Content and Objectives

In individualized societies, the couple, or dyad, is the norm and in most cases also the actual origin of families. Many different processes accumulate in the course of life: The search for the right partner has become a crucial life project for many; births, even those made possible by reproductive medicine, are usually the result of cooperation by two people; to a large extent, high separation and divorce rates also lead to the emergence of continued and stepfamilies along new couple relationships; important decisions made by individuals often stem from interaction with a significant other. At the same time, partners’ decisions are pivotally influenced by the social role each individual plays and in what circumstances his or her life course presently is. Gender and gender-specific ideas, as the primary cultural framework for both behaviour and social relationships, are of central importance in this. Against this background, the project examines partners’ decision-making processes that are crucial for family formation and the influence of gender on them.

The dyadic perspective on family decision processes is still a rather neglected field in fertility and family research, in part because the demands on data and methods are considerable. We intend to close this gap primarily with the help of explicitly dyadic data sets such as those in pairfam, NEPS, and FReDA. Data sets with information about partners who were not personally interviewed are also used.