Nechaeva N.A. New Importance of Family and intergenerational Relations for Russia and China. In: New Importance of family and Intergenerational Relations for Russia and China. St Petersburg, “Renome”. P. 114-141.

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Abstract

This chapter examines the transformation of youths’ ideas about gender and family-marriage relations based on a conducted study. The transformation is slow, heterochronic and somewhat controversial in several aspects. Marriage and family remain a significant life goal for young people. Compared to the old social norm of marriage being more important to the woman rather than the man, gender norms for today’s youth are blurring. To them having a family is just as crucial for a man as it is for a woman. Factor analysis determined two typologies of marriage attitudes among modern youth. The first one is dominated by the psychological and emotional side of the relationship. One-third of students are prioritizing honest and sincere relationships and a lasting marriage with only one-tenth disregarding feelings. The core of the second typology is the official and rational aspect of marriage. The ideas are polarized. More than a quarter of them are convinced of the necessity of registering different aspects of their relationships and about the same percentage completely disagrees with that notion. Gender roles, especially the female-specific ones, are slowly shifting. Half of today’s youth consider being a mother a woman’s main purpose in life, but one-third, while not negating that role, recognizes a profession as that purpose. The “head of the household” role is losing its grip but there is still a desire (mainly among women) of having a man be  the provider in the family. Overall from 1996 up to 2008 the vector of change in gender patterns among youth has been headed towards the destruction of traditional patriarchal ideas about family and the spread of egalitarian views on the matter. Currently, there is a so-called backward wave of a shift towards the strengthening of traditional patriarchal views on the man’s and woman’s places in the family.

Content (in russ)