Kompendium der Familienforschung in Österreich, Schriftenreihe Nr. 7

The increasing number of non-marital unions and the rise in non-marital births –
which can be observed in Austria as in most other European countries – has made
it popular to write and speak about the dissociation of childbearing and marriage
or even the „end of marriage“. In this paper we look at the empirical evidence on
this issue by using the data from the 1996 Austrian Family and Fertility Survey
(FFS).
After a short review of historical trends we will approach the questions from two
different angles: first, we will focus on the changing role of marriage and study
whether cohabitation in Austria is developing into a serious alternative to marriage,
or whether for the majority of the population it is likely to be just a new form of an
early phase of the partnership which will later be converted into marriage. Next, we
will add the dimension of children to the analysis and study the marriage behavior
of all unmarried women who have a first conception (resulting in a birth). Under a
life course perspective we will look at both the timing and quantum of marriage for
those women, and study under which conditions different groups of women behave
differently. These two aspects together will help us answer the question asked in
the title of this paper.
1.1 Historical trends in Austria
Austria, although a small country, has remarkable regional differences with respect
to non-marital fertility. In the central region of Austria including parts of Upper
Austria, Salzburg, Styria, and Carinthia, having children before marriage has a tradition
that can be traced back to the 18 th and19 th century. It had to do with the
structure of agriculture and the inheritance system (Haslinger 1982) but also with
legal marriage constraints. Various case studies on the situation of unmarried
mothers in rural areas are presented by Mitterauer (1990). At that time the proportion
of children born out of wedlock in these provinces was probably among the
highest in Europe as is also indicated by the data of the Princeton European
Fertility Project which computed standardized indices for all provinces of Europe
from the late 19 th century onwards (Coale and Watkins 1986). These regional differentials
continued almost unabated into the late 20 th century although the levels
tended to change after 1975. Between 1950 and 1975 the proportion of first births
born out of wedlock remained almost constant around 40% in Salzburg and below
20% in Vienna and Burgenland (Kytir 1993), despite the fact that Salzburg is
largely rural and Vienna entirely urban.
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