„Meilės santykiai šiuolaikinėje Lietuvoje ir jų poveikis santuokos,
šeimos kūrimo ir vaikų auginimo pasirinkimams“ (sut. reg. nr. S-MIP-21-47)
Project duration: 2021 m. April-2024 m. March
Project leader: prof. dr. (HP) Victor C. de Munck
Project team: dr. Jūratė Charenkova
Project is funded by Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT) grant No. S-MIP-21-47.
Aim of the project: to reveal how youth’s perceptions of love relations changes and how it correlates with prognoses of second demographic transition.
The purpose of the project is to answer the question “are monogamy, marriage and family no longer normative features of the human life cycle?” This project investigates the interaction between three theories explaining this question in a way that has not yet been studied. Theory 1: Lesthaege and Van Kaa (1986) used the term second demographic transition to describe the shift by western nations to sub-replacement fertility rates and decreasing marriage rates. This shift was said to be caused by three factors: (1) technological advances in contraception; (2) increase in female socio-economic status, and (3) Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in which Westerners now seek self-actualization or “individualization” rather than meeting basic subsistence needs. Theory 2: Giddens (1992) presciently argued that romantic love and its affiliation with marriage and family was changing to “confluent love,” a purely agent-based love, where pleasure was the goal. Ilouz (2012; 2019), Regenerus (2018), and Slater (2016) are among the many that amplified and provided evidential support for Giddens’ perspective. Theory 3: May (2010) concluded that while sexual norms vary across time and place, the features of intimate romantic love remain a “constant”. Thus polyamory and the confluent love are fashionable, but will not replace love, marriage and family as portals through which humans pass. This study relies on quantitative and qualitative methods to illuminate an anthropological perspective on how the three theories interact. We will start with a “bottom up” inductive approach to discover what styles of love relations people choose and why they do so. The research will describe the different styles and the values, ideology and behavioral patterns associated with these different relational forms. From these descriptions we will use top down approaches to test hypothesis about each of these styles focusing in particular on aspects that facilitate or resist decision to marry or have children.
Planned results: results of the project will be published in 5 national and international level publications and conferences. It is also planned to publish a monograph and popular articles based on the research data.