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This special issue on the journal, European family is devoted to informing American readers of recent developments in Europe so that they can better address the nature of contemporary family change in the West. It is not the authors' aim to present a comprehensive account of the forces behind contemporary family change, nor have they asked their contributors to do so. The reports presented in this issue need to be followed by finer-grained comparative studies that can clarify how events such as out-of-wedlock births or union dissolutions are experienced and interpreted in different cultural and political settings. Such studies may help explain how and why family patterns changed so swiftly and radically after the baby boom. The one persistent development amid the ups and downs of postwar demographic patterns is the steady march of married women into the labor force. On a cultural level: the parallel trend has been the growth of an ideology stressing independence and self-fulfillment.

The article presents some salient changes that have occurred in the social stratification of Euro-American population during the Second World War. Its second objective is to point out which of these changes are likely to continue in the transitory post-war period and which are bound to end with the armistice. Before the war, the factual and legal status of women was unequal to that of men. In all Western countries, with no exception whatsoever, women's political, economic and other rights and privileges were more limited than those of men. Some high positions and functions were legally closed for women; some occupations were either factually or legally monopolized by men. Women's remuneration for similar occupations was lower than for men. Rights of the wife in the family were less extensive than those of the husband. The war saw a dramatic change in this status, with women entering armed forces and other occupations totally monopolized by men. As a result these occupational, economic and functional changes in the position of women, their total status has become closer to that of men.