Families and Personal Networks An International Comparative Perspective

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order to identify the items that represented the same dimension and thus
could be aggregated into composite indexes (Table 3.5). Two dimensions
emerged from this procedure: the child-centredness component, which
represents the centrality of children in personal and family identity and
in the organization of family life; and the openness to alternative family
forms, which reveals the level of acceptance of single fatherhood, women’s
voluntary childlessness, and same-sex couples’ family rights. Based on
this model, we created two indexes by calculating the average mean of the
items corresponding to each dimension.
Figure 3.5 summarizes the mean differences in the attitudinal indexes
between the three countries. Regarding the child-centredness index, all
countries differ significantly (F  =  108.05; p  <  0.001). Lithuania stands
out as the country in which the respondents report the highest level of
child-centredness, followed by Portugal and Switzerland. Concerning
openness to alternative family forms, all the countries differ significantly
from each other (F = 105.86; p < 0.001). Switzerland shows the higher
level of acceptance of alternative family forms, followed by Portugal and
Lithuania.
The distributions of the shaping factors across the three countries
provide us valuable information concerning the level of structural and

Table 3.5 Principal component analysis on the dimensions of family-related
attitudes (loadings)

Items

Child-

centredness

(32.32%)

Alternative

family forms

(24.17%)

When children are young, it’s bad if the couple gets

a divorce

0.796

A person has to have children in order to feel

fulfilled

0.772

A (pre-school) small child is likely to suffer if his or

her mother works (full-time)

0.754

A man alone can bring up a child just as well as a

woman alone

0.732

A woman is free to choose not to have children 0.662

Homosexual and lesbian couples should have the

same rights as other couples, including the right

of adoption

0.648

R. Gouveia et al.