Evidence stresses that family interventions mostly involve members of the nuclear family unit and therefore exclude other potentially significant individuals. This study hypothesizes that such a nuclear family orientation has unintended consequences for the development of family-based social capital in family interventions. This study was based on a sample of 48 parents enrolled in a family intervention program in Switzerland. Data were collected and analyzed at two time points using egocentric network analysis. The results showed that practitioners mainly involved parents and their children in the intervention. This nuclear family orientation was found to be associated with a significant decrease in network size and centrality of parents and an increase in network density. The results indicate that nuclear family orientation is detrimental to family-based social capital. Based on these results, practitioners should be aware of important family relationships beyond the household and more systematically involve them in family interventions.

In divorces by mutual consent, the negotiation of the divorce agreement between spouses and their lawyers plays a crucial role in shaping the socioeconomic consequences of divorce. However, the interpretation of gender equality in divorce law remains contested. Lawyers must navigate tensions between their professional rationality, the legal framework, and the gendered organisation of the family. This study explores how Swiss lawyers interpret and apply recent developments in divorce law and case law in light of persistent gender inequalities. It asks how lawyers assess the potential of the law to mitigate or reinforce inequality, and how they balance the legal framework, client interests, and their own values in practice. The analysis, based on qualitative interviews with family lawyers, reveals that, despite being aware of the structural disadvantages faced by women, most practitioners do not actively seek to reduce them. Three main narratives were identified: (a) a purpose-rational narrative, focused on client autonomy and a formal-egalitarian interpretation of the law; (b) a value-rational narrative, in which lawyers actively work to counter gender inequalities; and (c) an ambivalent narrative, where lawyers express concern for inequalities but fail to translate them into action - often due to institutional constraints or dual representation. These findings underline the pivotal yet ambivalent function of lawyers in (re)producing or challenging gender inequality in divorce proceedings.

This research explores the sustainability of marriage, understood as long-term unions with high marital quality, by analyzing the styles of marital relationships in Switzerland. Using longitudinal representative data from the survey 'Social stratification, cohesion and conflict in contemporary families', we analyzed a subsample of 343 couples (1,029 observations) across three waves over 20 years. Cluster analysis identified five styles of marital relationship: Companionship, Bastion, Cocoon, Parallel and Association, based on several dimensions of family life. These styles were then linked to indicators of marital quality-marital satisfaction, relationship problems, and thoughts of separation, using multilevel mixed-effects regression models. Results show that couples who belong to the Companionship style, characterized by mutual commitment, external openness, and gender equality, report significantly higher marital quality. The Companionship style becomes more prevalent over time, as couples who initially developed Cocoon and Bastion styles (Institutional marriage) gradually switch to this style. In contrast, Association and Parallel styles (Individualistic marriage) remain relatively stable over time and are consistently associated with lower marital quality. These findings highlight the importance of relational dynamics within couples in maintaining sustainable marriages and demonstrate the predictive value of marital relationships over time.

The rise of remote work has introduced new dynamics into the labor market, reshaping both where and how people work. While research on social networks has long emphasized the importance of personal contacts in job searches and status attainment, the rapid diffusion of remote work opens new and largely unexplored avenues of inquiry. Drawing on egocentric network data from 4010 workers and 22,052 professional and household ties, we examine how three distinct work arrangements—fully remote, hybrid, and on-site—are associated with the composition of personal networks, the exchange of social support, and the emergence of workplace and household conflict. Using multivariate and multilevel techniques to test a set of hypotheses, we find that although remote workers maintain professional networks that are geographically more extended, they do not report lower emotional proximity to colleagues compared to on-site workers. Overall, we observe no substantial differences in the transmission of social support across remote work modalities. In contrast, marked differences emerge with regard to conflictual relationships. Hybrid workers report higher levels of household conflict. Higher conflict within personal networks is also reported by fully remote managers and by workers who perceive a mismatch between their preferred and actual level of telework. This article provides novel empirical evidence on a growing and powerful driver of personal network dynamics in today’s labor market.

This study explores the interconnection that exists between loneliness and conflict structures in older adults' family networks. Research has shown that close family dyads, such as marriages or partnerships, often generate conflict, with negative consequences for mental health. However, such dyads are embedded in larger family networks with their own conflict structures. When considering the development of loneliness, the significant role of these larger conflict structures and their characteristics (i.e., density, centralization) has been disregarded, to a large extent, thus far. This research draws on the Vivre/Leben/Vivere survey, which investigated the family life and health conditions of people aged 65 and over living in Switzerland. Analyses focused on 890 individuals who participated in two waves of the survey, separated by 6 years. Regression and mediation models show that the conflict density of family networks is related to loneliness through its association with stress. The importance of network conflict structures is discussed.

While family law in Western countries has changed dramatically in recent decades towards the ideal of gender equality, many inequalities remain with regard to the gendered outcomes of separation and divorce. Moreover, in family law, the move towards private ordering of legal issues in divorce has shifted the focus from the courts to lawyers, who have become central to the negotiation process in and out of court. Consequently, the interpretation of the law by lawyers needs to be scrutinised in order to assess its potential impact on the outcome of divorce settlements in terms of gender equality. Based on a large-scale survey of Swiss divorce lawyers and using a scenario approach, we examine the division of pension assets and post-marital maintenance, issues that are critical to the long-term socio-economic consequences of the unequal division of paid and unpaid work between couples. From an empirical perspective, the article examines the preferences of divorce lawyers with respect to the formal-egalitarian, compensatory and traditionalist interpretations. The findings suggest that the formal-egalitarian interpretation of gender equality is gaining traction in Switzerland, and that an awareness of gender inequalities is necessary in order to make full use of the compensatory mechanisms embedded in written law.

Introduction Teleworking is one of the most significant legacies of the pandemic. Great attention is now being paid to its effects on workers’ health. One of the arguments that emerged on this issue is that ‘working away from the office’ affects the time we spend with significant others. This calls into question all those processes that make relatives and colleagues important to our health, such as forms of mentoring and social support, but also conflicts, work interruptions or control over workers’ activities. So far, no study has evaluated the impact that teleworking has on these processes using data on personal networks. The Empty Office is the first study to use social network analysis to measure the impact that telework has on social relations and, in turn, workers’ health and well-being.Methods and analysis The project draws on a total sample of 4400 participants from Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain and Germany (n=1100 per country). The choice of these countries is due to their specificity and diversity in socioeconomic features, which make them particularly interesting for studying teleworking from a comparative point of view. The research is conceived as a sequential mixed-method design. First, quantitative data collection will administer an online questionnaire to gather information on telework modalities, health and well-being markers, and data on personal networks collected by a name generator. A qualitative module, administered one year later, will consist of in-depth interviews with a subsample (n=32) of teleworkers selected for delving narratively into the mechanisms identified with the quantitative analyses.Ethics and dissemination This study has obtained 2 years of funding from the Swiss Network for International Study and was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Geneva (CUREG-20230920-292-2). All participants will be asked to provide informed consent to participate in this study. The results will be shared with international organisations and disseminated in scientific journals and conferences. Fully anonymised data will be made available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) data-repository platform.

Although negative ties may cause stress and harm well-being, they are also considered fundamental in close and ongoing relationships. This study distinguishes positive, negative, and – when characterized by both valences – ambivalent ties. Analyzing almost 10,000 personal networks from the Swiss CH-X study shows that: (1) ambivalence among family members is more prevalent than among non-family members, (2) ambivalent family dyads or triads are not negatively associated with well-being, and (3) certain balanced family triads are associated with higher well-being and an unbalanced non-family triad is associated with lower well-being. These results suggest that conflicts are not necessarily detrimental to young adults’ well-being.

Young people today are expected to navigate their precarious careers in an entrepreneurial way. Self-employment is gaining ground on wage labour as one attractive strategy for winning the battle with precariousness. From Granovetter’s studies to the present day, one of the most prolific lines of research on the factors influencing the strategies of job insertion emphasises the key importance of personal networks. Based on social capital theory, this article tests (1) whether the composition of young people’s personal networks is associated with their desire to move towards independent careers; and (2) whether, among the mechanisms associated with this orientation, there is the ability to mobilise contacts’ resources, for example, avoiding conflict and exploiting different forms of social support. Analysing data on the personal networks of a sample of 7827 young people in Switzerland, our results show that the orientation towards self-employment is more likely for those who access contacts with an unfavourable position in the labour market, such as people with lower educational levels and a foreign background. Although receiving social support plays a role, our results show that, for young people wishing to become self-employed, an even more important predictor is the presence of conflicts in their networks. In the context of the precarization of young people’s labour pathways, these results suggest that self-employment can serve as a coping strategy for the most vulnerable, as well as an escape from difficult relationships.

AbstractWhile close relations include both intimate family members and close friends, the transmission of socioeconomic resource remains largely confined within families. Moreover, family-transmitted values and sociopsychological skills are incorporated during childhood, and emotional and instrumental support is still mainly assumed by family members. These overlapping exchanges mean that family ties constitute durable resource for individuals, but that families are (also) damaging in case of tie dissolution, poor relational quality or gendered family practices. In this chapter, we examine how family and friends affect vulnerability processes differently by using three longitudinal datasets on long-term couples, lone parents, and ageing individuals, as well cross-sectional data on adults’ personal networks, collected with support from LIVES. We found that ambivalent and sometimes negative (i.e., resource depletion) aspects of family relationships emerge, in particular, in situations in which other key resources (including friendship ties) are missing, typically with the occurrence of stressful life events. Conversely, negative family events are more quickly overcome when sufficient resources (including friends) are available. Interestingly, some negative life events, such as job loss, are better dealt with through sparser personal networks. By contrast, normative life events act as densifiers or enlargers of both elective and family networks.

AbstractThis chapter emphasize several dimensions of resources as reserves. Lifelong dynamics are crucial for the understanding of vulnerability development across adulthood. The chapters of this section all contribute empirically to the understanding of resource dynamics through the life course. They tackle important issues regarding long-term processes of resilience and vulnerability. They show the importance of developing a lifelong perspective on resources when dealing with various outcomes (i.e., health, well-being, income, social capital). The contributions highlight the existence of a diversity of individual reserves to avoid or deal with critical events. This diversity refers to various levels: micro (e.g., educational, psycho-social), meso (e.g. relational) and macro (e.g. social policies). The systematic accumulation of (dis)advantages across life course is questioned, and, conversely, the existence of individual reserves making dynamics of resilience for more vulnerable individuals possible. The impact of socio-historical contexts on reserve dynamics will be considered, enabling the consideration of historical time as a critical factor stressed by the life course paradigm.

This study focuses on the constitution of financial reserves in Switzerland from a longitudinal perspective. Personal income after retirement derives from financial reserves whose constitution depends both on positional factors, such as sex and birth cohorts, and processual factors, such as occupational trajectories, in the institutional context of the Swiss pension system (structural factors). We hypothesise that some processual, positional and structural factors interact with each other to shape financial reserves available in old age. We assess this set of factors and their interactions using the occupational trajectory types stemming from optimal matching analysis (OMA) combined with the hierarchical clustering and regression tree methods. We used the retrospective biographic data SHARELIFE gathered during the third wave of the SHARE survey in 2009. The results show that occupational trajectories are influential factors accounting for much of the financial reserves available in later life. However, these processual factors interact with positional factors such as sex and birth cohort. The retirement schemes generalised in Switzerland during the period under consideration add up to the effect of positional factors on the constitution of financial reserves.

AbstractThis chapter presents the vulnerability framework used in the different sections chapters of this book. Vulnerability is defined as a process of resource loss in one or more life domains that threatens individuals in three major steps: (1) an inability to avoid individual, social or environmental stressors, (2) an inability to cope effectively with these stressors, and (3) an inability to recover from stressors or to take advantage of opportunities by a given deadline. The chapter also stresses the importance of resources, reserves and stressors to understand the dynamics of vulnerability throughout the life span. This life course perspective of vulnerability processes is better understood through three main perspectives: multidimensional (across life domains), multilevel (using micro, meso and macro perspectives) and multidirectional (the study of vulnerability life trajectories should envisage all possible directions, namely stability, decline, recovery, growth trajectories and in long-term). We also argue in this chapter that a vulnerability framework enables researcher to understand the craft of our lives and the responses, be they individual (through agency), collective (through support) or institutional (social policies) that can be given to life events, life transitions, and to the stressors that individuals inevitably face sooner or later in their life.

AbstractCoherently with the life course perspective that studies individual life trajectories embedded in sociohistorical changes, this chapter offers a synthesis on the long-term dynamics of vulnerabilities in old age that are associated with a deficit of reserves. In a first time, we investigate how economic, social and health reserves have been unevenly constructed across long lives. The impact of social stratification in the early stage of life, the institutionalization of the life courses and the process of accumulating (dis)advantages are confronted. In a second time, we show how the results of those life course dynamics, the unequal distribution of reserves older adults have to cope with aging, changed during the last 40 years. Undeniable progresses also resulted in new inequalities, or the accentuation of older ones. Third, challenging the classical perspectives of political economy of ageing and social gerontology, we show that depletion is not a linear process but that social inequalities and life accidents play a role. Moreover, coping mechanisms are considered since they tend to be based on reserves’ activation while preserving a level of reserves, for further ageing challenges.

Les questions du « nous familial » et des formes que prennent les chaînes d’interdépendances familiales constituent le centre de l’approche configurationnelle des familles. Ces questions semblent à première vue éloignées de la famille, un groupe limité, tant par le nombre de personnes qu’elle concerne que du point de vue des rôles que ces personnes jouent les unes pour les autres. Cet article vise à présenter quelques notions et résultats de recherche qui se font les avocats d’une prise en compte empirique systématique de configurations larges d’interdépendances pour comprendre les dynamiques qui se développent dans toute relation familiale.

The configurational studies of this special issue trace complex patterns of interdependencies existing among family members and beyond households. They focus on the functional connections among spouses, children, siblings, and other relatives living in a variety of households. The main goal of this special issue is to reveal how some key decisions and exchanges occurring in family dyads, such as the marital and parent–child dyads, are embedded within a larger set of family and interpersonal exchanges that constitute configurations of their own in a variety of contexts.

In this research, we considered how various structural aspects of friendship networks relate to marital quality according to gender. To investigate this issue, we drew on data from a large longitudinal survey on marital functioning based on 903 heterosexual couples living in Switzerland. Using reports from male and female partners, we explored the extent to which joint contacts, transitivity, and overlap in friendship structures affect various indicators of marital quality for husbands and wives in the long run. Our results indicate that separate, low transitive friendship networks affect marital quality negatively for women, but not for men. We also discuss the importance of the results for understanding the dynamics of heterosexual couples within larger relational contexts beyond dyadic interactions, as well as the relevance of separately analyzing husbands' and wives' marital dynamics.