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On 6 June, Leen Rahnu from the Tallinn University School of Governance, Law and Society defended her doctoral thesis, which researched the developments of cohabitation within the second half of 20^th century in Estonia and Europe. The thesis shows that many important changes have taken place. For example, marriage was in decline, cohabitation became more popular, divorce percentages increased and starting a family was pushed further to adulthood.

Rahnu agreed that the changes are connected to the demographic modernisation of the people.”As cohabitation and divorce were widespread in many Eastern European countries before the regime changed in the 90s, the economic difficulties and rise in insecurity were not enough to explain the change,” she explained. The thesis also emphasised the importance of cultural factors when describing these changes.

A part of the thesis compares the family manners of ethnic and other Estonians. “We saw that in older generations, non-ethnic Estonians used to start living together only after marriage, or at least marry soon after moving in with each other. Now, cohabitation has brought about changes that have spread throughout all ethnic groups,” Rahnu said.

The thesis combines four case studies, which used data from the Generation and Gender Survey (GGS). Until now, theoretical research on cohabitation has been looked at from a Western Europe perspective. This thesis used the experience of Eastern European countries. At the same time, the thesis helps understand the position of Estonia in the context of these developmental changes. “The changes in defining a family should not be seen as a social divergence – we should rather modernise the standing policies to conform more to the current developments. We also received confirmation that learning the native language is vital to the integration process,” added Rahnu.

The Doctoral Thesis titled “Partnership Dynamics in Second Half of the 20^th Century: Evidence from Estonia and Other GGS Countries of Europe” was defended on 6 June at 14:00 at Tallinn University. The supervisors were lead researcher Allan Puur and senior researcher Luule Sakkeus from Tallinn University. The opponents are Professor Tiit Tammaru from University of Tartu and researcher Aiva Jasilioniene from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.

The thesis can be accessed via the TU Academic Library E-vault .