Social Relationships in the New Demographic Regime: Potentials and Risks, Reconsidered

This paper explores the potentials and risks that dramatic declines in mortality, morbidity, and fertility have created for social relationships. On the one hand, these changes have made possible more durable, active, and intense bonds; a wider and more varied mix of family, family-like, and non-family ties; and the ability to inhabit roles and relationships in novel ways. On the other hand, these changes have brought new types and levels of complexity, disruption, ambiguity, and uncertainty to relationships. The revolutionary changes of the last century have formed a vastly different landscape within which social relationships must be built, maintained, and understood.