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Family / Will wedding bells stop ringing?

A new myth about the Nordic countries has been born, joining the ranks of the popular perception abroad that Scandinavians practice “free-love.” The new myth is that the institution of marriage is disappearing.
Researcher Stanley Kurz raised the red flag when he claimed in the influential conservative journal The Weekly Standard that marriage is slowly dying in Scandinavia.
“A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children have unmarried parents,” Kurz declared.. Not only that, but Sweden is singled out as “the world leader in family decline.”. USA Today echoed these sentiments recently, suggesting that “marriage in parts of Scandinavia is dying.”
These obituaries sound ominous. One assumes that there are tens of thousands of abandoned children wandering the streets of Stockholm and Helsinki, neglected and unloved, while the only people getting married, presumably, are romantically-minded gay couples.
Of course, statistics are open to interpretation... My personal reaction to Kurz’ claim–as someone who has lived and worked in Sweden since 1986–was amazement. In the first place, I wondered why the American researcher would be so worried about marital bliss, or the lack thereof, among people living on the roof of Europe.
About half of my Swedish friends with children are not formally married. But these unmarried couples are all in ordinary family relationships, no better or worse than the relationships of couples I know who are married. Unmarried Dad takes turns with Mom in picking Junior up from the day-care center each afternoon. Neither Mom nor Dad wants to go to their kid’s school parent night, but they finally reach a compromise. Some of these unmarried couples decide eventually to have a wedding, if only as an excuse to have a big party.

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