April 05, 2004 | Press Release
The Culture of Reproduction: New research group established at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock has a new Junior Independent Research Group, The Culture of Reproduction, headed by Dr. Laura Bernardi. The new research group focuses in the main on the socio-cultural embedding of reproductive behavior in European regions that saw a rapid decline in fertility to very low levels during the 1980s and 1990s: namely, southern, central, and eastern Europe, in addition to Germany.
To understand the causes of this development (such as changes in the decision-making process of individuals and couples), the research links it to the local cultural understanding of childbearing and parenthood. Culture defines the way in which individuals interpret their environment and provides them with motivation for their own behavior. This includes behavioral norms and ideas about what seems appropriate, desired, or unavoidable. The group studies the concepts and meanings associated with fertility choices and how these are enforced or modified by formal and informal institutions. The research is empirically grounded on comparative case studies that investigate the cultural dimension of fertility choices by integrating the analysis of qualitative data (such as in-depth-interviews and participant observation) and socio-demographic survey data.
For one project, for example, members of the new research group collect and analyze in-depth interviews from the northern German towns of Lübeck and Rostock to examine the impact of relatives and peer networks on family formation. Most projects are carried out in co-operation with other research centers and universities in Germany and abroad. For example, the Rostock researchers are participating in a study entitled "Kinship and social security" that is being conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale. International research also concentrates on Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria, where fertility declines in the 1990s followed the German example.
Laura Bernardi's article "Channels of social influence on reproduction" on lowest-low fertility published in a special issue (5+6/2003) of Population Research and Policy Review provides an insight into the work of the research group. Bernardi analyzes the mechanisms that influence couples' decisions whether and when to have children. The study is based on research she conducted in Lombardy, Italy. She differentiates between four different types of social interaction: social learning, social pressure, subjective obligation and what she calls "social contagion". The latter refers to a chain reaction that motivates people to start a family when friends or relatives do so. Lombardy follows a general demographic trend observed in most regions of Europe: the postponement of marriage and parenthood. There is a difference, however. Fewer couples in this northern Italian region remain childless than elsewhere in Europe and almost all children are born within marriage. Bernardi shows in her study, how the interaction between this package deal (marriage-children) and the mechanisms of social learning is of particular significance in the perpetuation of this fertility behavior pattern. For further information, see http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/0167-5923/contents.
Laura Bernardi comes from Italy. She studied in Rome, where she received in 1995 her diploma (Laurea) in philosophy and history. In 1997 she successfully completed a DES diploma in demography in Louvain la Neueve, Belgium. She was then a doctoral student and post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock. Her dissertation was awarded by the University La Sapienza in Rome in 2002. After a postdoctoral year studying anthropological demography at Brown University in the USA, Laura Bernardi returned to Rostock in 2003.