Todd tells us that when there’s a change in what family structure dominates a region, it’s mostly due to a subpopulation becoming more dominant.
FWIW, while I can’t speak for 1983 (three years before my birth), at least going by the definitions of this post, I would put Finland at equal, exogamous, nuclear (Finnish people move away from their parents at 21.8 years of age at average, one of the lowest in Europe, with the EU average being 25.9 years), and low parental authority. This seems to differ from the way Finland was classified in the book (I assume that “universalist” corresponds to “community”?), and if it has shifted from the original classification, I’d assume it to have happened by cultural drift rather than changes in subpopulations.
urbanization erodes community
i.e. makes the family more nuclear. But your report seems to indicate either more change than he implied, or that he was wrong about Finland in 1983.
I assume that “universalist” corresponds to “community”?
No, universalism is a separate dimension, probably resulting more from equality than from community.
He uses it pretty broadly, without a clear definition:
Most of the universalist ideologies agree in their portrayal of the idea of fraternity: from Christianity, which holds that all men are brothers, to the Third International which co-ordinates fraternal relations between parties.
His description of the opposite is maybe clearer: “all the forms of parochialism, all types of ethnocentricity”.
Looking up government statistics for Finnish household size over the years, they give an average size of 2.46 persons for 1981 and 2.41 for 1986, which sounds pretty nuclear already. (There’s a steady downwards trend from 3.35 in 1966 to 2.02 in 2016).
FWIW, while I can’t speak for 1983 (three years before my birth), at least going by the definitions of this post, I would put Finland at equal, exogamous, nuclear (Finnish people move away from their parents at 21.8 years of age at average, one of the lowest in Europe, with the EU average being 25.9 years), and low parental authority. This seems to differ from the way Finland was classified in the book (I assume that “universalist” corresponds to “community”?), and if it has shifted from the original classification, I’d assume it to have happened by cultural drift rather than changes in subpopulations.
I did note that he says:
No, universalism is a separate dimension, probably resulting more from equality than from community.
What’s the definition of universalism? It’s mentioned a bunch in the post.
He uses it pretty broadly, without a clear definition:
His description of the opposite is maybe clearer: “all the forms of parochialism, all types of ethnocentricity”.
Looking up government statistics for Finnish household size over the years, they give an average size of 2.46 persons for 1981 and 2.41 for 1986, which sounds pretty nuclear already. (There’s a steady downwards trend from 3.35 in 1966 to 2.02 in 2016).