The concept of marriage and family. Family and marriage: role and legal basis

Who is our social unit - marriage or family? Which of them has been guaranteeing social reproduction for many centuries? What are they and why? All this and even more will be discussed in the article.

The concept and essence of marriage and family

These two similar concepts are often used to mean the same thing. They are indeed very close, but there are also differences between marriage and family. Here are some of them:

the family historically appeared earlier, and marriage began to be registered with the development public institutions;
Different forms of family are known among different peoples and at different times, and marriage, as a rule, implies the basis of the relationship of a couple: a man and a woman;
the family is often a more extensive and stable social entity, but marriage is legal term and object. Although there may be such a phenomenon: the father who left the family broke family connection with the child, but, with legal point view of marriage, this connection continues to operate.

But such a division is conditional. The fact is that there is still no final interpretation of these concepts, and they are used more often as synonyms, which raises virtually no objections. Later in the article we will use them as identical terms.

The main functions of family and marriage:

Reproductive. The main resource for the development of humanity - new people - is produced precisely in families.
Economic. The family is the minimum unit of the national economy, managing its own budget, being a producer and a consumer.
Educational. Marriage can be called a school in which both adults and little people learn socialization, gain and develop experience in this area.

Forms or models of marriage and family

The union of a man and a woman can take a wide variety of forms, depending on the progressiveness of society and the weight of religious dogmas in it. So, a family or marriage can be:

Traditional marriage– confirmed by secular and/or religious institutions, encouraged by society. To the greatest extent regulated legally.
Civil marriage– all relationships are like in a traditional family, but without registration. Recently, it has been increasingly approaching traditional marriage in matters of legal protection for partners.
Temporary marriage- concluded for a certain time, after which it is considered terminated. Found in some Muslim countries.
Communal marriage– this is a format for the case when there are more than two partners.
Guest marriage- a modern trend, the result of the desire to keep only the comfortable side, removing all the tense moments like everyday life. The partners live in different territories and meet from time to time.
Open marriage– when partners agree to leave each other the right to have personal relationships outside the family.

The basis of both marriage and family is the married couple, as well as other family members who are related to this couple. Most countries have special family codes. Often the basic dogmas of building family relationships are established by religion.

Recently, a whole science and professionals with special education have appeared at the service of those partners who strive for harmony in family and marriage. It's about about the psychology of marriage and family. The main postulate of this direction in psychology is that harmonious relationships can only be established as a result of both partners working on them. A family psychologist will help solve family and marriage problems.

Modern marriage and family are in the most favorable conditions in order to be successful. Society is tolerant of people’s desire to choose non-traditional forms family structure. And this means more freedom in searching for your personal happiness.

Introduction........................................................ ........................................................ .. 3

1. The concept of “marriage” and historical types of marriage.................................................. 4

2. Evolution of family and marriage................................................. ........................... 7

3. Family as a social institution................................................... .......... eleven

4. Family classification.................................................. ........................... 17

5. Social functions of the family................................................... ................. 19

6. Family - the environment for the spiritual development of the individual.................................................... .21

Conclusion................................................. ........................................... 24

Bibliography................................................ .................................. 26

Introduction

The family is one of the five fundamental institutions of society, giving it stability and the ability to replenish the population in each subsequent generation. At the same time, the family acts small group– the most cohesive and stable unit of society. Throughout his life, a person is part of many different groups - a group of peers or friends, a school class, a work team, a sports team - but only the family remains the group that he never leaves.

Therefore, when we talk about the most important social institutions - the pillars of society, we name the family among the first. The family is the main institution of society. In turn, the institution of family includes many more private institutions, namely the institution of marriage, the institution of kinship, the institution of motherhood and paternity, the institution of property, the institution of social protection of childhood and guardianship, and others.

Marriage is an institution that regulates relations between the sexes. In society, sexual relations are regulated by a set of cultural norms, but marriage in human society is considered the only acceptable, socially approved and legally enshrined form of not only permitted, but obligatory sexual relations between spouses.

1 . The concept of "marriage"and historical types of marriage

The Russian word “marriage” goes back to the Old Russian “brachiti”, which means “to select”, i.e. to choose the good and necessary and discard the bad and unnecessary. This gives rise to some ambiguity of the term, which in the legal sphere denotes a family union, and in the industrial sphere - spoiled, low-quality products.

In Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech and some other Slavic languages, these two phenomena are much more difficult to confuse, because the marriage union is denoted by the term “shlyub”, which originates from the ancient Slavic word “slyub”, meaning a solemn promise. “To fall in love” means to come to an agreement.

Marriage is a socially sanctioned form of relations between the sexes and to offspring, i.e., a means of regulating sexual relations and population reproduction. Thus, marriage is a free, equal union of a woman and a man, concluded in compliance with the order and conditions established by law, forming a family and giving rise to mutual personal and property rights and obligations between spouses. As we see, the very definition of this social phenomenon contains a contradiction: on the one hand, “free”, and on the other, “responsibilities”. But this is a contradiction not of logic, but of life, of reality itself. By freely entering into a union, people voluntarily accept obligations and norms of behavior in this union.

Modern marriage is monogamous and represents the highest form of monogamy at this stage of human development, that is, strong, stable monogamy that arose in human society over a long period of its development. Monogamous marriage is historically the fourth form of marriage, in which the relationship between a man and a woman is completely subject to the norms prevailing in a given society.

In the history of mankind, four systems of marriage relations sometimes existed simultaneously, but in different places:

- group marriage– a marriage union of several men and women (it was widespread in primitive society);

- polygyny– one man and several women (this type is especially characteristic of nomadic pastoralists)

- polyandry– one woman and several men (an extremely rare case that existed among one of the peoples of Indochina);

- monogamy– one man and one woman (the predominant form of marriage among agricultural peoples).

Monogamy comes in two forms: lifelong And divorcible, or easily divorced. Single-parent families (one parent with children) were extremely rare.

Marital - or marital - relationships stem from bisexuality. Marriage is a person's response to his heterosexuality, while family life is the cumulative result of all such evolutionary and adaptive adaptations. The marriage is stable; it is not part of biological evolution, but it forms the basis of all social evolution and therefore is sure to persist in one form or another. Marriage gave man a family home - the glorious crown of all the long and intense evolutionary struggle.

Comparative statistical data over 10 years show that in Russia approximately every third marriage breaks up, and in big cities even the second. Of those who get divorced, only about 40% of men and 30% of women enter into remarriages, other people, as a rule, remain lonely. Among the motives for divorce analyzed in the works of domestic sociologists A.G. Kharcheva, M.S. Matskovetsky, L.I. Chuiko, V.I. Sysenko, one of the first places is occupied by drunkenness or drug addiction of one of the spouses, conflicts and scandals, bad relationship with relatives of the husband or wife and their interference in the relationship of a young family, betrayal of the husband or wife, sexual incompatibility. In these motives, it is necessary to highlight a common dominant - the spouses’ lack of proper socio-psychological preparation for marriage, fulfillment family roles.

The prerequisites for a successful marriage are positive social and psychological characteristics of the individual, a stable social and financial situation of the spouses, a high level of their culture and sexual consent. This raises the problem of preparing young people for marriage; her serious attitude to the responsibilities of future spouses is an indispensable condition for a prosperous family.

Analysis of sociological information shows that in the modern civilized world there is a process of gradual moving away from the traditional type of family and approaching the democratic type. Although this movement is uneven on all four scales and ambiguous in all social systems, the observed trend can be considered progress in family relations.

The famous American sociologist W. Good defines family disorganization as “a breakdown in family unity, a violation of the structure of social roles, when one or more family members cannot accurately fulfill their role responsibilities.”

The main forms of family disorganization are:

1. Incomplete family group, illegitimacy. Although such a family group cannot be said to have disintegrated - it never existed - illegitimacy may still be regarded as a form of family disorganization. Firstly, because the father-husband cannot fulfill his role functions in relation to the mother and child, as prescribed by society. Secondly, because the roles of both father and mother as a family member in relation to social control are not fulfilled, which is an indirect cause of illegitimacy.

2. Family breakdown due to the intentional departure of one of the spouses; annulment, separation, divorce, desertion. This can also include family abandonment, when a person uses various excuses to be away from home for a long period of time.

3. The family is “like an empty shell,” when spouses live together but maintain only minimal contact with each other, unable to fulfill their role responsibilities in the area of mutual emotional support, including sexual relationships.

4. Family crisis caused by external events: death of one of the spouses, imprisonment, etc.

5. Internal disasters associated with the physical pathology of one of the spouses or children; incurable mental illness of spouses, mental retardation of children.

3. Family as a social institution

The seed as a social institution arose with the formation of society. The process of family formation and functioning is determined by value-normative regulators. Such, for example, as courtship, choosing a marriage partner, sexual standards of behavior, norms that guide 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 accepted in a given society, through which they regulate and sanction their sexual lives and establish their marital, parental and other kinship rights and responsibilities.

At the first stages of the development of society, relations between men and women, older and younger generations were regulated by tribal and clan customs, which were syncretic norms and patterns of behavior based on religious and moral ideas.

With the emergence of the state, the regulation of family life acquired a legal character. Legal registration of marriage imposed certain obligations not only on the spouses, but also on the state sanctioning their union. From now on, social control and sanctions were carried out not only by public opinion, but also by government agencies.

To understand family as social institution The analysis of role relationships in the family is of great importance. Family role- one of the types of social roles of a person in society. Family roles are determined by the place and functions of the individual in the family group and are divided primarily into:

- matrimonial(wife husband),

- parental(mother father),

- children's(son, daughter, brother, sister),

- intergenerational And intragenerational(grandfather, grandmother, elder, youngest), etc.

The fulfillment of a family role depends on the fulfillment of a number of conditions, first of all, on the correct formation of the role image. An individual must clearly understand what it means to be a husband or wife, the eldest in the family or the youngest, what behavior is expected of him, what rules and norms are expected of him, what rules and norms this or that behavior dictates to him.

In order to formulate the image of his behavior, the individual must accurately determine his place and the place of others in the role structure of the family. For example, can he play the role of the head of the family, in general, or, in particular, the main manager of the family’s material wealth.

In this regard, the consistency of a particular role with the personality of the performer is of no small importance. A person with weak strong-willed qualities, although senior in age in the family or even in role status, for example, a husband, is far from suitable for the role of head of the family in modern conditions.

The successful fulfillment of its functions by a family largely depends, on the one hand, on how conscientiously each family member occupying a certain position fulfills his social role, and on the other hand, how much “role behavior” corresponds to the “role expectations” of family members in relation to to each other.

For the successful formation of a family, sensitivity to the situational demands of the family role and the associated flexibility of role behavior, which is manifested in the ability to leave one role without much difficulty and enter a new one as soon as the situation requires, is also of no small importance. For example, one or another wealthy family member played the role of financial patron of its other members, but his financial situation has changed, and a change in the situation immediately requires a change in his role.

Role relationships in the family, formed during the performance of certain functions, can be characterized by role agreement or role conflict. Sociologists note that role conflict most often manifests itself as:

1) role model conflict, which is associated with their incorrect formation in one or more family members;

2) interrole conflict, in which the contradiction lies in the opposition of role expectations emanating from different roles. Conflicts of this kind are often observed in multi-generational families, where second-generation spouses are both children and parents and must accordingly combine opposing roles;

3) intra-role conflict, in which one role includes conflicting demands. In a modern family, problems of this kind are most often inherent in the female role. This applies to cases where the role of a woman involves a combination of the traditional female role in the family (housewife, childcare worker, etc.) with a modern role, which involves equal participation of spouses in providing the family with material resources.

The conflict can deepen if the wife occupies a higher status in the social or professional sphere and transfers the role functions of her status into intrafamily relationships. IN similar cases The ability of spouses to flexibly switch roles is very important. A special place among the prerequisites for role conflict is occupied by difficulties with the psychological development of a role associated with such characteristics of the spouses’ personalities as insufficient moral and emotional maturity, unpreparedness to perform marital and, in particular, parental roles. For example, a girl, having gotten married, does not want to shift the family’s economic concerns onto her shoulders or give birth to a child, she tries to lead her old lifestyle, not subject to the restrictions that the role of a mother imposes on her, etc.

In modern society, there is a process of weakening of the family as a social institution, a change in its social functions, and non-role family relationships. The family is losing its leading position in the socialization of individuals, in organizing leisure time and in other important functions.

It can be argued that both in society and in the family, women are still subject to discrimination. Often this is facilitated by women themselves, who place demands on their daughters to help around the house, while their sons lead an idle lifestyle. With such attitudes, society (represented by men and women themselves) seems to perpetuate further discrimination against the female sex. If we analyze sociological data, the most obvious form of discrimination is the nature of the distribution of housework in the family. Although studies over the past three years have documented a more equal distribution of household responsibilities, the problem still remains open.

However, traditional roles, in which the woman ran the household, gave birth and raised children, and the husband was the owner, often the sole owner of property, and ensured the economic independence of the family, were replaced by role ones, in which the vast majority of women in countries with Christian and Buddhist cultures began to participate in production, political activity, economic support for the family and take equal and sometimes leading participation in family decision-making.

This significantly changed the nature of family functioning and entailed a number of positive and negative consequences for society. On the one hand, it contributed to the growth of women’s self-awareness; equality in marital relations, on the other hand, aggravated conflict situation, affected demographic behavior, leading to a decrease in the birth rate and an increase in the mortality rate.

The family, in the process of socialization, prepares children to perform family roles. I. S. Kon writes that the concept of social role is central in the analysis of social interactions. The study of social roles in the family allows us to identify what is happening in it social change, to clarify the issue of family functions and related social conflicts.

The concept of a social institution is widely used both here and abroad. In relation to the family, it is used, first of all, as a complex system of actions and relationships that performs certain social functions. Or, the concept of a social institution is viewed as an interconnected system of social roles and norms that is created and operates to satisfy important social needs and functions. Social roles and the norms included in a social institution determine appropriate and expected behavior that is aimed at satisfying specific social needs.

The family is analyzed as an institution when it is especially important to find out the compliance (or non-compliance) of the family’s lifestyle and its functions with modern social needs. The model of the family as a social institution is very important for predicting changes in the family and trends in its development. When analyzing the family as a social institution, researchers are primarily interested in samples family behavior, family role, features of formal and informal norms and sanctions in the sphere of marriage and family relations.

The family is considered as a small social group when the relationships between individuals in the family are studied. This approach successfully explores the motives for marriage, the causes of divorce, the dynamics and nature of marital relationships and the relationship between parents and children. Although it must be taken into account that group behavior is influenced by socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions.

4. Family classification

Families are classified by type by a variety of sciences - sociology, statistics, economics, anthropology, psychology.

According to anthropology, families are divided into consanguinal And conjugal.

Consanguinal the family consists of blood relatives belonging to several generations. Relationships in such a family are divided along the male line (patrilineality) or along the female line (matrilineality). Regardless of the line of kinship, it is the relationship between relatives, and not the relationship between husband and wife (conjugality), that serves as the basis for family organization. A married couple lives either with the wife's relatives (matrilocality) or with the husband's relatives (patrilocality), children can belong to both the wife's family and the husband's wife.

Conjugal the family is based on marital rather than kinship relationships. Relatives on the wife's and husband's sides are considered part of the family. They are recognized as equally important and are included in the family organization only as relatives of the wife or husband, but not in themselves. Children do not belong to the relatives of the wife or husband, but to the married couple.

If the conjugal family preserves itself through the continuity of generations, then the conjugal family is formed anew with each subsequent marriage.

By residence criterion conjugal family belongs to dislocal marriage. This means that the newly created family is separated from the parents and lives away from them. The conjugal family allows greater freedom in the performance of family roles. American, Russian and European societies belong to the conjugal type, and the old Chinese family was patrilineal, patrilocal, consanguinal. The Pueblo Indian family was matrilineal, matrilocal and consanguinal.

In addition, there are two main types of family found in human society - traditional(or classical), it’s also called expanded(multi-generational), and modern nuclear(two-generation), or family origin, And pro-reactionary, or newly formed, (created by adult children).

By number of children allocate childless, one child And large families families.

By criterion of dominance in the family of husband or wife allocate patriarchal And matriarchal family, and leadership criterion – paternal(male head of the family) material(head of the family is female) and egalitarian(both spouses are considered equally members of the family).

5. Social functions of the family

Family functions– these are ways of manifestation of its activity; life activity of the entire family and its individual members. In all societies, the family performed the main functions:

- population reproduction(physical and spiritual-moral reproduction of a person in the family);

- educational function – socialization of the younger generation, maintaining the cultural reproduction of society;

- household function– maintaining the physical health of members of society, caring for children and elderly family members;

- economic– obtaining material resources from some family members for others, economic support for minors and disabled members of society;

- spiritual communication– development of personalities of family members, spiritual mutual enrichment;

- social status– providing a certain status to family members, reproduction of the social structure;

- leisure– organization of rational leisure, mutual enrichment of interests;

- emotional– obtaining psychological protection, emotional support, emotional stabilization of individuals and their psychological therapy;

- sphere of primary social control– moral regulation of the behavior of family members in various fields life activities, as well as regulation of responsibilities and obligations in relations between spouses, parents and children of representatives of the older and middle generations.

Changes in the structure and functions of the family, even sudden and revolutionary ones, are quite natural in historical development. We can say that they accompany the development of the individual family nucleus, where the birth of a child, the marriage of older children and their departure from the family, and other joyful and sad events usually cause sudden and drastic changes in the family structure. However, the family (not a special form of it, but simply a family) turned out to be an extremely flexible system that adapts to any circumstances. It is the family that is an integral part of all social changes taking place in society.

Changes in the average life expectancy of the population, regulation of family size by the spouses themselves or by society (for example, in modern China or Vietnam, where the birth rate is limited by law), as well as other demographic factors can lead to significant shifts in the life cycle of family units. However, an integral characteristic feature the family nucleus is that it has a beginning and an end during the lifespan of one of the spouses, namely, the lifespan of the married couple who is its founder.

Social functions of the family have two main sources of their occurrence: the needs of society and the needs of the family organization itself. Both one and the other factor change historically, therefore, each stage in the development of a family is associated with the withering away of some functions and the formation of other functions, with a change in both the scale and nature of its social activity. However, with all these changes, society at any stage of its development needs the reproduction of the population; therefore, it is always interested in the family as a mechanism for this reproduction.

6. Family is a spiritual environmentpersonality development

The family is an organic unit of society; its interests are inseparable from the interests of the state.

Family life is a unity of material processes, including socio-biological, economic and moral-psychological relations. Moral ties between family members are based on feelings of love, kinship, mutual affection, responsibility, duty, family honor and dignity.

An important feature of family relationships is taking into account the character and temperament of each family member, resolving contradictions that arise in everyday life between spouses, parents and children and in the children's environment, finding ways and means to strengthen psychological contact in the family.

The family in modern society represents the most important unit of spiritual relationships. Relationships in the family are based not only on material, but also on spiritual mutual assistance and spiritual interest in living together.

Family is a person’s personal sphere, the structure of his life, the birth and upbringing of children, the relationship of generations, the transmission of culture, a unique emotional and psychological atmosphere of love and affection, which is so important for the development and preservation of human individuality.

A modern family is a small group whose members are closely connected by common life interests, joint activities, everyday life. Joint family life requires flexible coordination, agreement on mutual rights and responsibilities, and an equal understanding of their roles.

The modern family focuses on the implementation of its most important social function - raising children. The family is an active factor in the formation of personality, the source of the development of the child as an individual.

The child’s personality is formed under the influence of the totality of all social relations, especially the system of those specific relations in which his life and activities directly take place. However, the level of moral culture of parents, their life plans and aspirations, the experience of social communication between elders, family traditions - in a word, the atmosphere in their home is often decisive in the development of the personality of both junior and senior schoolchildren. The family as a social community accumulates the wealth of all social relations.

The area of family relations is one of the most complex, the nature of which is determined not only by family or marital ties, but also by socio-economic, national, political and other conditions. And the unity of various connections in the family forms a complex system of relationships in which the child’s personality is located.

Family education has its advantages. It is in the family that the child’s individuality and his inner world are most fully revealed. Parental love helps to reveal and enrich the emotional, spiritual and intellectual spheres of children’s lives.

The family brings up children of different age groups. On every age stage There are specifics and problems of education.

It gives rise to the characteristics of upbringing and the composition and structure of the family. In recent decades, the decline in the birth rate has increasingly led to the spread of one- and two-child families. A decrease in the number of children in a family leads to the disappearance of the children's team, which is especially noticeable in a one-child family and in a family where the interval between the birth of the first and second child is long. A. S. Makarenko emphasized the disadvantages of a family with two parents and an only child. There are fewer connections in this family, less interdependence and stability. The heterogeneity of orientation is especially noticeable.

Each family can exist and develop only when it has some common goals and orientation for all its members. The successful performance by a family of its functions is determined not only by its internal state, but also by the social health of society.

Conclusion

What is the most important thing for a marriage to become stronger and more romantic? According to the latest data, couples whose marriage is successful and the spouses have become really close to each other do not at all strive to spend all evenings and weekends together. They just happen to be together different time, sometimes meeting for only five minutes, but these meetings bring joy.

Facts are well known that indicate an increase in the number of divorces, a deep crisis in the institution of the family and a decrease in the birth rate. Moreover, family problems increase the risk of mental and physical illnesses in both adults and children. Problems and tensions in families affect us all. It is difficult to dispute that many of society’s ills are rooted in negative factors generated by marital conflicts and the breakdown of families.

The family constitutes an essential link in the chain of social existence, because each nation and state is composed of individual families: the family is the first basis of the state.

The family is the primary unit of society, uniting spouses and their offspring. In a family, an individual, sacrificing some of his own characteristics, enters as a member of a certain whole.

Family life is associated with the gender and age division of labor, housekeeping, mutual assistance of people in everyday life, the intimate life of spouses, procreation, and therefore reproduction, raising a new generation, as well as with moral, legal and psychological relations.

Family is the most important tool for individual development. It is here that the child first joins social life and learns its values, norms of behavior, and ways of thinking and language. In other words, a family is a school of education, transfer of experience and worldly wisdom. A full-fledged marriage between a man and a woman presupposes the separation of the connecting couple, i.e. such a connection between them, by virtue of which they do not exclude, but mutually rely on each other, each finding in the other the fullness of their own life. Only under this condition can we talk about true harmony in the family.

Bibliography

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3. Golod S.I. Family and marriage: historical and sociological analysis. – St. Petersburg: TK Peropolis LLP, 1998.

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5. Zemska M. Family and personality. – M.: Progress, 1986.

6. Kravchenko A.I. General sociology: Textbook. manual for universities. – M.: UNITY, 2001.

7. Matskovsky M.S. Sociology of the family. Problems, theories, methodologies and techniques - M.: Science. 1993.

8. Family and everyday culture / Ed. D.I. Vodzinsky. - Minsk: Narodnaya Asveta, 1987, p. 5-7.

9. Semenov Yu. I. Origin of marriage and family. - M.: Nauka, 1974.

10. Family: Book to read. In 2 books. / Comp. I. S. Andreeva, A. V. Gulyga. – M.: Politizdat.

11. Sociology: textbook for universities / V. N. Lavritenko, N. A. Nartov, O. A. Shabanova, G. S. Lukashova; Ed. Prof. V. N. Lavritenko. – M.: UNITY, 2000.

Matskovsky M.S. Sociology of the family. Problems, theories, methodologies and techniques - M.: Science. 1993, 64-70.

Dobrenkov V.I., Kravchenko. A. I. Social institutions and processes. T. 3.- M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 2000, 293-295.

Zatsepin V.I. Family. Social, psychological and ethical problems. - K.: Politizdat of Ukraine, 1989, p. 74-80.

After studying this chapter, the student should:

know

the essence of the concepts of “family” and “marriage”, “parenthood”;
main theoretical approaches to the study of the nuclear family;
main trends of transformation family and marital relations in modern society;

be able to

Analyze marriage and family relations in Russia, taking into account global trends in this area;

own

skills in analyzing the dysfunctions of the institutions of marriage and family in modern society;
critical analysis skills modern trends in the field of marriage and family relations.

Key concepts: family, marriage, nuclear family, extended family, kinship, parenthood, household, cohabitation, single-parent family, patriarchal family, egalitarian family, “absent father.”

Family and marriage

Concepts of family and marriage

Family is the social reality that accompanies a person throughout his life, and is perceived by many as a little-changeable phenomenon. However, it is not. Since the 1960s. family and marriage are in constant transformation, which gives grounds for many sociologists and publicists to talk about the crisis and even the disappearance of these social institutions.

On the one hand, in all developed European countries, including Russia, there are such phenomena as an increase in the number of divorces, single-parent families and cohabitations, births of children out of wedlock, a decrease in the birth rate, the spread of childlessness and loneliness as a consciously chosen lifestyle, a decrease in the role of the father in the family, the spread of homosexual marriages, which, According to many researchers, this indicates a clear crisis in the institutions of family and marriage. On the other hand, remarriages, restored families, adoption of children are becoming widespread, the demand for infertility treatment is growing, the dating industry is developing, including electronic methods(via mobile devices,

Internet), which obviously serves as proof that the value of marriage and family for people, as before, remains quite high.

So what is family and marriage in a sociological sense?

Traditionally, the study of family in sociology involves considering it as social institution with its inherent norms, sanctions, roles and functions and how small social group when the focus is on family values and relationships.

Let's turn to the classic definitions of family. Domestic sociologist A.G. Kharchev gives the following definition: “A family is a historically specific system of relationships between spouses, between parents and children; is a small social group whose members are related by marriage or parental relationships, community of life and mutual moral responsibility and the social necessity of which is determined by the need of society for the physical and spiritual reproduction of the population” or shorter: “A family is an association of people based on marriage and consanguinity, connected by a commonality of life and mutual responsibility.” From the famous British sociologist E. Giddens we find the following definition: “A family is a group of people connected by direct family relationships, the adult members of which assume responsibilities for caring for children. Kinship relations are relationships that arise during marriage or are a consequence of a blood connection between persons.”

Let us immediately note that these definitions reflect, rather, the model of the most typical, so to speak, “classical family” of industrial society. In fact, not all families fall under these definitions, for example, married couples without children, single-parent or single-parent families, families with adopted children. Taking these circumstances into account, a broader definition of family can be given.

Family is a group of people related by marriage or kinship (blood or legal) who share a sense of common identity and mutual responsibility.

Despite all the variety of forms of family life, it is still possible to identify a special generic characteristic of the family that distinguishes it from other small groups (work collectives, groups of friends, etc.). This is the nature of connections between people. In a family, people are connected by marriage, kinship, or adoption/guardianship (non-blood relationship). These connections are especially close and intimate. A family is a kind of microcosm, closed to a certain extent from the external social environment. Family members share a sense of special identity - belonging to the family and a sense of mutual responsibility.

Let us now turn to the concept of marriage. In the Sociological Encyclopedia we find this definition.

Marriage- is a historically changing social form of relations between a woman and a man, through which society orders and sanctions them sex life and establishes their conjugal and kinship rights and obligations.

Let us immediately stipulate that in sociology, marriage is the actual relationship between a man and a woman, and not just those recognized by the state (registered marriage) or the church (consecrated marriage). Unregistered marital relationships, which in Russia are usually called cohabitation or “ civil marriage”, also apply to marital relations.

Historical forms of marriage are monogamy And polygamy. The latter, in turn, is divided into polyandry (polyandry) and polygyny (polygamy). In the majority modern societies Polygamy is officially prohibited, although it may exist in fact.

In everyday consciousness, family and marriage are often identified. However, sociologists distinguish between these concepts and the phenomena behind them: a family can exist without marriage (for example, single-parent families, in which there is no marital relationship), just as a marriage can exist without a family (for example, a guest marriage, when there is a relationship between a man and a woman, but there is no kinship, joint household and mutual responsibility).

According to the Family Code Russian Federation, marriage is a free, equal union of a man and a woman who have the goal of creating a family. It gives rise to mutual rights and obligations between spouses. Marriage is a serious step in the life path of every person. In this regard, many people who decide to get married are interested in what types of marriage there are and what is the religious understanding of such a union of a man and a woman. What marriage is and other issues will be discussed in the article.

Concept and signs

There is no legal concept of marriage. But at the same time, there are two doctrinal definitions:

sociological. From this point of view, marriage is a historically conditioned, sanctioned and regulated form of relationship between representatives of society of different sexes. This concept of marriage is applicable to actual cohabitation, since it implies the formation of rights and obligations between a man and a woman;
legal From the point of view of jurisprudence, such a relationship between a man and a woman is an important legal fact that causes the formation of family legal ties. The wedding is carried out in accordance with the procedure established by law with the aim of creating a unit of society called a family.

These types of marriages have fundamental differences. The main one is that marriage in the legal sense becomes the reason for the emergence of legal ties that are regulated at the legislative level.

The meaning of a marriage union is that it represents:

union of partners entailing legal consequences;
the form of relationship between a man and a woman;
a symbol both for partners and for the state;
a type of agreement between members of society.

The marriage union is characterized by the following features:

union of persons of the opposite sex;
presence of family life;
compliance by the family with the conditions provided for in Article 12 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation;
official registration of relationships by the civil registry office.

A marriage union in the Russian Federation can be registered by the civil registry office, subject to a number of conditions. The main ones include:

the presence of voluntary consent of the spouses. It must be expressed orally and in writing;
reaching a certain age by persons wishing to get married. According to Article 13 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation, the age of marriage in Russia is 18 years. If there is a good reason, you can get married at the age of 16 or even earlier, but the latter is not available to residents of all regions.

There is a popular belief that the lower age for marriage in different regions varies from 14 to 16 years. This is wrong. In the Family Code of the Russian Federation there is no such thing as a lower age limit for legalizing relationships.

Religious understanding

The concept and signs of marriage have been clarified, but for the majority of residents of our country, the religious aspects of such relationships between members of society are no less important. Today, the two most widespread religions in Russia are Orthodox Christianity and Islam. From the perspective of these faiths, the definition of marriage and its understanding should be considered.

A church wedding, also called a wedding, is a Christian Orthodox marital union of a woman and a man, concluded in a religious community through a sacred rite. According to Christian doctrine, the wife must submit to her husband, and he, in turn, must love her as Christ the Church. Husband and wife become one flesh and bear mutual responsibility for any actions. Adultery (adultery) in Christianity is a serious sin.

Muslims call marriage “Nikah”. For a process to be considered valid, several conditions must be met:

the spouse must be an adult and not fall under the category of “Mahram” (a man who is a close relative);
the bride can be Muslim, Christian or Jewish;
actions must be voluntary;
Witnesses must be present during the marriage;
the man must pay the bride price.

The number of wives in Islam is limited to four. Temporary marriage and its forms are not permitted among Sunnis, but are legal among Shiites.

Forms

IN modern world There are different forms of marriage. The most common of them include:

ecclesiastical, concluded by the church. Such marriages were widespread in the Middle Ages. Such unions are still recognized as legal in many countries, for example, Great Britain and Poland;
actual, called civil in Russia. In some countries, such as Ecuador and Germany, it is considered legal;
When listing the forms of marriage, it is necessary to mention temporary, practiced in Muslim countries. Its terms and validity period are specified in the contract, upon the expiration of which any legal relationship between the spouses ceases to operate. Why is a marriage of this form necessary? It is practiced with the aim of producing heirs and is due to the reluctance to live together for more time than necessary in order to acquire offspring;
fictitious. This form of marriage is the official registration of a relationship without the real goal of starting a family. In some countries, such an act is punishable by law;
morganatic. A union of people with unequal social status. A common phenomenon that was officially prohibited at the beginning of the last century and earlier in many countries, including German-speaking countries;

same-sex. It is not allowed in Russia, but is practiced and has legal force in many Western European countries. Such couples even have the right to take adopted children into the family;
in terms of the number of spouses, a family can be monogamous (husband and wife) or polygamous (one wife and several husbands or vice versa). The first form is the most common in the world. Speaking about families with more than two spouses, the “Swedish family” should be mentioned. Despite its name, it is not recognized as legal by Swedish authorities.

Marriage in Russian Family Law is only an official civil union. It may be morganatic or fictitious, but must be formalized. The Marriage Code states that the relationship is registered by an authorized person. Discussions are currently underway to amend the marriage code. The main idea of the discussion is to legitimize cases of actual cohabitation. But such marriages and their forms are still not regulated at the legislative level. The initiative has not been transferred from the discussion plane to the practical one.

Turning to history, you can see that initially in our country the function of civil registry office workers was performed by the church. Now such marriage and its forms are also common, but those getting married must contact both the registry office and the church (the sequence does not matter).

Many people wonder why register a marriage, since you can lead a family life without a stamp in your passport? Therefore, there are hundreds of thousands of such families in Russia.

This kind of marriage is not recognized in Russia, as are the following types, practiced mainly by young people:

guest. The main characteristic of a marriage of this type is separation when there is an officially registered relationship in the registry office;
open form. The legal signs of a marriage of this type are obvious, but in marriage contract the possibility of relationships on the side is spelled out;
trial. There are no legal signs of marriage. Essentially this living together without legitimizing the relationship.

Russia is actively adopting experience foreign countries, but the type of marriage with registration of relations in the registry office is the only form regulated at the legislative level. The concept of marriage under Family Law is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Advantages and disadvantages

There are many pros and cons of holding an official wedding, but first of all you need to dwell on the legal side of this issue. The advantages are:

Firstly, the definition of marriage implies fixing the responsibility of the spouses before the law. It doesn’t matter what kind of marriages there are, if their official consolidation is allowed by law, then they become a guarantor of the quality of family life, the fulfillment of obligations and respect for the rights of all family members;
secondly, people wondering why to get married should know that it is the social and psychological protection of citizens. Knowing everything about marriage, you can understand that it is a state guarantee of the protection of the family, paternity, childhood and motherhood;
thirdly, the concepts and legal characteristics of marriage, known to man and a woman, become confirmation serious intentions create a new unit of society.

The form of marriage in Russia is the same for everyone. The classification of marriage is not particularly important. Relationships legalized in accordance with the Family Code are a kind of manifesto to society.

When listing the advantages of marriage, you should also indicate the disadvantages. The main disadvantage, or rather disadvantage, of marriage is that it and Family Law in general are not a guarantee of idyll and harmony in the family. State registration of marriage only encourages spouses to accept responsibility to each other.

In addition, registering a marriage is not insurance against conflicts and family breakdown. In this case, the breakup is experienced more painfully, and the procedure can be complicated by a lawsuit. According to the Family Code of the Russian Federation, a divorce in the registry office can be carried out only without the spouses having property claims and children. In other cases, you need to contact the world or district court. In this regard, you should think carefully before making such a responsible decision.

If Russian legislation does not allow getting married, then you can get married abroad, but you should understand that such a union will not be officially recognized on the territory of our country. From a legal point of view, people who got married abroad in violation of the rules of the Family Code of the Russian Federation will continue to be considered strangers to each other. This is practiced by same-sex couples traveling to Western European countries and the United States of America to register their relationship.

Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman, where the independence of both parties is equal, the dependence is mutual, and the obligations are mutual.

L. Anspacher

The family in its present form has not always existed." She went through many stages before accepting modern form.

During the period of the final formation of the social system, the ape people were united into primitive consanguineous hordes, something between a herd of animals and human society. These hordes were promiscuous. Sexual relationships developed between blood relatives: parents and children, brothers and sisters. Over time, promiscuous and especially consanguineous sexual relations disappeared, as it was noticed that incest leads to defects in the offspring.

Gradually formed group family, where the men of a certain group are the collective spouses of another group of women. To create such a family, two foreign, non-consanguineous hordes united, the women of one of which were the common wives of the men of the other horde. The entry into sexual relations of persons belonging to different hordes did not give them any rights over each other and did not impose on them any duties in relation to each other. In those days, the most important occupation was “hoe farming,” in which women played the main role. Hence comes its dominant position at this stage of development of society, called matriarchy.

Third form historical development families - couple family. It is characterized by the fact that the husband has one main wife among many others, and the wife is one main husband among other men. From a historical point of view, this is a qualitative leap forward. The first married couple on earth begins to emerge, which is still very unstable, easily dissolved and does not exclude the possibility of an affair on the side. Its appearance and formation are associated with the fall of matriarchy and the establishment of patriarchy, caused by the fact that in the conditions of developing cattle breeding and agriculture, a man becomes the main figure in the production of material goods.

A family of one man with one specific woman (the so-called monogamous marriage) is a product of historical decay primitive society, a reflection of the economic revolution, which consists in the fact that a man becomes a separate, independent owner of the means of production.

A monogamous family meant the triumph of the strong and the enslavement of the fair sex. A man began to look at a woman as a thing that can be bought and sold. IN Ancient Greece a beautiful girl was worth several head of cattle.

A man in a class society enjoyed significant sexual freedom. He was recognized as having the right to premarital and extramarital affairs. Fidelity was considered obligatory only for the wife. As a rule, monogamy prevailed. It was precisely this circumstance that gave rise to calling a property-based marriage in a class society monogamy. In a class society, especially in the early stages of its development, marriages of one man with several women at the same time occur, that is, polygamy. But such oligamy is essentially no different from monogamy: the wife’s economic dependence on her husband manifests itself in an even more distinct form. From each of the wives, no less than in monogamy, marital fidelity is required.

In a slave society, another type of sexual relationship begins to form, which is called sexual love. Many will find it blasphemous to consider love as an object of study, to analyze this sacred feeling. But you need to know: how love appeared, what happened before it, how it differs from other feelings!

So, sexual love.

The vital principle of love develops in ancient Babylon, Egypt, and India. The man must be recognized as its discoverer, since the woman responded with affection without the right to choose. The first sexual love was due to the improvement of aesthetic and moral culture, strengthening mutual understanding between people. From this time on, the improvement and ennoblement of sexual life begins, the true fusion and mutual penetration of human flesh and spirit. Human society continued its development, and at the same time the relationship between men and women underwent changes.

The main features of European feudalism were large and small landownership and the dominance of Christianity. The Church surrounded sexual life with shame and considered tender sympathies for a woman a terrible guilt, a mortal sin. For hundreds of years, family-marriage relations among serfs were under the complete authority of feudal lords, who personally determined future spouses without asking their consent. The animal reigned. humiliating right of the first night...

With the disintegration of feudal society and the transition to capitalism, sex life becomes more dependent on money than ever before. Bourgeois society is gradually trying to give women certain qualities that are characteristic of an ordinary commodity. A man evaluates his future wife by her checkbook. A pretty young lady marries not her beloved boy, but a textile factory or shares in an oil concern that guarantee profit. This tendency suppresses and kills the human essence - dreams, aspirations, feelings, love.

A hundred years ago, the French writer V. Hugo pointed out that marriage: is increasingly acquiring the nature of a transaction;

In this regard, moral degradation of the family occurs. However, in a capitalist society, a new opportunity has opened up for women - to be directly involved in the system of socio-economic relations. This led to a change in their position in the family. A wife employed in social production is not a dependent of her husband. Independent earnings made women economically equal to men.

In our country, after the October Revolution, for the first time in history, complete equality of men and women was proclaimed. Economic relations in the family between spouses consist in the fact that they combine together the shares of the social product they receive from society in order to support their children and jointly run the household.

Marriage imposes certain responsibilities on both parties, including economic ones, both in relation to each other and to children. They are formalized by legal registration of marriage. The state cannot oblige people to enter into marriage, nor to refrain from dissolving it. The only thing that official bodies force people to do is participate in the maintenance of children born in marriage. Divorce does not relieve either parent of this responsibility. Thus, law is not a true regulator of relations between the sexes. This function can only belong to morality.

In the modern world, there are several forms of marriage and sexual relations: monogamous, polygamous and polyandrous families. In most countries, the law now only recognizes a monogamous family—one man and one woman living together and running a household. Polygamous marriages - one man having sexual relations with several women - were common in Africa and Asia. The main reason for polygamy is gender imbalance, in which women outnumber men due to their death, mainly as a result of wars. Finally, polyandry - the cohabitation of several men with one woman - is found as a relic among some tribes and in areas where there are few women.

In the former USSR, according to Article 235 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, bigamy or polygamy, that is, cohabitation with two or more women while maintaining a common household, is punishable by imprisonment for up to 1 year or correctional labor for the same period.

The term “marriage” has a dual meaning (content), i.e. it provides for certain social relations and a legal act that officially registers these relations. Marriage is a voluntary union of two free and equal people. Voluntary consent of marriage is a guarantee that the family will be created on the basis of love, complete equality of the bride and groom, without any benefits. Marriage registration is a legal action leading to the creation of a family. From the moment of marriage, a complex set of personal and property relationships arises.

No one forces marriage, however, having entered into it, the spouses are obliged to obey its moral requirements, its laws.

Choosing the right life partner means laying the foundation for marital harmony. But often a person makes the right decision, having previously made a number of mistakes. This method of searching for truth is called the trial and error method. Naturally, it is not suitable for choosing a spouse. This decision has an impact on the rest of your life, and mistakes here are very expensive. It is better to take advantage of the experience of previous generations and be prepared for the most important step in life.

Most often, a family is created on the basis of love. The relationship between a man and a woman during the premarital period is at the stage of friendship. At this time, recognition of each other occurs, a search for common views occurs, a need for each other, and sensual attraction arises.

It happens that relationships begin with love and quickly end in marriage. This love can last a long time, but if there was no friendship, then there was no deep knowledge of each other. Love and infatuation are the highest stages of psychological intimacy. Love differs from falling in love in treating another as oneself. With love, a balance is established between one’s own and another’s “I” based on knowledge of oneself and the other. Love is characterized by strength and depth. The power of love depends on who is loved: his inner and outer beauty, the depth - on his fidelity to duty, nobility, honesty, intelligence.

Marriage for love presupposes reciprocity: love is repaid only by love. Here you cannot approach with a saving “but”: “I don’t love him, but he is promising, I will live my whole life comfortably with him.” Sometimes a person goes into marriage prudently, knowing that the other person loves him, but such a marriage is unlikely to be happy. Even a marriage for the sake of material well-being, concluded with mutual consent, can be lasting, but happy - it is doubtful.

It is well said: “The soul is given to us to believe, the heart is given to love, the mind is given to know what to believe in, and to know whom to love.” It happens that we can experience deep and strong feelings for someone with whom we cannot get along. Often a real person and an idealized image have one or two common features, some of which are secondary. Sometimes a girl chooses her life partner based on his external data: high growth, physically developed body, striking appearance. The ultimate dream of a young man for a wife is: a wasp waist, regular facial features, a gentle voice. Young people often choose a companion based on external characteristics, but for family life the main qualities are internal qualities: honesty, justice, intelligence, goodwill, flexible character, tenderness, caring, compliance, as well as the ability and desire to actively participate in housekeeping.

It is desirable for men and women entering into marriage to have similar cultural levels, education and material needs, which contributes to complete mutual understanding and unity of interests. Two leaders, that is, two people who have clearly expressed leadership traits, cannot get along together. The truthful and the deceitful, the generous and the stingy, the hardworking and the lazy cannot get along together. People with an orientation towards different moral and spiritual values will not get along.

To choose a spouse, you need to learn to speak and learn to listen. When we master this skill, the problem of choosing a life partner becomes much easier. Unfortunately, we often do not know how to communicate, no. we know how to talk to each other. Most often we listen only to ourselves, we think about only expressing our own. not caring at all whether the interlocutor understands us.. When someone else speaks, we only politely wait for a pause before starting to speak ourselves. The ability to listen and listen is one of the most valuable qualities of a person; helping him understand people.

Sexopathologists G. S. Vasilcheiko and Yu. A. Reshetnik propose the concept of five main marital factors for assessing and predicting the marriage union, which allow diagnosing the stability of a marriage.

The structure of general marital potential includes physical, material, cultural, sexual and psychological factors.

Physical factor(FF) is of a purely intuitive nature, regardless of gender, one person evokes unconscious sympathy or antipathy in another. This individual and deeply personal reaction is determined by the entire physical appearance (the face is of particular importance), timbre of voice, demeanor, speech, facial expressions, gestures, manner of dressing, and finally, the smell characteristic of to this person. Determined at the first meetings, FF is exceptionally stable and, as a rule, retains its positive or negative connotation during long-term communication, undergoing only minor modification. In all people, regardless of age, it is closely linked with the sexual factor; However, in young people this influence is more pronounced, and with age, in cases where the role of the cultural factor increases, it shows a certain tendency to be subordinate to the latter.

The material factor (MF) is determined by the correlation of the partner’s contribution to the overall financial status of the family and the correspondence of this contribution to the expectations and requirements of the other partner. Compliance can be maximized when there are high demands and their satisfaction, or when there is little input and low demands. Thus, the role of the MF depends on its place in the range of value orientations of the individual.

The cultural factor (CF) is determined by the correlation of the intellectual and cultural needs of the spouses and is very variable throughout the life of even one couple.

The sexual factor (SF) is determined by the correspondence of the actual program of intimate intimacy of each partner to their sexual expectations. This factor is subject to many influences, including age and health status, with which it must first of all be correlated. Models of male and female sexuality are not identical in terms of quality (for example, differences erogenous zones), and in terms of age. SF can have a powerful modulating effect on FF, more often in the form of exacerbation of previous unconscious or suppressed psychological attitudes (Karenin always had ugly, protruding ears, and Anna could not help but see this, but clearly realized this only after her relationship was completely determined with Vronsky).

Psychological factor(PF) is the collector on which all others focus; it is he who determines the unity and integrity of human behavior. PF implies a correlation between the personal characteristics of both spouses, primarily their characters and role aspirations.

Interacting, these factors make up marital potential. If the majority of factors have a positive (centripetal) direction and contribute to the strengthening (densification) of the union, then the marriage potential is characterized by a positive index: if negative (centrifugal) factors predominate, aimed at loosening and disintegrating the union, then the marriage potential has a negative index.

The formation of an optimal marriage occurs gradually - from the charm of first love through a chain of overcoming disappointments (created by the little things of everyday life) to the acceptance of a real partner with all his advantages and disadvantages.

Love has become a mass phenomenon, but this does not mean that everyone without exception gets married for love. According to S. Golod, 39.1 percent of men and 49.6 percent of women marry for love. After all, love is a personal value, not a marriage value. If the spouses’ motive for getting married is a commonality of views and interests, then the degree of their satisfaction with family life is often much higher than in families formed only by love, without taking into account other factors. Love in marriage can pass quickly. Sechenov also believed that love in marriage passes in 3-4 months, at best in 2-3 years, if people are very well suited to each other psychophysiologically. Love-passion should be replaced by love out of habit or friendship.

When we get married, for some reason we promise each other happiness. But marriage is, first of all, a very big responsibility. The French philosopher Taine said very well on this matter: three weeks they study each other, three months they love, three years they argue, thirty-three years they tolerate each other, and children start all over again. Although, of course, there are happy exceptions here, when mutual love is so strong and beautiful that it helps to overcome all the difficulties of a shared path.

Before crossing the threshold of the registry office, young people need to ask themselves: what do I, honestly, want to get by getting married - just to be happy myself (herself) or to give happiness to my chosen one (darling). You definitely need to know whether you have respect and complete trust in each other. Do you have a unity of views on the main values of life, on family life, on raising children? And finally, do you have the financial resources to start a family? What kind of income do you expect to live on and where?

One of the features modern marriage Compared to the 50s, he has become much younger. Now no one is surprised at a young man who is in a hurry to get married even before serving in the army, and girls hastily exchange their prom dress for a bride's dress. The fact that by the age of 18-20 the mental makeup is not yet fully revealed has its own positive side, since the plasticity of the young psyche facilitates the development of compatibility. And if there is a willingness to meet each other halfway, then compatibility is achieved faster and easier than in adulthood. Early marriages are favored by the easier mutual adaptability of young people, since their preferences and individual habits have not yet become entrenched. In young parents who are not yet burdened with chronic diseases and bad habits, strong, healthy children are born.

Early marriage is not an easy task for parents: father-in-law and mother-in-law, mother-in-law and father-in-law, because a lot in the fate of a young couple will depend on the help and support of the older generation.

On the other hand, the inexperience of young people is a bad adviser when choosing a spouse. This is where mistakes often occur when solving important family problems, haste, imprudence.

“Currently, all countries in the world have set their own age for marriage, and the range is very wide: from 12 years (Greece, Spain and some other countries) to 18 years. In Azerbaijan, Armenia and Ukraine, girls are allowed to marry from the age of 16. In certain cases. Councils of people's deputies may allow marriage to be registered at a younger age (but not earlier than 16 years).

According to the laws of many countries, the age of marriage does not coincide with the age of civil majority: before reaching which parental consent is required for marriage. For example, in France, the marriageable age for women is set at 15 years, and for men - 18 years, but until they reach the civil age of majority, 21, they have no right to marry without parental consent. In Uruguay, men cannot decide on their own whether to marry married before 25 years of age.

Ancient philosophers proposed an age difference between men and women. Aristotle argued that a man should be about 20 years older than a woman. According to Plato, a woman reaches her peak at 20 years old, a man at 30. The difference should be 10-15 years.

The problem of age as a selection criterion should be considered not only in connection with physiology, but also with the psychology of love. Intimate life is a complex range of physical and spiritual experiences. A person of advanced age is biologically inferior to a young person. But, as they say, the medal also has reverse side. Older age “wins” youth with the breadth of cultural needs, richness of spiritual experiences, experience of past years and wise maturity.

What does it mean that a loved one will grow old faster because he was born earlier, that the calendar period of love will not be so long if it gives a person the deepest, unique experiences? The age difference does not overshadow feelings if a person is young at heart. In this sense, the age criterion disappears, and love goes beyond the physiological power of time.

Based on a survey of students at Toritsu University (Japan), it was revealed that the majority of boys and girls, among the individual qualities of their future brides and grooms, valued above all else: firstly, “sexual attractiveness,” and secondly, “their strength. love,” and thirdly, “health.” Much less importance is attached to whether or not the bride retained her virginity at the time of her acquaintance with the young man. Restoring the prestige of virginity is now being resorted to mainly by women belonging to the upper strata of Japanese society, who are prone to arranged marriages, in which virginity has long been considered one of the important advantages of the bride. It should be noted that Japanese women want husbands with a higher level of education than their own, or at least with the same level as themselves.

Between a third and half of all marriages in Japan today are arranged marriages. An arranged marriage means that its participants were quite openly brought together for the purpose of marriage on the initiative of either parents, a family friend, or an intermediary. According to Japanese students, “an ideal marriage is a marriage of love, concluded after a marriage ceremony and parental agreement.”

In recent years, matchmaking has been widely practiced in Japan using a videotape recording, which records the facial expressions, speech, and demeanor of the future bride on a television screen.

The American writer O Henry wrote about marriage advertisements in Sunday newspapers at the end of the 19th century. In Russia, the first issue of the Moscow “Marriage Newspaper” was published in 1904. Currently, marriage advertisements in newspapers and magazines are becoming popular again.

The legal procedure and conditions for marriage in the Russian Federation are determined civil code. Here are a number of his articles.

Art. 13. Marriage. Marriage is about government agencies civil records. Marriage registration is established both in the interests of state and public, and in order to protect the personal and property rights and interests of spouses and their children.

Art. 14. Procedure for concluding marriage. Marriage occurs after one month has passed after those wishing to get married submit an application to the state civil registry office. If there are good reasons month period can be shortened or increased.

Art. 15. Conditions for marriage. To get married it is necessary mutual agreement persons entering into marriage and their attainment of marriageable age. The age of marriage is set at eighteen years.

Art. 16. Obstacles to marriage. Marriage is not permitted: between persons, one of whom is married to the other; between relatives in a direct ascending and descending line, between full and half brothers and sisters, as well as between adoptive parents and adopted children, between persons, one of whom has been called incompetent by the court due to mental illness or dementia.

Art. 17. Emergence of rights and obligations of spouses. The rights and obligations of spouses are created only by a marriage concluded in the state civil registry office.

Art. 18. The right of spouses to choose a surname upon marriage. When entering into a marriage, the spouses, at their own discretion, choose the surname of one of the spouses as their common surname, or each spouse retains their premarital surname.

Art. 43. Grounds for declaring a marriage invalid. A marriage can be declared invalid if the conditions established by Articles 15 and 16 of the Code are violated, as well as in cases where a marriage is registered without the intention of starting a family (a fictitious marriage).

The day the application for marriage is submitted to the Wedding Palace is considered the day of engagement. Engagement - preliminary agreement to conclude family union, which developed as a folk custom back in ancient times.

Engagement - word of mouth! As a rule, a large number of people learn about this event. You can notify your relatives and closest friends about it in writing. Witnesses who are nominated by the future bride and groom are invited as guests of honor. Most often, the engagement takes place in the girl’s house. The bride and groom can exchange rings. After this, congratulations from parents and guests are accepted, business conversations related to the birth of a new family are held, and a tea party is organized. The bride prepares for this day and treats the guests to her “signature” dish. And then - dancing, games, entertainment, in which both parents and children take part.

Submitting an application to the Wedding Palace in itself does not establish any legal relationship between the persons who signed the application. Refusal to marry the persons who submitted the application does not entail any legal consequences.

The established period from the moment of filing the application until the day of marriage registration gives the bride and groom the opportunity to check their feelings, think about the seriousness of the decision made, comprehensively prepare for the wedding day or decide on the issue of terminating the engagement.

If the decision is correct, then a week before registering the marriage, young people must go to the Wedding Palace and confirm their decision to enter into marriage; marriage.

The family is the primary unit of society, the main link connecting the individual with society. In the family, the ideological views and worldview of the younger generation are formed, and moral and ethical standards of behavior are learned.

One of the basic moral principles of the family is the awareness of responsibility to society for raising their children as worthy citizens.

The center of subjective importance of the family has shifted; today e economic factors (material well-being, prosperity, etc.) on personal-psychological, moral-emotional factors. In the family, people see, first of all, the guarantee of spiritual mutual understanding and unity of loved ones, a source of psychological security and positive emotions of an intimate nature, a necessary component of meaning human life.

Orientation towards marriage is the most important value orientation of young people before marriage and in the first years of family life. After all, the intention to get married is caused primarily by the desire of young people to be constantly with the object of their love, their dream of long-term physical intimacy, the need to have children, to be a mother, a father.

Family in the modern social situation is a value, the loss of which is costly to society and to individuals, both men and women, and deforms their lives and destiny.

There are differences between marriage and family. Marriage is a legal contractual relationship between two persons of opposite sex. A family embraces a larger or smaller circle of persons related by consanguinity as a biological factor. While marital relations unstable over time, because they can be terminated due to divorce, family relationships, once established, remain unchanged. If the marital relationship between the wife and husband ends, then between their joint children and each of them separately they remain. The marriage relationship, while it lasts, only externally takes on the appearance of a family.

In addition to biological functions, the family serves to satisfy the economic, cultural and other needs of people. The family contains and raises the offspring. Society trusts her with the organization of food, entertainment, recreation, residence and the satisfaction of countless other large and small needs of individuals. After all, the family survives the marriage.

The economic function of the family includes the following components: participation in social production, housekeeping, and formation of the family budget.

By participating in social production, adult family members thus provide the family with a material basis for existence.

I. A. Latyshev reports on interesting monetary relationships between husbands and wives in Japan. In Japan, tens of millions of “household budget books” are sold on New Year's Eve, which keep detailed records of income and expenses and savings. Such accounting is carried out day after day and serves for the spouses, especially the mistress of the house, as the initial basis and guideline in planning and solving their financial affairs.

Given the tendency of Japanese spouses to comply with the rules of “big bookkeeping” in their financial relationships, the country’s large firms, as well as government agencies They are in the habit of handing over wages to their employees in sealed envelopes bearing the seal of the institution. This is done based on those wives who want their husbands to open envelopes with salaries only at home in their presence, depriving their husbands of the opportunity to hide part of their earnings. An item of pocket expenses for an employee of one of the companies.

Food (including 25 lunches and 8 dinners on days of delays at work)...

Coffee or tea.

Drinking with a friend and playing majan (4 times)...

Cigarettes..... .

Books, newspapers, weekly magazines...

Salon...

Gifts for children...

Gifts for co-workers (on the occasion of weddings, funerals, etc.)...

Other expenses...

One of the most important is the educational function of the family, since both adults and children are brought up in the family, and accumulated social experience is passed on to children in it.

The family, as a rule, determines the nature of the use of free time.

Family leisure includes: watching TV; reading, meeting with relatives, friends and acquaintances, visiting libraries, theaters, concert halls and cinemas, spending holidays together, excursions, walks in nature, playing sports, etc.

There is no escape from the fact that sexual relations, which are a potential source of fertility, have gone beyond the boundaries of marriage; this led to the emergence of an illegitimate family. Extramarital affairs actually arise when a woman and a man enter into sexual relations, which may be accompanied by different interests and intentions. In our country there is a procedure for recognizing and establishing paternity for children born out of wedlock. Thus, the law recognizes a family consisting of parents and children even in cases where there was no officially registered marriage. The state provides support to any family, including extramarital ones. Let us emphasize that recognition and support of an extramarital family has nothing to do with justification free love.

The area of intimate relationships in a person’s life is not regulated by law. And as long as the extramarital union of a man and a woman does not lead to the birth of children, it has no legal significance.

The reasons for the appearance of an extramarital family: 1) wars and epidemics, 2) gender disproportion, E) emigration of mainly men in search of work to European and Asian countries, 3) the presence of convicts.

A long-term extramarital union between a man and a woman who do not intend to formally consummate the marriage is called concubinage. Concubinage is a form of extramarital union on which, even without legal intervention, a stable family can be built, fulfilling all three of its social functions: biological, cultural and economic.

In recent years, the United States has seen a return to the “chaste family,” in which, of course, the fear of AIDS played a role. AIDS is considered a kind of retribution for the departure from traditional family. So today the world has turned to the chaste family. In Sweden, for example, in 1987, 65 percent of girls under 20 had not had sexual intercourse, 61 percent of Swedes believe that sex is possible with permanent partner. Unfortunately, our country lags behind both in stabilizing family relationships and in promoting chastity.

American family scientists N. Stinney and D. Defrain, based on a survey in which more than 3,000 American families participated, recognized that to create a strong family you need to know 6 “secrets.”

1. Caring for each other. This is a decisive moment for the success of any family, requiring an investment of time, effort, and heart. Family members do everything possible to ensure the well-being and happiness of loved ones.

2. Spend time together. When 1,500 children were asked what they thought made a strong family, money, cars and nice houses were not on their list. They simply replied: “Do everything together.” It doesn't matter what you do, it matters that you do it together. After all, there is always something that the whole family can do. To achieve mutual understanding in the family, you should not waste time on joint affairs.

3. Respect. Feeling respected and valued by others is one of the basic human needs. It is necessary, according to many, to focus on the positive.

4. Communication. Psychologists believe that communication helps bring families together and makes it easier to cope with disappointments and crises. IN strong families They believe that real communication does not come immediately, it must become a habit gradually.

5. Spiritual health. Members of strong families radiate warmth in everyday life. There are certain values: honesty, responsibility and patience.

6. Overcoming crises. And strong families have problems, but they are able to overcome them. This requires focusing on the positive, the art of communication, and spiritual resources. The important thing is to realize that you are needed by others.