This article analyses continuity and change in family life in the Netherlands over the last decades. The authors consider three characteristics of families: (1) family types, (2) maternal employment, and (3) parent-child time. Analyses are based on data from the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Dutch Time Use Study. The results indicate that there is both continuity and change. Although two married individuals giving care to their children is still the most common family type, alternative family forms have become more popular, including unmarried cohabiting parents and single-parent families. Furthermore, the division of labor is still strongly gendered: Dutch mothers’ participation on the labor market is limited and they still hold the main responsibility for children. Moreover, children are still most likely to grow up in a household with both a father and mother. There are also indicators of change. Maternal employment is much more prevalent than in the 1970s and fathers’ involvement with children increases.

In this article attention will be paid to the radical societal changes in respect of informal cohabitation. The rate of extramarital child birth has increased to over 50% of all first-born children. Family law is traditionally focused on marriage, which was for a long time the only acceptable relationship type. The question addressed in this article is whether the law of parentage and the law of parental responsibilities should be reformed in order to meet the needs of modern families.

The identified trend of changing family relations and establishing a family without being traditionally married, probably does not apply to the entire Dutch population. Islamic law requires that people get married before children are born. Among Muslims, this standard is still followed on a large scale. Marriages which may be validly established according to Islamic law, however, will not always be recognized in the Netherlands. Examples include the unregistered marriages and polygamous marriages. This has implications for the way in which questions of parentage and custody of children that were born out of these marriages, are answered. In this article it will be argued that the law, where it concerns issues of parentage and custody, provides insufficient protection to the category of those unrecognized Islamic marriages.

Within the context of a recent call for the strengthening of the legal position of grandparents with regards to visitation rights, this article presents a brief review of major conceptual notions and empirical findings within the literature on grandparent-grandchild relationships. Three major topics for understanding the intergenerational relationship are addressed: the historical context, the importance of the relationship, and changes over individual time.

This article gives an overview of the changes in the Dutch marital property regimes during the last twenty years. This is preceded by a discourse sketching the reasons for this legal modernization trajectory and the history of the community of property and standard prenuptial agreements.