are concerned, Lithuanians
from these cohorts have the most traditional attitudes. They tend to agree
that a woman is free to choose to have children or not, that children
under 6 years of age suffer if their mother works, and that divorce is
harmful to small children. Meanwhile, the Swiss have the most liberal
and individualistic attitudes: they dissociate women and motherhood
and place individual well-being within a marriage ahead of the impact of
divorce on children. Overall, the Portuguese are somewhere in between,
but there is a striking contrast between the older cohort, which is more
traditional, and the younger cohort, which is more liberal. Such differ-
ences in attitudes lead us to expect that personal network formation is less
rooted in family members in Switzerland than in Lithuania and Portugal.
However, there are similar trends across the three countries. Individuals
from the younger birth cohort are more oriented towards egalitarian gen-
der roles and ascribe a more relevant place to children in one’s life. This
leads us to expect more diverse personal networks among individuals
from the younger cohort. Men from the three countries tend to stress the
importance of children, to see negative effects of divorce, and to lend
more support to a gendered division of work according to traditional
roles. This suggests that men are more oriented towards traditional famil-
ial relationships, which may impact the formation of their personal
networks.
Education and Occupations
To assess educational resources and to enable comparisons between the
three countries, we resorted to the International Standard Classification
of Education (ISCED97).^3 The distribution of educational credentials
is very different (Table 2.3). Generally, individuals tend to be highly
educated in Lithuania. Moreover, educational levels are quite similar in
both cohorts, which attests to the priority given to higher education
and vocational/technical education during Soviet times, as Soviet citi-
Contextualising Personal Networks Across Birth Cohorts...