A Culture of Marriage, Two Tales:

Tearing One Down in Sweden

Allan Carlson

      Allan Carlson is President of the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois. This is the second part of an article on marriage. The first part was on “Rebuilding One in America” in the April, 2004issue of the St. Croix Review. This article is reprinted from the newsletter The Family in America, volume 17, number 12. The extensive end notes in the original have been omitted.

            The changing status of the family in Sweden over the past 100 years can be summarized through five transitions:

From a regime where the family was an open expression of Christian values with claims of its own to a regime that is intentionally secular and designed to protect the interests of the individual;

From a legal order that gave preference to the property and inheritance claims of blood relations and lineage to one giving preference to the claims of the surviving spouse;

From a regime that assumed a bread winning husband/father and a homemaking wife/mother to a regime giving first priority to gender equality, universal adult employment, and self support;

From a legal order that encouraged marriage as an economic partnership resting on a vital home economy to a regime dedicated to what one analyst calls “statisation,” where the state deliberately takes over family functions and encourages the economic independence of married adults and universal dependence on the welfare state;

And from a regime that presumed marriage to be exclusively heterosexual to one that grants nearly equal status, benefits, and obligations to same-sex couples.

The overall story is one highlighting the interaction of ideology and law-making.

Before 1920

            The foundation of Swedish law remains a vast statute called Sveriges Rikeslag, enacted in 1734 but now with innumerable amendments. Under the assumption of a “common estate,” this measure long codified the inferior status of women relative to men in matters of earnings and property. Despite some liberalization in the late 19th century, the Swedish husband until 1920 still held the right to control and administer the common estate during marriage. Reflecting the importance of land and lineage in the old regime, the law also excluded from the common estate real property acquired before marriage or by inheritance during marriage. In the then-rare cases of divorce, the marital estate would be divided equally, although marital misconduct such as adultery could result in penalties imposed on the offender.

The Marriage Code of 1920

            In 1918-19, The Kingdom of Sweden experienced a bloodless democratic revolution. Following mass protests in the streets, the King surrendered virtually all of his power to Parliament. The adoption of universal adult suffrage in 1920 extended the vote to women. And Sweden’s Parliament or Riksdag also adopted a new Marriage Code in 1920.

            This Code built on the idea of the marital home as an economic partnership, with husband and wife equal in rights but different in function. Relative to property, the 1920 Code adopted the concept of “deferred community.” The prescribed marital property system rested on the idea of “separate administration but equal division for one and all.” The measure abolished the automatic co-ownership of property during marriage as well as the position of the husband as the dominant administrator. Rather, each spouse would control and administer the property that he or she owned at the time of marriage or gained later. Jointly owned property was also possible. Notably, the 1920 Code also embraced the idea of independent liability; spouses were not held responsible for each other’s debts (except for educational expenses for their children and certain direct household expenditures). The Code expanded the definition of marital property to include property acquired before marriage or by inheritance during marriage. On the dissolution of the marriage through death or divorce or by mutual petition, all marital property would be divided equally, although in cases of divorce the Courts retained the power to punish one or the other spouse for marital misconduct. Importantly, the Code did lay upon the husband a special responsibility for economic support of his wife and children. Overall, the 1920Code aimed at creating a relatively simple property system that minimized disputes and lawyering and encouraged gender specialization in the home. It was ideally suited to a people committed to nearly universal marriage and the avoidance of divorce.

Radical Currents in the1930s

            During the early 1930s, a declining marriage rate and a sharply falling fertility rate led to calls for radical changes in the Swedish home. For example, the feminist Social Democrat Alva Myrdal generated a furor by calling for “collectivized homes” for Swedish families, where young mothers would join fathers in the full time labor force, with infants and toddlers cared for in common nurseries, and with meals prepared in collectivized kitchens (and she actually saw such a facility through to construction). With husband Gunnar Myrdal, she co-authored in 1934 the book Kris i befolkningsfrågan (“Crisis in the Population Question”). In order to raise Sweden’s birthrate, they said, the natures of marriage and family needed to be radically changed. Fathers should be freed from their “breadwinner” role; mothers freed from “homemaking.” All adults should work, and massive new state welfare benefits—child allowances, daycare subsidies, universal health care, low interest “marriage loans,” and so on—should pay the costs of parenthood. The marital home, under their scheme, would largely cease to be a significant economic unit. Working through The Royal Population Commission of 1935 and the Swedish Parliament’s Women’s Work Committee, the Myrdals enjoyed are mark able influence for the balance of the decade.

“Era of the Swedish Housewife”

            By 1940, however, their ideas were in retreat. The onset of World War II and Sweden’s perilous position as a “neutral” nation surrounded by Nazi German conquests encouraged a conservative nationalism. Relative to the family, older ideas found in the labor unions—that “women were to be liberated from the labor market rather than liberated to participate in it” and that men deserved to earn a living “family wage”—regained popularity. Feminist analysts now call the 1940-67 period “the era of the Swedish house wife.” Public policy encouraged the full time care of small children at home. The marriage rate climbed, while the average age at first marriage fell. Fertility also rose: Sweden’s mini-Baby Boom. As late as 1965, only three percent of all Swedish preschool children were in some form of non-parental day care. The “traditional Swedish family,” encouraged by The Marriage Code of 1920 and by popular values, seemed solid.

Radical Change

            Yet the late 1960s experienced new waves of radical change: so-called “Eurocommunism” was on the march, while Red Brigades terrorized Italy and West Germany, and France was torn apart by the New Left riots. Meanwhile, Christian values—summarized by one analyst as “responsibility, sacrifice, altruism and the sanctity of long-term commitments [such as marriage]”—rapidly gave way in Western Europe to a militant “secular individualism” focused on the desires of the self.

            Sweden also entered into what one leading historian, Yvonne Hirdman, calls its “Red Years,”1967-1976. At their heart was a massive “gender turn” that would radically alter the nature of marriage in Sweden. In 1968, a joint report by the Social Democratic Party and the trade union alliance (the LO) concluded that

. . . there are . . . strong reasons for making the two breadwinner family the norm in planning long-term changes within the social insurance system.

The next year, the same Alva Myrdal chaired a major panel “On Equality” for the Social Democrats. Its report concluded that

. . . [i]n the society of the future . . . the point of departure must be that every adult is responsible for his/her own support. Benefits previously inherited in married status should be eliminated.

The Report also called for a tax policy based on individual earnings, without preference for any so-called “form of cohabitation.”

Directives 1969

            Accordingly, in 1969 the Swedish government resolved to fundamentally reform its marriage law. The Minister of Justice created a Committee of Experts and issued a set of Directives. The Committee was to consider whether there was still even a need for marriage law and, if so, how it should be reconfigured. It was to consider the “clearly anachronistic” nature of community property, based as it was on the discarded Christian notion of “one flesh.” The Committee should strive for a more complete secularization of domestic relations laws. It should also consider the diminished importance of marital status in Sweden, the new imperative of “personal fulfillment,” the rising demand for divorce, declining public interest in material property in favor of pensions, annuities, and other claims on the welfare state, and the elevation of gender equality into the cornerstone of Swedish social policy.

An Individualized Income Tax

            In this spirit, Sweden’s Parliament approved in 1971 a fundamental reform of the income tax. It abolished the taxation of households through the joint income tax return premised on “income splitting” by married couples. Instead, all persons would henceforth be taxed as individuals, without attention to marital status, dependents, employment, or income of a spouse. This gave Sweden the most “fully individualized taxation system” in the developed world. In the context of high marginal tax rates, this change also greatly benefited the two-income household and penalized the traditional one-income bread winner family. Analysts of modern Sweden are nearly unanimous in viewing this shift from “joint” to “individual” taxation as the most sweeping social change in Sweden over the last 40 years, for it “more or less eradicated” the traditional home.

The Reform of 1973

            On the basis of the Family Law Reform Committee’s work, Parliament approved a new measure in 1973 governing marriage and divorce. Most legal impediments to marriage disappeared: even half-brothers and half-sisters could marry, as could aunts and nephews, uncles and nieces. Only siblings and persons related by blood in unilinear descent faced prohibition; bigamy and polygamy were also banned. The minimum marriage age for both spouses became 18. Premised on the idea of marriage as a voluntary union, it was—in one advocate’s words—“only natural that if one of the spouses is dissatisfied, he or she may demand a divorce.” In effect, the community or state was deemed no longer to have a significant interest in the preservation of a marriage. “Fault” would no longer be considered, nor would marital misconduct have any bearing at all on the division of property. If both husband and wife agreed to the divorce, it would be immediately granted. If one spouse objected or if there was at least one child under age 16 in the home, the new law fixed a mandatory reconsideration period of six months. “Separation” no longer had legal status. The measure assumed adult self-support and largely ended the concept of alimony (except in limited cases where “maintenance”payments for a set time might be required).

The Marriage Code of 1987

            Focused on property and in heritance questions, the new Marriage Code of 1987 weakened—but did not entirely eliminate—the concept of marriage as an economic partnership. On the one hand, and despite pressure for a more individualistic formulation, the new law retained the concept of “deferred community property” found in the1920 Code. In principle, a spouse remained entitled to a half share in marital property at the time of divorce or death. The Courts gained more power to set aside pre-nuptial contracts establishing separate property. And surviving spouses won greater control over marital property relative to children and other heirs, continuing the so-called “amputation of the bloodline” in Sweden.

            On the other hand, other provisions gave spouses increased independence. One abolished the obligation each had to manage and preserve matrimonial property. Joint liability for debts acquired by household expenditures or children’s education disappeared. In one commentator’s words, the new Code reflected “the increasing focus in the law itself on termination of marriage, rather than on its preservation.” The 1987 Code also ended the husband’s special responsibility to support the family. Both spouses now had a shared responsibility.

The Joint Homes Act of 1987

            The Joint Homes Act was also approved in 1987. This new measure governing “relationships similar to marriage” rested on “the principle of neutrality toward family form.” As Ulla Björnberg explains:

The principle states that individuals are free to develop their personal lives at their own will, to choose a living arrangement and ethical norms for their family life. The role of family law is restricted to providing solutions to practical problems and to formulate rules of a kind that can be accepted by almost all individuals.

            Still, the Joint Homes Act did not equate “cohabitation” with “marriage.” Specifically, cohabitators did not gain the equivalence of “marital property rights” in inheritance or a right to claim “maintenance”after separation. Rather, the rules in this measure applied only to the equal splitting of a dwelling and household goods acquired for joint use.

           Still, the measure did affirm that parenthood in consensual unions would involve rights and responsibilities equal to those in marriage. Unmarried fathers must register with the state. Joint custody of children after separation is the assumption for both cohabitating and married couples.

            A novel development in the 1987 measure, though, was that it applied to both unmarried heterosexual and homosexual couples.

The 1995 “RegisteredPartnership” Law

            In 1995, the Swedish Parliament approved a law granting same-sex couples the right to form a “registered partnership.” This represented a civil contract providing rights and responsibilities nearly identical to those of conventional marriage. The few exceptions involved adoption, joint custody, and artificial insemination. “Registered partners” gained rights to “deferred community property” and to a claim for maintenance following a break-up of the couple. In 2000, the government severed its official ties to the Lutheran Church of Sweden. The same year, the Swedish government extended the “registered partnership” option to foreign nationals residing in Sweden for at least two years. In 2002, gay and lesbian couples gained the right to adopt children (although during the first year of this law’s operation, none had done so). Recent Court decisions have also given legal recognition to polygamous marriages among immigrants from Muslim countries.

Second Thoughts?

            Regarding marriage, the sweep of change in Sweden has been massive. All the same, there are a few signs of contrary movement, even second thoughts.

            In 2000-02, for example, a curious case worked its way through the European Court system. “D,” a male Swedish national, took a job in 1996 with the European Union (E.U.) Council of Ministers in Brussels. He brought with him his “registered partner” from Sweden, and asked the E.U. Council to recognize his partner as a “spouse” in order to claim a household allowance. Unexpectedly, the Council refused to grant the allowance, a decision reaffirmed by the Court of First Instance, the E.U. Advocate General, and finally the European Court of Justice. Importantly, at each stage, the decision rested on viewing the European family “on the basis of a very traditional model of a (male) breadwinner with a dependent spouse and children.”

            Of similar novelty, some Swedish analysts are beginning to suspect that “cohabitation,” long viewed as a form of liberation for women, may in fact be “a trap.” As UllaBjörnberg concludes:

The neutral position in family law and in rules of social protection presupposes that women and men have similar positions, which they do not have. Considering the position of women in the labor market in Sweden, the higher economic insecurity for women in consensual unions could be a trap.

            Greater uncertainty in employment and welfare benefits, she continues, tied to minimal protections accorded by legal cohabitation, have made private life more difficult and have contributed to Sweden’s perilously low birth rate.

            In short, it appears that the more conventional form of marriage may be finding new and unexpected friends, even in 21st Century Sweden.     Ω

“If an enemy power is bent on conquering you, and proposed to turn all of his resources to that end, he is at war with you; and you—unless you contemplate surrender—are at war with him.” —Barry Goldwater