Prague, Jan 11 (CTK) – Pregnancy is not a reason to get married in the Czech Republic anymore, daily Pravo writes yesterday, referring to sociologists.
Many Czech marriages started with an unplanned pregnancy and a subsequent wedding in the past decades. A lot of now adult children were amazed when they first found out how soon after the wedding they were born. But this practice has ended, the paper writes.
Nearly half of the children are born out of wedlock in the Czech Republic now. In 2014, 51,000 children were born out of wedlock, while in 1989 it were only 10,000.
“The increase in the portion of children born out of wedlock is one of the most significant trends of the demographic development in the country in the last three decades,” said Michaela Nemeckova, from the Czech Statistical Office (CSU).
Financial consultant Frantisek Machacek said one of the reasons why people postpone the marriage is the fact that a newborn baby is financially demanding and many couples do not have further tens of thousands of crowns to organise a wedding.
Often people need to find a bigger flat to live in with a baby, too.
Kamila, 28, and Petr, 30, have been living together for six years. Kamila is expecting a baby, but they do not plan a wedding before the childbirth.
“We will get married some day, but now we will have a lot to do with the baby being born, a lot of expenses, and so we will not complicate it with further expenses for the wedding,” Kamila told Pravo.
“We did not plan a baby, but it is good news that the baby will come and we are looking forward to it. Whether we are husband and wife or not has no influence on it,” Petr said.
A small, modest and cheap wedding that would legalise the baby is not needed because Czech society does not mind out-of-wedlock children anymore. These children have the same rights as those born in wedlock and nobody checks under what legal conditions they were born. If young people decide to marry, they mostly want to have a big, nice wedding, Pravo writes.
Jiri, 38, said their daughters were bridesmaids at the wedding he and his partner had. “They enjoyed it with us. Nobody minded it, did they?” he said.
Machacek believes the change in people´s position on marriage is good. “It is an undisputable asset that marriage is not seen as an expected form of legalising cohabitation enforced by social pressure, but as a really deeply felt, voluntary bond based on private needs and feeling of both partners,” he said.
Family remains to be a priority, but it is considered a family even without the official confirmation of the authorities. Especially young people with higher education share this view, Pravo writes.
Marriage is not a condition for a man and woman to live together these days. Two out of five Czech couples that live together unofficially get married later on, according to a study by the Sociology Institute.
Sociologists concluded that people´s life cycles have changed. In the past, the life career was divided in clear stages and one stage smoothly turned into another. At present, the individual life stages lost their clear place in a person´s life. A 21-year-old woman is not automatically expected to be married and it is not taken for granted that a 63-year-old man will be a pensioner sitting in a park every day, the paper writes.
With longer life expectancy, the life stages are extending. Women giving birth to their first child after the age of 30 were a rarity 20 years ago, while now they are common. The age of 30 is ideal for an unmarried man or woman to start considering having a family.
($1=24.873 crowns)
