The message is the crisis of the family at the present stage. Causes of the crisis of the modern Russian family and its impact on the development of culture

The family is a historically specific system of relationships between spouses, parents and children, as a small group linked by marriage or kinship. The functions of the family as a way of manifesting the activity, life of the family and its members, are historical and are closely related to the socio-economic conditions of society. The modern family is characterized by reproductive, educational, household, economic, primary social control, spiritual communication, social status, recreational, emotional and sexual functions.

The family, in its synchronous functioning, is a system that is in some equilibrium thanks to established connections. However, this balance itself is mobile, living, changing and renewing. A change in the social situation, the development of a family or one of its members entails a change in the entire system within family relations and creates conditions for the emergence of new opportunities for building relationships, sometimes diametrically opposite.

Let's turn to the concept of "family crisis". A crisis is a sharp, turning point in something (Lapin N.I., Gvishiani D.M.).

Family crisis is a state of the family system characterized by a violation of homeostatic processes, leading to frustration of the usual ways of family functioning and the inability to cope with a new situation using old patterns of behavior.

The family as a social institution has two characteristics. First, the family is a self-regulating system, the culture of communication is developed by the family members themselves; this is inevitably accompanied by a clash of different positions and the emergence of contradictions, which are resolved through mutual agreement and concessions, which is ensured by the internal culture, moral and social maturity of family members. Secondly, the family exists as a union sanctioned by society, the stability of which is possible through interaction with other social institutions: the state, law, public opinion, religion, education, culture.

In a family crisis, researchers identify two potential lines for the further development of the family: (Eidemiller E.G., Yustitsky V.V.):

1. Destructive, leading to a violation of family relations and containing a danger to their existence.

2. Constructive, containing the potential for the family to move to a new level of functioning.

Analysis of the literature on the problem of crisis situations in the family allows us to identify several approaches to the description of family crises.

The first is related to the study of the laws of the family life cycle. In the mainstream of this approach, crises are considered as transitional moments between stages of the life cycle. These crises are called normative or horizontal stressors. They arise when there are obstacles or inadequate adaptation during the passage of any stage of the family life cycle.

V. Satir identifies ten critical points in the development of the family.

The first crisis is conception, pregnancy and childbirth.

The second crisis is the beginning of the child's mastering of human speech.

The third crisis - the child is establishing relations with the external environment (goes to kindergarten or to school).

The fourth crisis is when the child enters adolescence.

Fifth crisis - the child becomes an adult and leaves the house.

The sixth crisis - young people get married, and the family includes daughters-in-law and sons-in-law.

The seventh crisis is the onset of menopause in a woman's life.

The eighth crisis is a decrease in men's sexual activity.

Ninth crisis - parents become grandparents.

Tenth crisis - one of the spouses dies.

Thus, the family in its development goes through a number of stages, accompanied by crises. The normative crisis recorded at the microfamily level is usually based on the individual normative crisis of an adult or a child, leading to the destabilization of the system.

The second approach is related to the analysis of events in the family's life: family crises can be triggered by some events that affect the stability of the family system. Such crises can arise regardless of the stages of the family's life cycle and are called non-normative (Olyfirovich N.I.).

The third approach is based on knowledge about crisis situations in the family or its individual subsystems, obtained in the course of experimental research. Of undoubted interest are the studies of Czech scientists who have identified and described two "critical periods" in the life of a family.

The first critical period occurs between the 3rd and 7th year of married life and lasts about 1 year in a favorable case. The following factors contribute to its occurrence: the disappearance of romantic moods, an active rejection of the contrast in the behavior of a partner during the period of falling in love and in everyday family life, an increase in the number of situations in which spouses find different views on things and cannot come to an agreement, an increase in negative emotions, an increase in tensions between partners due to frequent clashes. A crisis situation can arise without the influence of any external factors that determine the everyday and economic situation of a married couple, without parental intervention, betrayal or any pathological personality traits in one of the spouses.

The second crisis period occurs approximately between the 17th and 25th year of marriage. This crisis is less deep than the first; it can last 1 year or several years. Its occurrence often coincides with the approaching period of involution, with an increase in emotional instability, the appearance of fears, various somatic complaints, a feeling of loneliness associated with the departure of children, with the increasing emotional dependence of the wife, her worries about rapid aging, as well as possible sexual betrayal of her husband.

In both cases, there is an increase in dissatisfaction. The leading role in the case of the first crisis is acquired by a frustrating change in emotional relationships, an increase in the number of conflict situations, an increase in tension (as a manifestation of difficulties in restructuring emotional relationships between spouses, a reflection of everyday and other problems); the second crisis is an increase in somatic complaints, anxiety, a feeling of emptiness in life associated with the separation of children from the family.

According to the views of N.V. Samoukina, the first crisis period (5-7 years) is associated with a change in the image of a partner, namely, with a decrease in his psychological status. The second crisis period (13-18 years old) is caused by psychological fatigue from each other, gravitation towards novelty in relationships and lifestyle. This period is especially acute for men. It is less painful in those families where the conditions for relative freedom and independence of the spouses are mutually recognized, as well as where both partners begin to look for ways to renew their relationship.

Crises in individual subsystems (for example, the above-described crises in marital relations) can influence the course of normative family crises, intensifying their manifestations.

A family in crisis cannot remain the same; she fails to function adequately in the changed situation, operating with familiar, stereotyped notions and using habitual models of behavior.

Let's consider the main approaches to the problem of studying the family. The family as a social institution emerged with the formation of society. The process of family formation and functioning is conditioned by value-normative regulators. Such, for example, as courtship, the choice of a marriage partner, sexual standards of behavior, the norms that govern the wife and husband, parents and their children, etc., as well as sanctions for non-compliance. These values, norms and sanctions represent the historically changing form of relations between a man and a woman, adopted in a given society, through which they order and sanction their sexual life and establish their marital, parental and other kinship rights and obligations.

As a social institution, the family performs the most important functions: biological reproduction of society (reproductive), education and socialization of the young generation, reproduction of the social structure through the provision of social status to family members, sexual control, caring for disabled family members, emotional satisfaction (hedonistic).

The family, as a small social group, is a special kind of union between spouses, characterized by a spiritual community. In addition, a trusting relationship develops in the family between parents and children, due to which the family is called a typical primary group: these relationships play a fundamental role in the formation of the nature and ideals of the individual; they create a sense of integrity, the desire of family members to fully share its inherent views and values. Third, the family is formed in a special way: based on mutual sympathy, spiritual closeness, love. For the formation of other primary groups (they, as we have already noted in the topic on the social structure of society, a kind of small groups), it is enough to have common interests.

So, family is understood as interpersonal interests between spouses, parents, children and other relatives who are connected by a common life, mutual moral responsibility and mutual assistance.

If we turn to an examination of the special literature on the problem of family psychology, we can distinguish two epicenters on which the attention of both research psychologists and practicing psychologists is focused: the family as a social system and the family as an educational institution. In other words, psychologists study two directions: ensuring the safety of the family as the most important basic element of society and ensuring the transmission of the culture of society by the family from one generation of people to another. This suggests that the modern family, experiencing increasing stress, is no longer able to cope with these two most important functions. In Russia, in particular, direct and indirect indicators of family problems are: a catastrophic decline in fertility, the world's highest rate of abortions, an increase in illegitimate births, very high infant and maternal mortality, low life expectancy, a high rate of divorce, the spread of alternative types of marriage, and families (maternal families, cohabitation, families with separated living partners, homosexual families, families with adopted children, etc.), an increase in the incidence of child abuse in families.

The overwhelming majority of specialists (philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, economists, etc.) who study the family agree that the family is now experiencing a real crisis. Moreover, the manifestations of this crisis reveal themselves the brighter, the higher (on average) the general level of socio-economic development of society, the higher (on average) the standard of living and material well-being of people.

However, it is necessary to make an important remark: the intensity of the processes of socio-economic development (especially high in the so-called "transitional" societies, to which in particular modern Russia belongs) has an extremely destabilizing effect on the whole of society and, therefore, on the family as its most important substructure. which largely masks the more general dependence of the growth in the number of family problems on the general level of socio-economic development.

The family crisis is largely due to significant changes in social life in general. Large and small groups based on the socio-economic differentiation of society are increasingly losing their role as a space in which direct relationships between people are closed, their motives, ideas, and values \u200b\u200bare formed.

As a rule, the causes of the family crisis are seen by most specialists (especially non-psychologists) in external factors: (social, economic, political, ideological, environmental, and even biological and genetic). This approach to determining the causes of the family crisis can be called sociological (in a broad sense) and adaptive: the family is considered here as an unchanging given that exists in a changing external environment; family crisis is the result of unfavorable external influences; overcoming this crisis is seen in the creation of optimal (most favorable) conditions for the functioning of the family. This approach to understanding the nature, functions and purpose of the family has long been dominant, and only very recently has it begun to be critically rethought.

At first glance, consideration of the family crisis seems paradoxical, since it turns out that the optimization of social conditions leads not to a decrease, but, on the contrary, to an increase in the number of family problems, not to a weakening, but to an aggravation of the crisis of the modern family.

Along with this traditional approach to the crisis of the family, there is a different vision of this problem, which can be called ecological, as well as psychological: the family is considered as a rather autonomous subsystem in the system of relations "society - family - individual", and the family itself is also a complex system of inter- and the transpersonal relationships that exist between its members. It should be noted that the family, in changing social conditions, itself also develops, and this development in no case can be defined only negatively, reduced to deviations from a certain standard, pattern, or understood as a derivative, secondary.

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Ministry of Science and Education of the Russian Federation

Moscow State University of Culture and Arts

Faculty of Social and Cultural Activities

Department of Social and Philosophical Sciences

Course work

in the discipline "Social Pedagogy"

« The crisis of the modern family "

Completed: 2nd year student

correspondence department Zhdannikova N.V.

Academic Supervisor: Loseva Lyubov Pavlovna

Moscow 2013

Introduction

1 theoretical characteristics of the family

1.4 Family life cycle

2.2 The crisis of the institution of the family

2.3 Divorce and domestic violence

2.4 Violation of the reproductive function of the modern family

3 ... Diagnostics of interpersonal relationships in the family

3.1 Methods of psychodiagnostics of interpersonal marital relations

3.2 Methods of psychodiagnostics of parent-child relationships

Conclusion

List of references

application

family relationship psychodiagnostics marital

Introduction

The problems of family and intra-family relations have always been relevant. But, perhaps, a special interest in questions family life appeared in recent years in connection with the crisis of the modern family. Most of the research is devoted to the analysis of economic, social, pedagogical aspects of family life.

As you know, the first five years of married life are the most difficult; during these years, family happiness is fragile. Many mistakes that young people make even before marriage, and then replicated in the process of living together, are largely due to ignorance of the main problems of family life. Hence - a psychological unpreparedness for their discussion and constructive resolution.

Much attention is paid to the study of the modern family in our time, both in our country and abroad. Therefore, in psychology, there are different points of view on the phenomenon of the modern family.

The majority of domestic researchers note that the transition of our country to the conditions of qualitatively new economic relations influenced the formation of the family, because the family "directly or indirectly reflects all the changes taking place in society, although it has relative independence."

Therefore, studies of the modern family allow us to say that "the concept of the family is increasingly moving away from the unconditionally recognized strict functions set by society, and is increasingly approaching the image of the family as a small group in which the functions, roles and values \u200b\u200bdepend on its constituent individuals" ...

The course work is devoted to the problems of the modern family, its characteristics, features and functional-role structure. The course work outlines issues related to the characteristics of the main functions, structure and typology of families, examines the psychological characteristics of the modern Russian family.

1. Theoretical characteristics of the family

1.1 Definition of the family. The functional and role aspect of the modern family

A family is a small group based on marriage or consanguinity, the members of which are linked by a common life, mutual moral responsibility and mutual assistance; it develops a set of norms, sanctions and patterns of behavior that regulate the interaction between spouses, parents and children, children among themselves.

The family is a more complex system of relations than marriage, since, as a rule, it unites not only spouses, but also their children, as well as other relatives or just people close to the spouses.

Marriage is a historically conditioned, sanctioned and regulated by society form of relations between a man and a woman, establishing their rights and obligations towards each other, their children, their offspring, and their parents.

Today the family is viewed from two sides. The family is considered one of the four fundamental institutions of society, which gives it stability and the ability to replenish the population in each next generation. At the same time, the family acts as a small group - the most cohesive and stable unit of society. Throughout his life, a person is part of many of the most different groups, but only the family remains the group that he never leaves. It is the most important institution for the socialization of the younger generations. It is a personal environment for the life and development of children, adolescents, young men.

The family is an integral part of society and it is impossible to diminish its importance. Not a single nation, not a single civilized society can do without a family. The foreseeable future of society is also not conceived without a family. For each person, the family is the beginning of beginnings. Almost everyone associates the concept of happiness, first of all, with the family. And only a healthy, prosperous family has a beneficial effect on a person, the creation of which requires significant efforts and certain personality traits.

The topic of the institution of the family and its problems is one of the most important and urgent, since the family today is in an institutional crisis, does not cope with the performance of its functions and needs support and assistance from both society and the state.

The degree of study of this topic is quite high, as evidenced by the variety of literature on this topic, which deals with family problems. These are publicistic articles used in writing the work of V. M. Zakirova, Candidate of Sociological Sciences, about divorce and domestic violence as a phenomenon of family trouble. Also article Tyurina E.I., Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, on the causes of the crisis of the modern family - as a social institution, the article attempts to analyze the factors of the crisis in the modern family. An article by EI Balditsyna, which examines the nature of the relationship between the state and the family in the Soviet period - as social institutions of society. When writing the work, theoretical data were used teaching aids on the sociology and psychology of the family, as well as data from Internet resources, directly articles on the topic of family problems and statistical data. The lack of a legal framework is noted.

The family is the first social community (group) in a person's life, thanks to which he becomes familiar with the values \u200b\u200bof culture, masters the first social roles, and gains experience of social behavior. Social psychologists view the family as a cell of the social structure of society, acting as a regulator of relations between people. A family is a small social group, which is characterized by certain intragroup processes and phenomena. At the same time, the family is distinguished from other small groups by some characteristics: marriage or kinship ties between its members; community of life; special moral-psychological, emotional-ethical and legal relations. The family has such features as life-long belonging to the family group (the family is not chosen, a person is born in it); maximum heterogeneous group composition; the maximum degree of informality of contacts in the family and the increased emotional significance of family events. One of the most accurate definitions of a family belongs to N.Ya. Soloviev. According to him, a family is “a small social group of society, the most important form of organizing personal life, based on marital union and family ties, that is, the relationship between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters and other relatives living together and leading a common economy ".

Most complete and modern version classifications are offered by E.G. Eidemiller and V.V. Yustickis, highlighting the following basic functions of the family

upbringing function - meeting the need for fatherhood and motherhood, raising children;

household - the formation and expenditure of the family budget, maintaining the physical condition of the family, caring for the sick and the elderly;

emotional - stabilization of close emotional relationships of family members, satisfaction of the need for sympathy, respect, recognition, psychological protection;

the function of primary social control is the fulfillment of social norms by family members;

the function of spiritual communication is mutual spiritual enrichment, the organization of leisure;

sexually erotic - satisfaction of the sexual and erotic needs of family members.

The authors note that the inner essence of the function can change with the changing conditions of the family. The functions of the family are set by needs, the subjects of which are society, family and personality. The functions of the family are realized in the process of fulfilling family roles and determine, first of all, their content.

The distribution of roles and functions in the family is closely related to the concepts of leadership in the family. In this regard, it should be noted that "... now the head of the family is not the head" by law ", but the leader, that is, whose psychological influence is recognized voluntarily."

In today's egalitarian family, the husband is the head in some matters and the wife in others. At the right moments, they change leadership, and no friction arises in this regard. Such families are characterized by approximately the same level of assessments of the personal characteristics of husband and wife and high satisfaction with family life. The problem of the distribution of roles between spouses is the basis for dividing families into traditional and egalitarian.

A feature of the modern stage of family formation is a significant increase in egalitarian families and, accordingly, a decrease in the number of traditional ones.

In a traditional (patriarchal) family, roles and responsibilities are rigidly distributed according to the norms prescribed by gender roles. This is a family, the head of which is a man - a breadwinner, a breadwinner, a woman in such a family is assigned the role of an educator.

a) there is a traditional division of male and female roles in the sphere of "secondary" functions;

b) the system of norms justifying this distribution, the position of responsibility for family functions is expressed;

c) the leading role in making family decisions belongs to the husband; high authority of the father, who exercises social control over the behavior and upbringing of children.

The modernized (egalitarian) family model suggests:

a) the distribution of roles in the domestic sphere, based on the relative equality of the spouses' contributions to external activities;

b) the position of combining responsibility for the performance of family functions;

c) a democratic leadership structure;

d) "the egalitarian concept of family life", equality of husband and wife in the family and outside it.

Equal and fair distribution of roles is characteristic of an egalitarian marriage. Some researchers consider the participation of a woman in the material support of the family as a criterion for the traditional / egalitarian character of the family. L. Khaas discovered that for the egalitarian distribution of roles, it is not so much the fact of the wife's work that matters as her earnings and the prestige of her occupation.

1.2 Types and types of modern family

Analysis of literary sources shows that psychologists working with the problems of the modern family attach great importance to its features and distinctive features in comparison with the traditional family.

Schneider identifies the following features of the modern family:

The family has become smaller in number;

The modern family is less stable;

The number of families where the head is the husband has decreased;

The family became less friendly, because parents and adult children, brothers and sisters prefer to live separately;

Significantly more (compared to the recent past) people do not legitimize relationships, or even live alone.

According to the listed modern features families distinguish the following types.

1. By related structurefamily maybe nuclear(married couple with children) and rasshandrenowned(a married couple with children and one of the relatives of the husband or wife).

2. By number of children: bezdetnaya, one-child, small-child, large a family.

3. By structure:with one married couple with or without children; with one of the spouses 'parents and other relatives, with two or more married couples with or without children, with one of the spouses' parents and other relatives or without them.

4. By composition:single-parent family, separate, simple, large family.

5. By geographic location:urban, rural, remote.

6. By uniformity social composition:socially abouthomogeneous and variousaboutnativefamilies.

7. By family experience:newlyweds; young family expecting a baby; middle-aged family; senior marital age; older married couples.

8. According to the characteristics of the existing family structure and the organization of family life: family - "otdushandon" (gives a person communication, moral and material support ); child-centric family; a family such as a sports team or discussionaboutth club (travel a lot, see a lot, know how, know); etc.

10. By the nature of theleisure activities: families open(communication oriented) and closed(focused on intra-family leisure).

11. By the nature of the distribution of household responsibilities:families traditional and egalitarian.

12. By type of leadershipfamilies can be authoritarian and democraticandmi.

13. Depending on special conditions for organizing family life: studentfamily and "Distant"family (separation due to the specifics of the spouses' profession).

14. By the composition of the spouses in the nuclear family: full(includes father, mother and children) and incomplete(one of the parents is missing).

15. By social and role characteristicsstand out traditional, child-centered and superatrugged families.

16. By the nature of communication and emotional relationships in the familymarriages are classified into symmetrical, complementary and metacompedigree.

IN symmetricalin a marriage union, both spouses have equal rights, neither of them is subject to the other. Problems are resolved through agreement, exchange, or compromise. IN complementarymarriage one gives orders, gives orders, another obeys, awaits advice or instructions. IN metacomplementaryin marriage, a leading position is achieved by a partner who realizes his own goals by emphasizing his weakness, inexperience, ineptitude and powerlessness, manipulating his partner.

There are many varieties of the family structure, where these signs are somewhat smoothed out, and the consequences of improper upbringing are not so clear. But still, these negative consequences do exist. One of the most noticeable is the mental loneliness of children in the family. This fact is taken into account in the Richter - Spivakovskaya typology.

1. Outwardly "calm family"is different themes , what events in her flow smoothly. From the outside, it may seem that the relations of its members are ordered and consistent.

But in such family unions, long and strongly suppressed negative feelings towards each other are hidden. This type of relationship is unfavorable for a child's development. The child feels helpless, constantly experiencing fear. His life is filled with an unaccountable feeling of constant anxiety, the child feels danger, but does not understand its source, lives in constant tension and is unable to weaken it.

2. " Volcanic "family:in this family, relationships are fluid and open. Spouses often disagree and converge, scandal, quarrel, in order to soon tenderly love and confess love for the rest of their lives. Children in such families experience significant emotional stress. Quarrels between parents are a real tragedy for a child.

3. A family - "Sanatorium" - a typical example of family disharmony. One of the spouses, whose emotional reactions are expressed in increased anxiety in front of the outside world, the demand for love and care, creates a specific limitation, a barrier to new experience. All family members, including children, are gradually drawn into a narrow, limited circle. Spouses spend all their time together and try to keep their children near them. Such parental positions lead to an excessive overload of the child's nervous system, in which there are neurotic breakdowns, emotional characteristics such as increased sensitivity, irritability.

4. Family - "fortress": such alliances are based on the idea of \u200b\u200bthe threat, aggressiveness and cruelty of the surrounding world. The spouses have a pronounced increase in the feeling of "we". They are psychologically arming themselves against the whole world. Love for a child is increasingly acquiring a conditional character, a child is loved only when it justifies the requirements imposed on him by the family circle.

5. Family - "theater": such families maintain stability through a specific “theatrical” lifestyle. The focus of such a family is always on play and effect. As a rule, one of the spouses in such families has an acute need for recognition, constant attention, and encouragement. Demonstrated to outsiders love and care for the child does not save from the acute feeling of the children that the parents are not up to them.

6. A family "third wheel". This type of family arises when the need to take on parenting roles is unconsciously perceived as a hindrance to marital happiness. This happens with the psychological immaturity of one or both parents, with their unpreparedness to perform parental functions. As a result, there is a style of relationship with the child of the type of latent rejection. Raising children in such situations leads to the formation of self-doubt, lack of initiative, fixation on weaknesses; children are characterized by painful experiences of their own inferiority with increased dependence on their parents.

7. "Family with an idol": This type is quite common. Relationships between family members lead to the creation of a "family idol". The child turns out to be the center of the family, becomes the object of increased attention and guardianship, and the inflated expectations of parents.

With such upbringing, children become dependent, activity is lost, motives are weakened. The need for positive assessments increases, children lack love; collisions with the outside world, communication with peers.

8. Family - "masquerade"... Building their lives around differently understood values, serving different gods, parents put the child in a situation of different demands and inconsistent assessments. Inconsistency in the actions of parents, for example, the increased exactingness of the father with excessive care and forgiveness of the mother, causes confusion in the child and splits his self-esteem.

The presented typology of families would be incomplete if it did not include atypical families. Despite the emergence and spread of such families in modern society, scientists hardly associate their research interests with their study. Therefore, many problems concerning these families are still unknown to the general public. However, such non-traditional marriage unions exist, have their own characteristics, lead their own way of life, which sometimes significantly differs from the generally accepted ideas about marriage and family.

1. Meetingfamily: the marriage is registered, but the spouses live separately, each of them has their own housing. Even the appearance of children is not a reason to unite and live in a “common home”. Most often, children stay with their mother or are given to the next of kin to be raised. Such a family gathers together either on holidays and weekends, on vacation. The rest of the time, the spouses can meet from time to time, without burdening each other with family problems.

2. Intermittentthe family is characterized by the fact that the marriage is officially concluded, the spouses live together, but they consider it permissible to part for a while and not run a common household.

3. Unregistered marriage(civil) - an increasingly pervasive form of the family. The reasons for the popularity of extramarital unions are primarily associated with the crisis of the modern family, the fall of its social prestige. The traditional distribution of household chores, characteristic of an official marriage, is violated in an extramarital union. The form of living together provides each partner with individual freedom, which he can use at any time. This form of living together will be further spread. This is facilitated by early physical, sexual development, the process of breaking the strict generally accepted framework in the field of sexual morality, the dominance of freedom in establishing extramarital sexual relations. An increasing number of young people consider it necessary to go through a probationary period in cohabitation before a "real" marriage - to get to know each other's character and habits better, to test their feelings and sexual compatibility.

4. Openthe family differs in that, publicly or privately, spouses allow connections outside of marriage. Some married couples, in search of sexual diversity by mutual voluntary consent, establish sexual relations with some other, one or more couples (closed and open swing). Some swingers not only make love together, but jointly organize and spend holidays, help each other to raise children, and solve everyday problems together.

5. Muslima family - polygamy, legalized by religion. The husband is the absolute master of all household members, submission to him is mandatory for all members of this family - from small to large. He alone makes decisions and determines the further fate of aging wives and growing children.

6. " Swedish»A family is a family group that includes several representatives of not only females, but also males. Legally, relations in such a family can be formalized only between partners of one couple, but this does not prevent all men and women included in the family union from considering themselves spouses of each other, running a common household, and having a common family budget. Children are also considered common.

7. Homosexual the family consists of marriage partners who have a so-called "non-traditional" sexual orientation. If it is a purely male or purely female married couple, within such a family there is a division of partners into “husbands” and “wives” and a corresponding distribution of family roles and responsibilities.

8. Time-limited marriage:the creation of a family union is seen as a kind of a kind of deal. If the spouses, after a certain period, which they agreed on earlier, do not declare their desire to extend the "contract", they are automatically considered completely strangers to each other. The group of atypical families of this plan includes mixedfamilies formed by divorced parents and their partners in remarriage; families with foster care adopted childrenetei;families raising other people's children; extendedcommunity-type families; families with undeespaboutown parents;families with chronically ill children and children with disabilitiesladies.

In addition to the structural and functional characteristics that reflect the state of the family as a whole, the individual characteristics of its members are also important for social and pedagogical activity. These include the socio-demographic, physiological, psychological, pathological habits of adult family members, as well as the characteristics of the child: age, level of physical, mental, speech development in accordance with the age of the child; interests, abilities; educational institution that he attends; successful communication and learning; the presence of behavioral deviations, pathological habits, speech and mental disorders.

The combination of the individual characteristics of family members with its structural and functional parameters adds up to a complex characteristic - the status of the family. Scientists have shown that a family can have at least 4 statuses: socio-economic, socio-psychological, socio-cultural and situational-role. The listed statuses characterize the state of the family, its position in a certain sphere of life at a particular moment in time, that is, they represent a cut of a certain state of the family in the continuous process of its adaptation in society. The structure of the family's social adaptation is shown in the diagram:

The first component of the social adaptation of the family is the financial situation of the family. To assess the material well-being of a family, which consists of monetary and property security, several quantitative and qualitative criteria are needed: the level of family income, its living conditions, the subject environment, as well as the socio-demographic characteristics of its members, which constitutes the socio-economic status of the family.

If the level of family income, as well as the quality of living conditions, is below the established norms (the size of the subsistence minimum, etc.), as a result of which the family cannot satisfy the most basic needs for food, clothing, payment for housing, then such a family is considered poor, its socio-economic status - low If the material well-being of the family meets the minimum social standards, that is, the family copes with the satisfaction of the basic needs of life support, but lacks material resources to meet leisure, educational and other social needs, then such a family is considered to be poor, its social economic status - medium.

A high level of income and quality of housing conditions (2 or more times higher than social norms), which allows not only to meet the basic needs of life support, but also to use different kinds services, indicates that the family is financially secure, has a high socio-economic status.

The second component of the family's social adaptation is its psychological climate - a more or less stable emotional attitude, which develops as a result of the moods of family members, their emotional experiences, relationships to each other, to other people, to work, to the events around them. to be able to assess the state of the psychological climate of a family, or in other words, its socio-psychological status, it is advisable to divide all relationships into separate spheres according to the principle of the subjects participating in them: into marital, parent-child and relationships with the immediate environment.

As indicators of the state of the psychological climate of the family, the following are distinguished: the degree of emotional comfort, the level of anxiety, the degree of mutual understanding, respect, support, help, empathy and mutual influence; place of leisure time (in the family or outside of it), openness of the family in relations with the immediate environment.

Relationships built on the principles of equality and cooperation, respect for individual rights, characterized by mutual affection, emotional closeness, satisfaction of each of the family members with the quality of these relationships are considered favorable; in this case, the socio-psychological status of the family is assessed as high.

The psychological climate in the family is unfavorable when chronic difficulties and conflicts exist in one or several areas of family relationships; family members experience constant anxiety, emotional discomfort; alienation reigns in relationships. All this prevents the family from fulfilling one of its main functions - psychotherapeutic, that is, relieving stress and fatigue, replenishing the physical and mental strength of each family member. In this situation, the socio-psychological climate is low. Moreover, unfavorable relationships can transform into crisis ones, characterized by complete misunderstanding, hostility to each other, outbreaks of violence (mental, physical, sexual), a desire to break the bonds that tie. Examples of crisis relationships: divorce, a child running away from home, termination of relationships with relatives.

The intermediate state of the family, when unfavorable tendencies are still weakly expressed, do not have a chronic nature, is regarded as satisfactory, in this case the socio-psychological status of the family is considered average.

The third component of the structure of social adaptation of the family is sociocultural adaptation. When determining the general culture of the family, it is necessary to take into account the level of education of its adult members, since it is recognized as one of the determining factors in the upbringing of children, as well as the immediate everyday and behavioral culture of family members.

The level of family culture is considered high if the family copes with the role of the keeper of customs and traditions (family holidays are preserved, oral folk art is supported); has a wide range of interests, developed spiritual needs; in the family, everyday life is rationally organized, leisure is diverse, and joint forms of leisure and everyday activities prevail; the family is focused on comprehensive (aesthetic, physical, emotional, labor) education of the child and supports healthy image life.

If the spiritual needs of the family are not developed, the range of interests is limited, life is not organized, there is no cultural, leisure and labor activity, the moral regulation of the behavior of family members is weak (violent methods of regulation prevail); the family leads a dysfunctional (unhealthy, immoral) lifestyle, then its level of culture is low.

In the case when a family does not have a full set of characteristics indicating a high level of culture, but realizes the gaps in its cultural level and is active in the direction of its increase, we can talk about the average socio-cultural status of the family.

The state of the psychological climate of the family and its cultural level are indicators that mutually influence each other, since a favorable psychological climate serves as a reliable basis moral education children, their high emotional culture.

The fourth indicator is situational-role adaptation, which is associated with the attitude towards the child in the family. In the case of a constructive attitude towards the child, high culture and family activity in solving the child's problems, its situational-role status is high; if in relation to the child there is an accentuation on his problems, then it is average. In the case of ignoring the child's problems and even more negative attitudes towards him, which, as a rule, are combined with low culture and family activity, the situational-role status is low.

Based on an analysis of the structural and functional characteristics of the family, as well as individual characteristics its members, it is possible to determine its structural and functional type and at the same time draw a conclusion about the level of social adaptation of the family in society.

1.3 Psychological factors of well-being of the modern family

Researchers of the modern family distinguish several factors of marital well-being:

Psychobiological compatibility is a major factor affecting family well-being. It includes mutual respect, mutual attraction, the willingness of spouses for family life, duty and responsibility, self-control and flexibility, etc. Frequent divorces in modern families can be explained by the unwillingness of spouses to marry, the inability of men to bear responsibility for the family;

Education. Numerous studies suggest that higher education does not always increase the level of stability in family relationships. But most researchers are inclined to believe that the level of intelligence of partners should not differ significantly. A marriage can exist in a patriarchal or close to it form, if the husband's education is higher than that of his wife, but if the intellect and education of the wife is higher than that of the husband, this is a problem marriage;

Labor stability. It is believed that people who often change jobs are distinguished by their inability to establish long-term relationships, which affects not only work, but also family relationships;

Age. The most optimal period for marriage is considered to be the age of a girl - 20 years, for a boy - 24 years. Earlier marriage implies unpreparedness for married life, lack of life experience for creating a family. A later marriage entails a longer process of adaptation of spouses to each other, because character and way of life are already more formed;

Duration of acquaintance. A short period of courtship cannot show future spouses in different life situations. With a short acquaintance, spouses run the risk of recognizing each other, already being married, where all the qualities that have not been seen before are manifested.

All these factors determine psychological compatibility or incompatibility in the family.

Psychological compatibility Incompatibility is determined by the following criteria:

The emotional side of marriage, the degree of affection;

The similarity of the spouses' ideas about themselves, about the partner, about the world as a whole;

The similarity of communication models of partners and behavioral characteristics;

Sexual and psychophysiological compatibility of partners;

The general cultural level, the degree of mental and social maturity of the spouses, the coincidence of value systems.

1.4 Family life cycle

The life cycle of a family is the history of a family's life, its length in time, its own dynamics; family life, reflecting the recurrence, regularity of family events.

1. The period of premarital courtship... The main tasks of this stage are the achievement of partial psychological and material independence from the parental family, the acquisition of experience of communication with the other sex, the choice of a marriage partner, the acquisition of experience of emotional and business interaction with him.

2. Conclusion of marriage and the phase without children... At this stage, the married couple must establish what has changed in their social status, and determine the external and internal boundaries of the family: which of the acquaintances of the husband or wife will be allowed into the family; to what extent spouses are allowed to stay outside the family without a partner; how permissible is interference in the marriage by the parents of the spouses.

During this period, the couple needs to conduct a huge amount of negotiations and establish many agreements on the most different. Social, emotional, sexual and other problems can arise. In the conditions of modern Russian reality, many newlyweds do not immediately decide to have their first child; more and more often there are cases when couples do not register, preferring the so-called civil marriage to legal formalization of relations.

3. A young family with small children.This stage is characterized by the division of roles related to fatherhood and motherhood, their coordination, material support for the new living conditions of the family, adaptation to great physical and mental stress, insufficient opportunity to be alone, etc.

A married couple may not be ready to have children, and having an unwanted child can complicate parenting problems. A number of important questions at this stage are related to who will look after the child. New roles of mother and father appear; their parents become grandparents. For many, this is a difficult transition. The material supply falls on the husband, so he "frees" himself from caring for the child. On this basis, conflicts may arise due to the wife's overload with household chores and the husband's desire to "rest" outside the family. Marriage can begin to break down as the wife's demands for childcare increase and the husband feels that the wife and child are interfering with his work and career. With regard to a young Russian family, in some of them there is a need to separate from the older generation, in others, on the contrary, all worries are transferred to the grandparents.

4. Family with schoolnicknames. The time a child enters school is often accompanied by a crisis in the family. The conflict between parents becomes more obvious, since the product of their educational activity is the object of general observation.

5. A family mature agethat children leave.Usually this phase of family development corresponds to the midlife crisis of the spouses. Often during this period of life, the husband realizes that he can no longer rise up the career ladder, and in his youth he dreamed of something completely different. This frustration can spill over into the whole family and especially on the wife. Children should feel like adults, they have long-term relationships, marriage (marriage) is possible.

6. An aging family.At this stage, older family members retire or work takes up only a fraction of their time. A financial shift is taking place: old people receive less money than young people, so they often become financially dependent on children.

At this stage, marital relations are resumed, new content is given to family functions. Retirement can make the problem of being alone with each other even more acute.

7. The last phase of the family life cycle.One of the spouses may die, and then the survivor needs to adapt to life alone. He is often forced to seek new connections with his family. In this case, the lonely spouse is forced to change his lifestyle and unwittingly accept the way of life that is offered to him by his children.

In the process of the development of family and marriage relations, psychologists distinguish periods of "decline in relationships", which are characterized by an increase in feelings of dissatisfaction with each other, the spouses show differences in views. These periods are called "crisis situations in marriage." Under fromemee crisis means the value conflict of the individual and society regarding the birth and socialization of children, resulting in the failure to fulfill the reproductive and socialization function of the family, accompanied by the weakening of the family as a union of relatives, the union of parents and children, the union of spouses, the weakening of the trinity of kinship - parenthood - matrimony due to the disappearance of family production, joint activities parents and children.

2. The main problems of the modern family in Russia

2.1 Patterns of development of family relations

The family crisis is based on certain patterns of development of intrafamily relations. In a crisis situation, it is necessary to be patient, to avoid rash decisions and actions.

There are several such periods, or recessions, in relationships that not all families successfully overcome:

* the first days after marriage;

* after about two - three months of married life;

* after six months of living together;

* after the first anniversary of marriage;

* after the birth of the first child;

* in the interval of three - five years;

* after seven to eight years of marriage;

* with 12 years of family experience;

* after 20 --- 25 years of family life.

The above periods of family crises are considered conditionally, because they are not experienced by all families. There are two natural critical periods in the development of marital relations. It is during these periods that divorces and remarriage are most frequent. It is impossible to avoid such crises, but it is possible and necessary to consciously manage them and their course in the interests of further strengthening the family.

1.The critical crisis period between 3 and 7 years, with a positive set of circumstances, lasts about a year. Romantic relationships, the growth of disagreements in everyday life, the growth of negative emotions, a feeling of dissatisfaction, a silent protest, a feeling of deception, reproaches disappear. Psychologists recommend limiting conversations about marital relationships, avoiding discussion of practical problems. Talk about professional interests... Spouses must look for a way out on their own, the intervention of third parties can aggravate the situation.

2. the crisis period between 13-23 years. It is less deep, but longer in time than the first. It coincides with the age of the “midlife crisis”. There is a heavy pressure of time, the feeling that a person will not have time to do everything he has planned. The social environment evaluates a person by what he has achieved. The result of the crisis is the development of a new image of oneself, a rethinking of life goals. This crisis is a difficult test for the family.

2.2 The crisis of the institution of the family

The family has always been an institution of primary socialization. The processes taking place in the family and in the family are certainly reflected in the process of personality formation. The conflicts arising in the family between parents and children, younger and older, conflicts between the "old" generation and the "new" complicate the process of upbringing and socialization of the younger generation.

Socialization is the process of becoming familiar with the values \u200b\u200band norms accepted in society and its subsystems. In the broadest sense of the word, socialization lasts a lifetime. In a narrow sense, it is limited to the period of maturation of the individual until adulthood. Family socialization is understood in two ways: as, on the one hand, preparation for the future family roles and, on the other hand, as the influence exerted by the family on the formation of a socially competent, mature personality. The family has a socializing effect on the individual through normative and informational influence. It is the family that is the primary source of socialization, and it is the family, first of all, that makes it possible for an individual to form as a socially competent person.

The problems of the modern family are among the most important and urgent. Its significance is determined by the fact that, firstly, the family is one of the main social institutions of society, and secondly, that this institution is currently experiencing a deep crisis.

And yet there is more than enough reason to worry about family. The family is really in crisis. And the cause of this crisis, if viewed in a broad sense, is the general global social changes, the growth of population mobility, urbanization, secularization and others, which lead to the loosening of the “family foundations”. These and a number of other factors determined the fall of the family as a social institution of society, a change in its place in value orientations. It is known that during the years of Soviet power, the social status of the family was relatively low, although the state exerted a significant influence on family relations.

During the years of reforms, there was a sharp decline in this status. The economic, social, and moral foundations of the family were undermined, which accelerated the process of devaluation of the family lifestyle, marriage for life, having few children, the growth of the prestige of single-bachelor independence, etc.

Over the past one and a half to two decades, there has been a serious decline in the number of marriages. In recent years, the number of divorces has increased by the number of registered marriages. So there are about two divorces for three marriages.

Causes of the crisis of the modern family as a social institution.

The family is a personal environment for human life and development from development to death. This is a special environment for the child, the first social institution that has a whole set of means of influence aimed at introducing the individual to the social whole.

Among people, the struggle of heterogeneous and multidirectional interests does not cease, the disunity of cultures and traditions is great, ideals and values \u200b\u200balso do not coincide, the level of satisfaction of needs is sharply different. Meanwhile, the security of the family is inextricably linked with its needs. Needs are the need for something necessary for the life of a person, his family and society as a whole. Satisfaction of needs is conditioned by numerous factors, including socio-economic ones. The socio-economic circumstances of the current stage of social development determine the use of indicators of a physiological minimum, and not indicators of a subsistence minimum, in solving problems of social protection of the population. The unthinkable wealth of the unjust group of oligarchs demonstrates the redistribution of property, which leads to the fact that over 70% of the population have incomes below the subsistence level. The continuing lag in the growth of monetary incomes from the growth in consumer prices leads to a deterioration in the material situation of most of the population of Russian society. The distribution of poverty due to socio-economic difficulties is the cause of the crisis of the modern family.

All strata of the population belonging to the category of the poor now have a very difficult life, but it is especially difficult for families with children. The birth rate has dropped dramatically, and it is estimated that the population of two-child families will lose a third of its size in about 30 years. For simple reproduction, it is necessary that half of the families have 3 children. The attitude that one cannot afford to grow even one is a consequence of the crisis in the livelihoods of most of the population. The number of families with minor children with an average per capita income exceeding the subsistence level is dramatically decreasing. It has already been proven that the poverty rate is due to the increase in the number of children in the family. Thus, the main reason for the crisis in the modern Russian family lies in a sharp drop in the quality of life of the population. The quality of life of a family is the most reliable indicator of its well-being.

The family crisis is unfolding against the background of global social notifications of the 20th and 21st centuries, entailing a shattering of the “family structure”, an intensification of divorces and the breakdown of marriages, an increase in the number of single-parent families, widespread abortions and extramarital relations, and an increase in domestic violence.

The unequal position of the institution of the family among other social institutions has led to the devaluation of the family way of life, lifelong marriage, an increase in the prestige of single-bachelor independence and few children in various countries and strata of society.

In the late 1990s, the catastrophic decline in family life showed that starting a family with several children ceased to act as one of the indicators of human well-being. The birth of children began to be viewed as a "hindrance" on the path to happiness and success in life, the achievement of an acceptable standard of living. According to a number of sociological and demographic studies, ensuring parenting status and reducing the value of children allows any living conditions to be considered insufficient even for the appearance of a second child in the family.

Over the past three decades, the average family size was 3.2 people in cities and 3.3 in rural areas, which is due to an increase in the number of small families, an increase in the number of young families due to a decrease in the age of marriage, a tendency to separate young families from their parents, an increase the proportion of single-parent families as a result of divorce, the death of a spouse and single children.

Russia is currently going through its fourth period of population decline. Unlike the three previous ones, it is not associated with any catastrophic events, but is the result of "internal" evolutionary changes in population reproduction, which are a direct consequence of the crisis of the family as a social institution.

Childlessness and few children have long become quite common phenomena in most of the territory of Russia. Not only the number of such families is growing, but also their share in the family structure.

The crisis of the family and the reproduction of the population is a value crisis of the social order, for which momentary interests are above the interests of its own self-preservation. Another factor in the family crisis is the attitude towards women as a workforce. This is due to the fact that family members have become more enslaved and less bound by the group, i.e. the family as a whole has become conditional. It is also associated with an increase in the number of women in the labor market, for example, the economic unity of husbands and wives has weakened. This leads to a general weakening of marital unions. Ties are destroyed not only between spouses, but also between parents and children. And also associated with a weakening of reproductive function. The family today may have fewer children than before because they want to do more for each child. A decrease in the amount of time parents spend with their children, an increase in the duration of a child's loneliness and the time he spends on the street, serves as a quantitative expression of the ineffectiveness of family socialization of children. Accordingly, this leads to the disintegration of the integrity of the family.

Modern society erodes family values, corrodes them, and ultimately endangers its own existence. Namely, this fundamental contradiction of industrial society, which, on the one hand, cannot exist without a family, without population reproduction, and on the other, does not have immanent mechanisms for the realization of this existential need, determines the need for family and demographic policy.

2.3 Divorce and domestic violence

The public cannot but worry about the large number of divorces. It is no exaggeration to say that there is a catastrophic rise in divorce rates. The main reasons for divorce are the abuse of alcoholic beverages, household disorder of spouses, adultery, the problem of the distribution of household duties, and psychological incompatibility. The increase in divorce has led to a significant increase in the number of children left without a parent.

According to Roskomstat, in the first half of 2013, the number of registered marriages and divorces increased compared to the same period in 2012.

Trends in the decline and growth in the number of births are quite consistently repeating changes in the number of registered marriages, although they are formed against the background of the preservation of a rather high proportion of those born to women who are not in a registered marriage, and a periodic increase in the number of registered divorces 13.

The decline in the number of births in the 1990s occurred simultaneously with a significant decrease in the number of registered marriages against the background of a decline in the demographic wave (the age of greatest marital and reproductive activity was reached by relatively small generations of those born in the second half of the 1960s - first half of the 1970s). The number of registered marriages dropped to a minimum - 849 thousand - in 1998, and subsequently grew, rising to 1,316 thousand in 2011. Deviations from the growth trend were noted only in 2004 and 2008. In general, over the period 1998-2011, the number of marriages has increased by 55%. However, in 2012 fewer marriages were registered than in 2011 (1213.6 against 1316.0 thousand). In the first half of 2013, the number of registered marriages turned out to be 14.4 thousand more than in the same period in 2012 (481.9 against 467.5 thousand).

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To fully disclose the above, I would like to consider the issue of the crisis in the modern family, since changes in some of the functions of the family are closely related precisely to the crisis situations developing in the modern family. The Russian family is going through a severe crisis. A significant number of family and moral traditions have been lost, the attitude of parents towards children has changed, the psychological microsociety of the family has been largely destroyed, and its educational function has been weakened. The child often lives in conditions of socio-psychological deprivation, lacks emotional support, the family does not guarantee him security.

The family impact on children is unique in intensity and effectiveness. It is carried out continuously, simultaneously covering all aspects of personality formation, and continues for many years. This impact is based primarily on the emotional relationship between parents and children, becoming one of the main factors of family trouble.

The alienation of parents from children, the younger generations from the elders against the background of infringement of universal and religious morality, the weakening of the values \u200b\u200bof family well-being led in the late 80s - early 90s to that rampant immorality and social pathology, which most clearly reveals the social crisis of our society, the crisis existential values. Based on the foregoing, Russia will need much more time to transform the entire system of life, reorienting it towards the interests of the family than Western countries. From here, we need to start a pro-family policy and think about how to make it effective earlier.

Childlessness and few children have become quite common in most of the territory of Russia, and not only. A sharp decline in the material level is forcing young families to abandon the birth of a second and third child and postpone the birth of the first. Families with two or more children are more likely to fall into the poverty zone and in this situation cannot provide their children with adequate nutrition, maintenance and education.

The current situation in Russia (the economic crisis, the escalation of social and political tension, interethnic conflicts, the growing material and social polarization of society, etc.) has exacerbated the situation of the family. For millions of families, the conditions for the implementation of social functions - reproductive, existential content and primary socialization of children - have sharply deteriorated. The problems of the Russian family come to the surface and become noticeable not only for specialists.

This is a drop in fertility, an increase in mortality, a decrease in nuptiality and an increase in divorce rates, an increase in the frequency of premarital sexual intercourse, an increase in the frequency of early and very early, as well as extramarital births. This is an unprecedented increase in the number of child abandonment and even murder, and galloping adolescent and, alas, child crime, and the growth of emotional alienation between family members. This is also the growing preference for the so-called alternative forms of marriage and family life, including the growth in the number of singles, single-parent families, marriages and quasi-families of gays and lesbians, and an increase in the number of marital cohabitations. This is the growth of family deviation - alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, including incestuous.

The collapse of a family with several children and a life-long marriage is a worldwide process, most clearly manifested in developed countries. Little children are a global problem of our time, which has arisen as a result of the historical weakening of the institution of the family, the destruction of family production and the transformation of family members into hired workers who have no new market incentives to have children at all. The modern degradation of the family as a matrimonial union, a union of parents and children and an economic association, that is, as an institution that does not fulfill its cardinal functions, is a direct result of the termination of the inertial effect of the norms of the family lifestyle, the withdrawal into oblivion of family production. It turned out that three centuries outside the family, market-oriented production were enough for the need for children as such to dry up.

The new society did not bother to create new incentives for having children. That is why there is such a massive need for one child in a market economy (hired labor). If the market economy does not change in this respect, then in one demographic generation the need for people will begin to weaken and for one - only child.

The aim of the family strengthening policy is to create in the market system a completely new market motivation for starting a family and children. Motherhood and fatherhood, logically, should become a professional occupation, just like any other business. Society should feel the need and interest in the family fulfilling its functions of reproduction and socialization of new generations.

Family crises are natural stages, they are "embedded" in the algorithm for the existence of any family. Crisis situations are a kind of family test of strength, and if they are successfully passed, then the family is functioning correctly and developing normally. If this is not the case, it is likely that the difficult situation will only increase the disharmony of the relationship. And the responsibility for this between the spouses is distributed fifty to fifty. Often this phrase means that two intend to scatter in the near future. But the rupture of relations is more likely a consequence of an incorrectly passed crisis, as well as troubles such as the appearance of connections on the side, diseases, alcoholism.

Crisis are usually triggered by important life events. They cause some changes in established relationships that affect the rhythm of the usual life and the redistribution of resources: attention, emotions, effort, time, additional knowledge and money. In modern family psychology, several transition periodsrelated to the internal dynamics and development of family relations. The transitions themselves from one phase of family relationships to another can be more painful and problematic, or quite calmly and without any particular complications.

The following characteristics of a family crisis are distinguished:

1. Aggravation of situational contradictions in the family.

2. Disruption of the entire system and all processes occurring in it.

3. Increasing instability in the family system.

4. Generalization of the crisis, that is, its impact extends to the entire range of family relationships and interactions. At whatever level of family functioning a crisis may arise (individual, micro-, macro- or megasystemic), it will inevitably affect other levels, causing disturbances in their functioning. As a result, the following manifestations of a family crisis can be found:

1. Manifestation of a family crisis at the individual level:

Feeling of discomfort, increased anxiety;

Ineffectiveness of old ways of communication;

Decreased level of satisfaction with marriage;

A feeling of incomprehensibility, unspokenness, hopelessness and futility of efforts made to change the situation, that is, a feeling of limitation of their capabilities, inability to find new directions of development in the situation;

Displacement of the locus of control: a family member ceases to take a subject position, it begins to seem to him that something is happening “with him,” that is, outside of him, which means that changes should not happen to him, but to others. In this case, he sincerely begins to believe that it is a change in the attitude or behavior of another family member that will lead to an improvement in the situation (O. Shiyan);

Closure to new experience and at the same time the hope for a "miraculous return of the world", not associated with their own changes;

Some family members have overvalued ideas;

Formation of symptomatic behavior.

2. The manifestation of a family crisis at the microsystem level:

Disorders in terms of cohesion: a decrease or increase in the psychological distance between family members (extreme options are symbiotic fusion and disunity);

Deformation of the internal and external borders of the nuclear family, the extreme variants of which are their diffuseness (blurring) and rigidity (impenetrability);

Violation of the flexibility of the family system up to chaos or rigidity (the mechanism of preserving and strengthening inflexible methods of response - "incongruent adaptation" - is almost universal in crisis situations, but its prolonged use disrupts the natural exchange of energy in the family);

Changes in the role structure of the family system (the emergence of dysfunctional roles, rigid, uneven distribution of roles, “failure” of the role, pathologization of roles);

Violation of the hierarchy (power struggle, inverted hierarchy);

The emergence of family conflicts;

Growth of negative emotions and criticism;

Metacommunication disorders;

An increase in the feeling of general dissatisfaction with family relationships, the discovery of a difference in views, the emergence of a silent protest, quarrels and reproaches, a feeling of deception among family members;

Regression or return to early patterns of functioning of the nuclear family;

"Getting stuck" at any stage of family development and inability to solve the problems of the next stages;

Inconsistency and inconsistency of the claims and expectations of family members;

The destruction of some established family values \u200b\u200band the lack of formation of new ones;

The ineffectiveness of old family rules and regulations in the absence of new ones;

Lack of rules.

3. Manifestations of a family crisis at the macrosystem level:

Family myth actualization;

Implementation of an archaic behavioral pattern that is inadequate to the actual context of the family's existence, but was effective in previous generations;

Violation of the internal and external boundaries of the extended family, the extreme variants of which are the diffuseness and rigidity (impenetrability) of the boundaries;

Hierarchy breakdowns (eg, inverted hierarchy, intergenerational coalitions);

Violations of the extended family role structure (role inversions, role “failure”);

Violation of traditions and rituals;

The ineffectiveness of old family norms and rules and the lack of formation of new ones.

4. The manifestation of a family crisis at the megasystem level:

Family social isolation;

Social maladjustment of the family;

Conflicts with the social environment.

No matter how different modern families may be from each other, most of them are complete, i.e. nuclear or extended. In general, it should be noted that the overwhelming majority of people get married and have at least one child. In other words, the family way of life retains its universality, although it is going through a rather difficult period of its development. Nevertheless, in recent years, they are increasingly talking about the crisis of the modern family, which has affected many countries of the world, including Russia.

The crisis of the modern family is manifested in a decrease in the birth rate, as well as a change in the nature and indicators of marriage. Thus, the decline in the birth rate, noted in Russia since the second half of the 1960s, has become simply catastrophic since 1991: it was no less than 10% annually. In 1993, indicators were achieved that were previously characteristic only for large cities with increased divorce rate, in which there were two divorces for every three marriages. In addition, the number of marriages themselves is declining by tens of thousands annually. All this makes the assertion that the crisis of the modern family has affected Russia as well.

In the family history literature, there are three reasons for the crisis of the modern family.

The first of these reasons has to do with the changing understanding of marriage and family in the modern world. In other words, it is of global importance, although it operates primarily in highly developed countries. As already noted, in the development of the modern family there is a clear tendency of nuclearization. Associated with the natural desire of a young family to build their own lives, it led to such unexpected consequences as a decrease in the birth rate, as well as an increase in the number of divorces and single people. The expanding practice of consensual marriage, when a man and a woman do not formally formalize their relationship, also does not help strengthen the family. Delivering tons of problems social workers, it also indicates the weakness of the mindset to create a family in an increasing number of people. This attitude was the subject of sharp criticism during the sexual revolution that swept Western countries in the late 1960s: directed against hypocrisy in matters of family, it often turned into a complete denial of it as a social institution. In other words, the existence of any norms governing sexual relations between people was denied. Changes in the economy, politics and social sphere of Western countries over the past three decades have allowed them to significantly alleviate the severity of the problems that led to the sexual revolution, but now Russia is experiencing something similar, where democracy is interpreted by many as permissiveness, and freedom in relations between people as sexual promiscuity ...

The second reason for the crisis of the modern family is associated with the negative aspects of the Soviet way of life in our country under the conditions of a totalitarian society. First of all, we are talking about the extremely unsatisfactory living conditions of the majority of Soviet families, the dependence of young spouses on their parents, the excessive employment of women with housework, the disorder of family life, as well as a high level of drunkenness and alcoholism. In addition, the system of moral education in a totalitarian society entailed a low level of personal responsibility, a lack of a culture of rational planning of one's own life, a very weak influence of morality on family relations and an orientation toward developing such qualities in children as obedience and discipline, rather than initiative. independence or dignity of the person. Finally, for 70 years in our country, there was practically no charitable activity, not to mention social workdesigned to professionally help both individuals and families in solving their everyday problems.

The third (perhaps the most important) cause of the crisis in the modern family is associated with the processes currently taking place in Russia. Since 1991, when changes in the economy actually began in our country, the social status of the family has been steadily declining. Today it has reached such a low mark as never before, at least in the entire history of the Soviet Union, and perhaps even Russia. As already noted, the number of marriages is rapidly declining, and the number of divorces is increasing. Fertility is also declining, while infant mortality is increasing. These and other negative phenomena have led to the fact that for several years in our country the mortality rate among the population exceeds the birth rate: this did not happen even during the Second World War, when the Soviet people suffered huge losses. According to opinion polls, many spouses want to have children, but cannot support them. This is not surprising, since the family poverty rate increases with the birth of new children. Many families were deprived of all previous guarantees: the right to work, free medical care, rest, leisure and even movement. In connection with the incessant interethnic conflicts, their right to life, as well as a dignified death, were under threat. The social stratification of Russian society has led to the formation of various families: rich, average income, poor and even beggars on the brink of survival.

The family's condition is perniciously affected not only by the material, but also by the spiritual impoverishment of modern Russian society. The preaching of violence, cruelty, immorality, selfishness and pornography has become commonplace in the media. Many families try to protect their children from this, but more often than not they cannot withstand the propaganda onslaught. As a result, the moral principles on which the family is based are erased. A weakened family itself becomes dangerous for society, since it gives rise to deviants - people who violate the norms established in society. The origins of immorality, crime, alcoholism, drug addiction and prostitution are to be found in an unhealthy family, which is a reflection of our sick society.

At present, there is no more important state task than the creation of conditions - both material and legal - for the preservation and strengthening of the family. The collapse of the family leads to the collapse of society, and therefore the state. And this applies not only to Russia, which is now going through one of the most difficult periods in its development, but also to any other country. Therefore, it is not surprising that a few years ago the United Nations Organization (UN) held a number of events within the framework of the International Year of the Family it announced, in which Russia also participated. This indicates that the international community attaches great importance to the role of the family in the modern world.

test questions

  • 1. What is a social institution?
  • 2. What are the prerequisites for the emergence of a social institution?
  • 3. What major groups of social institutions do you know?
  • 4. What is the family life cycle?
  • 5. What are the main functions of the family?
  • 6. How is the crisis of the modern family manifested?
  • 7. What are the causes of the crisis in the modern family?
  • 8. Who are deviants?