Sociology of Family and Marriage

A family is a group of people connected by marriage or kinship, which ensure satisfaction of socially significant needs and the upbringing of children.

The sociology of the family and marriage distinguishes the institution of the family from other communities of people not by chance. The family is one of the oldest social institutions that originated in primitive society. The value of the family for society lies in its ability to reproduce life and raise children.

The sociology of family and marriage has an object for studying the family as a system of relationships, which is more complex than marriage. The family, as a rule, consists not only of spouses, but also of children, relatives and close ones to the spouses of people.

Marriage is a historically formed, sanctioned and regulated by society form of relations between people, which establishes their rights in relation to each other, the offspring and parents. Relations in the family are built on three components: the relationship between spouses, children and parents.

The sociology of the family and marriage studies the totality of parts of public behavior and consciousness that lead to marriage and the creation of a family, contribute to its development, functioning, and in some cases - to disintegration. In this regard, the motives, value orientations, expectations of people are examined, which consider the possibility of marriage and the creation of a family, as well as those who are already spouses throughout the development of family relations.

The sociology of the family and marriage assigns a separate role to the woman, believing that it is from her consciousness and desire that the social and moral side of the relationship that is the basic foundation for the creation of the family and its development depends. Part of the majority of families are children. The appearance of children leads to the formation of another group of relationships in the family.

Today, the institution of the family is undergoing significant changes . Shaky economic conditions, material insecurity is now very large number of actual marriages that are not officially registered. Also, a fairly large proportion today have incomplete families, with one parent. This is due to an increase in the percentage of divorces, which already reaches 30-50% of the number of marriages. For modern society, the existence of same-sex quasisemilies, which are legally recognized by the legislation of a number of developed countries, also becomes characteristic.

The sociology of marriage and family studies the family as an integral part of larger social groups. The family is a component of society. Its existence, functioning and development are influenced by all cultural and socio - economic processes that take place in a given society.

According to the latest data, there were about 40 million families in Russia. About 70% of them are families consisting of spouses with children. Divorce statistics vary with great speed and variety.

To the society as a whole, instability in families is unprofitable. Therefore, the laws of society tend to hamper divorce, enabling people to re-evaluate relationships.

In the question of family types, sociology defines them as follows.

According to the form of marriage, mono- and polygamy is isolated. So, a monogamous family is a family in which only one wife can have one man. Polygamous - a lot of wives.

According to the structure of family ties, these types of families are distinguished: simple or nuclear (a married couple with children who are not yet married), complex (a married couple with children who are already in their own marriage).

The type of family determines such characteristics as the social class (the family of workers, intellectuals, businessmen, etc.), the type of population (urban, rural family), the time of the family's existence and the number of its members.

In addition, types of families are distinguished according to the conditions of life (student, family of artists, etc.).