Nuclear Implosion

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How is this playing out in European homes? Consider the family of 60 years ago. The paterfamilias comes home to his young wife. The baby boom that will fill maternity wards to bursting until the mid-1960s is just beginning. A child plays at her feet and the rounded belly beneath her apron suggests another is on the way.

Fast-forward to the present day. What lies behind the front door? The nuclear family is not dead — some 29% of E.U. households still include dependent children — but the age gap between parents and children is widening. Mothers with old faces and young children are now a common sight on the high street. The average age of women giving birth in the E.U. hovers at just below 30, up from 27.4 in 1991. That average falls between two distant poles: teenage pregnancies, which continue to rise in several countries, and a swelling contingent of graying progenitrices. In Spain, 13% of first-time mothers are over 40. In the U.K., the number of first-time mothers over 35 has trebled in 15 years. And medical techniques are extending the age at which women can conceive. On July 8, baby J.J. was born by C-section at a hospital in southeast England, weighing 3 kg. His mother, Dr. Patricia Rashbrook, 62 years old at the time, described him as "adorable"; her critics called her "selfish," noting that Rashbrook statistically is unlikely to see her son through university.

But even as the age horizon of traditional parenthood expands, many other options are now available. Some 13% of Europeans live alone, and every year the proportion of solo dwellers rises. So too do the ranks of heterosexual and single-sex couples living without children who now — at 49% of households — represent the most common form of family unit across Europe. Some have watched their kids leave the nest, others will never have children, but all are likely to spend the biggest chunk of their life in the company of their partner only.

Simply put, the definition of family is increasingly flexible, its constituent parts ever more diverse. While the family was once seen as a form of fate — it chose you — it's now increasingly something that Europeans choose and define by and for themselves. Censure won't deter women of dustier vintages from trying for babies, any more than disapproval stops couples, gay or straight, from cohabiting without the sanction of church, officialdom or parents. In this revolutionary age, Time peeks behind a few more doors to discover how Europeans are living now — and to predict how notions of the family may change in the next 60 years.

Maybe Baby
On any given weekday, you'll be lucky to find Riccardo Rosati and Lidija Markovic at either of their homes, in London or Belgrade. The 35-year-old Italian met his Serbian spouse, 34, in London. Rosati's job as vice president of an American investment fund keeps him on the road, but doesn't demand quite as much traveling as Markovic's role as a consultant specialising in direct foreign investment in the Balkans. Their schedules invariably separate them during the week, but they usually manage three weekends a month together, and last year found time to discuss starting a family. Rosati says his wife was "aware that, for biological reasons, she needs to have the kids relatively soon or skip it." Their decision: skip it.

Lisa McIntyre isn't quite so peripatetic, but she does like holidays more than the idea of raising kids. The 49-year-old university administrator and her husband David, 56, an airline pilot, shut up their home in Higham Ferrers, in central England, several times a year. For 2007, they're already planning two cruises, a relaxing break and an annual jaunt to the U.S. "We can do what we want and spend our money how we want." says Lisa, who decided against having children before she married David. "I don't have to worry about raising another person."