The network of users of non-remunerated work

holds without a spouse, it is more difficult for the traditional distri- bution of work by gender to occur. The reduction in the number of persons per household in principle affords relief from the load of domestic work, but this effect can be neutralised and even counter- acted by the loss of cooperation or division of work with the remain- ing members of the household, the loss of economies of scale, and in other cases by a parallel raising of the standards demanded or of the quality of the services produced, for the most part for self-con- sumption. To the extent that the single-person nature of the house- hold does not entail a rupture of relations with other members of the family or intimate friends, the spatial separation increases the time devoted to such relations by the time inevitably invested in travel between the homes.

“Temporariness” is another criterion for the classification of home-sharing. In Spain, as a consequence of the improvement in social and economic conditions rotating home-sharing is in the process of disappearing. The rotation of dependent members of the family, generally the father or the mother, between various different homes used to be commonplace among families with limited means as a strategy to share out the cost of care. Still, today, in the case of people from 65 to 69 years of age, 0.1% practises this form of home- sharing, a percentage which increases to 2.3% among those older than 75 years of age (CIS 2006). Similar in respect of the fact of the accommodation but often very different in respect of content, is the situation of the elderly who live in their own home but spend peri- ods in the homes of their children (2.2% at 65 years of age, and 6.3% at 85 years of age).

People who share a dwelling constitute the immediate network of users of the same spatial resource. Spatial proximity is a facilitat- ing condition for the exchange or donation of non-remunerated work to occur. Nevertheless, the increase in geographical mobility and the great size of cities render it difficult to provide care services in family networks, particularly for the elderly population. In Spain, the geographical dispersion of the family affects men and women in a very similar manner: 7.4% of the population have all of their fam- ily in a different town from their own, and 16.2% have the greater part of their family living elsewhere, which adds up to a quarter of the population with scarce family resources residing in the same place. Only 28.3% of the population have all of their family residing in the same town, but this is a number which has to be adjusted downwards as far as availability is concerned in the case of major cities in which travel time makes direct contact on a daily basis un- feasible unless the family live in the same district (CIS 2010a). In Spain, homes with reduced nuclear families predominate, and the size of the unit is even smaller in the case of the elderly. In the case of the population of between 30 and 65 years of age, the most fre- quent case is to live in a stable couple, or, to put this in other words, to share the space in the dwelling intimately. On reaching the upper limit of this period, 74% of people live in this manner. At 85 years of age, nevertheless, the most frequent situation is to be widowed (71%), because only a quarter of those who reach this age still have their partner (CIS 2006). Taking people of between 65 and 69 years of age, 14.7% live in a single person household, and this proportion increases to 23.7% among those older than 85 years of age, who are those who are most in need of the physical proximity of their poten- tial carers.

The type of household and the type of home-sharing is adapted to the feasibility of the alternatives, and is inseparable from the situ- ation of the family and the position which each individual occupies in their life cycle. A recent study by the CIS has thrown up informa- tion on the structure of residential relations preferred by the popu- lation above the age of eighteen years old. A bare majority of scarcely over half (51.4%) prefers to live with their partner and children following the model of the bi-generational nuclear house- hold, but more than one quarter (28.3%) prefer to live alone with

their partner (whether or not married), without children. This is a modality which is less common from the age of twenty-five years old, and flowers once again strongly after the age of fifty-five years old;

for the younger group it reflects the desire to become independent of their parents, and for those in middle age, the desire to become independent of their children.

A tenth (10.8%) of those interviewed prefer to live alone, a fact that leaps to the attention because those who are doing so and those who want to do so do not coincide (CIS 2010a)³⁰. Other small per- centages would like to live with their children, but without a partner (2.5%), or with their parents (3.3%) (very young children or those whose parents are so elderly that they are equivalent to children).

There are very few people who are in favour of living in shared ac- commodation with friends of either gender who are not partners (1.5%); there is no tradition of this in Spain, except during the student years. 2.2% of people over 65 years of age indicate as their preferred option that of living in a “home for people of their own age”. Among young people of less than twenty-four years of age, 21% would like to live alone, and 35% as a couple, without children;

for these people a home represents a goal, an indicator of their in- dependence. At the other end of the life cycle, among those of greater than 65 years of age, only 11% would like to live alone; for many of these people, autonomous living acquires a connotation of loneliness which young people do not attribute to it, but the elderly do. In fact, the number of those in this group who prefer to live with their children is almost as large (8.2%) as those who would prefer to live alone.

2.2.2.2. The close family

If defining a household is relatively easy because it rests upon the physical basis of the dwelling, the definition of the family is much more difficult, and more subject to ideological fluctuations. In ori- gin, the word family derives from the Latin term famulo, a servant, and originally meant a group formed of the master and his servants.

In some institutions in which the hierarchies are prohibited from

30 In this study, 10% of those interviewed said that they lived alone at home, but this only overlaps partially with those who say they would like to live alone.

marrying, such as in the Roman Catholic Church, the helpers who assist the hierarchies are known as “family”. And there are more than a few jurisdictions such as that in Spain, in which the term matrimony is also applied to the publicly formalised union of two people of the same gender. With the increase in longevity and the reduction in births, reproductive relationships arise during an in- creasingly limited proportion of people’s total life cycle, to the ex- tent that the time spent in family life dominated by emotional and sexual relationships which are not reproductive is growing propor- tionately.

Although the family unit most studied through surveys is the household, some investigations have deliberately used other family units as their point of reference. Thus, in the Survey on Times for Care which is analysed in this work (Spain 2009)³¹, the “close family”

was selected in order to compare the results with earlier surveys car- ried out by the same institution, in which the home had been taken as the reference unit. The close family has no legal definition, and it is only a psychological term: it is made up of those family members with whom a special emotional and social proximity is recognised.

The identification of the family members who share the same home offers no difficulty because that has a territorial basis, but the iden- tification of those family members who are considered to be close family depends on many personal conditions and circumstances.

The law (for the purposes of inheritance, the right to receive ben- efits, etc.) delimits degrees of proximity (first degree, second de- gree, and so on) but “closeness” does not correspond exactly with the degree, and also depends upon other criteria which exhibit a strong element of cultural variability.

Belonging to a family unit is symbolised principally by the joint celebration of important dates, such as Christmas or birthdays. Ac- cording to CIS (2010a), 50% of adults in Spain say that they fre- quently celebrate these occasions with their family, as against 11%

who say that they do so rarely or never. This is the indicator with minimum involvement, the most external. Participation in family

31 Carried out by the “Time and Society” Research Group of the Higher Council for Scientific Study, the Human and Social Science Centre (Consejo Superior de Investiga- ciones Científicas, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales).

events drops off with age, both because of a decline in the desire to communicate and because of the independence of residence, geo- graphical distance, and a reduction in the number of family mem- bers living together. According to other indicators which are less ritualised and deeper, such as discussing personal matters, only 30% do so frequently, and this falls to 22% when it is a matter of visiting or staying over in order to see the family members if there is no special reason for doing so. This is compensated by other forms of com- munication which do not require physical presence, such as contact over the telephone or by internet (22% do this frequently).

Another definition of the family which is an alternative to that based upon living together in the same dwelling or upon the exist- ence of legal bonds is that of the family as a “network of people who consider themselves mutually obliged to provide financial and social assistance”. In Spain, the feeling of obligation to take care of family members is intense, but only in respect of the closest family circle.

The feeling of obligation to provide financial help to a family mem- ber who is in need of it may not be symmetrical with the perception of a right to ask for and receive it. Family members show their soli- darity, affection and feelings of moral responsibility by means of donations of time and non-remunerated work more frequently than by transferring money.

The Survey on Times for Care (Encuesta sobre los Tiempos del Cuidado) (CSIC, Spain 2009) contributes some interesting data on the degree of intensity in family relationships. It is striking that 31.0% of women, as against only 23.8% of men should say that there are children of less than three years of age in their close family. A difference of 7.2 percentage points means that in reality women consider that there are small children in their close family by a pro- portion 30% greater than that of the men who think the same.

Could such a large difference be attributed to objective causes, such as the greater frequency of female single parent families, or the greater proportion of grandmothers? It does not seem to be suffi- cient to justify a difference of almost one third, and there is no doubt that subjective factors play an important role. Possibly, women extend the limits of the close family beyond the limits placed by men. With respect to children of 4 to 16 years of age, the proportion of women who say that they have them in their family is also greater

than that of men who say they do. The difference is more than ten percentage points, which means that the proportion of women who consider that the circumstance applies to them is 23.5% greater than that of men.

Although not quite so accentuated, the difference between men and women who recognise family members as close continues in respect of those older than 74 years of age, and while 40% of women say that they have people of that age among their close family, only 34.8% of men acknowledge that they do (Table 2.2).

As a result of the fact that women more frequently recognise the existence of children, the elderly, and dependent adults among their close family, the accumulation of dependent close relatives turns out to be 23% higher among women than among men. Re- gardless of the manner in which the law delimits it, women classify their relatives as close family more readily, they are more sensitive to recognising illness and dependency, and consequently assume different types of obligations in respect of their family environ- ment.

TABLE 2.2: People who say they have close family in these circumstances

(percentage)

A₁ A₂ B₁ B₂ C D

Children of Children Adults with Adults Older than Cumulative, 3 years old from 4 to 16 moderate with high 74 years dependent

or less years of age dependence dependency of age relations*

Total 27.5 48.5 14.4 11.2 37.5 139.1

Men (M) 23.8 43.3 12.9 11.0 34.8 125.8

Women (W) 31.0 53.5 15.9 11.3 40.0 151.7

% W/ M 130.3 123.6 123.3 102.7 114.9 120.6

% M / W 76.8 80.9 81.1 97.3 87.0 82.9

* D is calculated as the sum of A₁+A₂+B₁+B₂+C. It is assumed that there is a family member in each case. There may be more than one, and therefore the minimum number of dependent family members is shown.

Source: CSIC Time for Care Survey, Spain 2009, carried out for the CS02008-04747 R+D+I Research Project, directed by M.A.Durán (CSIC 2009). Sample of 1,200 persons, national scope, greater than 18 years old, in personal interview. An express definition of “close family” was not given to those interviewed, and it was left to their own assessment.

2.2.2.3. Extended family and social networks

Throughout the world, family networks constitute the principal base for social networks, but they do not constitute all of them, as social networks also include neighbourhood networks, friendship networks, work colleague networks, and others. In Spain, the CIS has measured the size and type of social networks by means of indi- cators with regard to the number of persons from which the subject may seek help in different situations, such as care in the event they fall ill, a loan of money in case of need, talking to share a problem, help in finding work, or the care of small children if they have them.

In all of these indicators, the network for men is wider than that of women. To take the case of care during illness, there is an average of 5.69 potential carers for men as against 5.01 for women. In the case of caring for their children, 3.64 as against 3.11. For talking about problems, 5.00 as against 4.46. For a loan of money, 3.79 as against 3.33. For finding work, 4.88 as against 3.37 (CIS, 2010a). The differences do not relate only to the environment outside the home, such as employment or obtaining a loan, but as these indicators show, to the enjoyment of the services of care and psychological at- tention inside the home. These indicators are complementary to, and not in contradiction with, those of the recognition of depend- ent close family members. Men consider that they would be cared for if they were to need it, while women accept the role and the re- sponsibility for doing so, in the knowledge that they would have less probability of receiving the same attention if they were to need it.

Women find themselves more confined to the home, while the men form relationships not only with the people in their family networks but also in their non-family networks; the difference is not enormous, but it is still significant. On average, every man has daily contact with 17.70 people, including work colleagues and friends, while every woman has contact with 13.85 people. Of those, 4.88 are family members in the case of women, and 3.94 people are family members in the case of men. The men have a slightly higher propor- tion of relationships with family members of the same generation or older than the women, and the women have a higher proportion with the successor generation. The daily social network for men is 28% more extensive and the weight of family members within the network is on average one person less than for women.

In addition to the information on the volume of the social net- work, the study quoted provides information about its internal structure (CIS, 2010a)³². In the case of the intense and long-lasting care required in the case of illness, expectations are limited princi- pally to the partner, but with a major difference between men (it is expected by 55.8%) and women (expected only by 39.7%); al- though it is true that this is the situation in which most help is ex- pected of the spouse, more than one half of those interviewed do not expect that it will be their partner who will provide the necessary care, because they have none, or for other reasons. After the spouse, the next most important reference figure is the mother (23.4%), from whom help is expected in almost exactly equal measure by both men and women. Next in importance are the daughter (8.2%), the son (5.1%), and the sister (4.2%). Neither the father, the broth- er, the friends, nor the other relations are of any importance in this role.

When caring for small children, if there are any, help is expected principally from the mother (36.6%), and both men and women rely on this. It does not really seem to be very convincing that help is expected more from the mother (that is, the grandmother of the children) than from the spouse: this is probably due, at least in part, to a non-explicit interpretation of the question, as being about help under some exceptional circumstances, rather than the normal care which a child requires. Whatever the case may be, the answer is similar from both men and women, in that they both rely less on their spouse (14%) than on their own mothers for such help. An important role is also played by the sister (8.8%) and to a lesser ex- tent by the mother-in-law (3.4%). Twice as many men as women expected help from the mother-in-law, as this is a network which is transmitted down through the female line. Hardly any contribution at all is expected in this area from the men of the family, or from friends either, although women expect more help from their friends (3.4%) than from their mothers-in-law.

32 The responses refer to all of those interviewed who said that they have at least one person but to not specify how many they have of the type of relationship to which the indicators refer (for example, they do not specify whether they have a father-in-law). With this caveat, the results are interesting in any case, because they reflect the complexity of the functions which social networks satisfy.