Abstract. According to surveys by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center for 2012 and 2024, the majority of respondents believe that in an ideal family, a husband and wife should jointly make decisions on important problems and solve them independently, without expecting help from their parents. Women express this opinion more often than men. People who believe that an ideal family should have many children are more likely than other respondents to focus on a more traditional distribution of roles between husbands and wives, as well as help from parents. According to a survey by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center for 2024, 24 % of respondents believe that any member of an ideal family can do what they want, even if it conflicts with the interests of other family members. People born between 1988 and 1994 were between 18 and 24 years old in 2012, and between 30 and 36 years old in 2024. Most of them got married and had to understand that the pursuit of this “selfish ideal” can only lead to the destruction of families. But the share of supporters of this “ideal” among them increased from 21 % to 27 %, and among those born in 2000—2006, who turned 18 to 24 years old in 2024, it was already 50 %. Schools and the media should form the opinion in Russian society that it is better to be members of a large family who help each other than lonely people who no one will take care of when they need it.
Acknowledgments: this work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation under grant № 23-28-00518 “Social construction of life strategies for families with different numbers of children: a socio-demographic studies”, https://rscf.ru/en/project/23-28-00518/.
For citation: Sinelnikov, A. B. (2024) Obshchestvennoe mnenie ob ideal’noĭ sem’e: chislo deteĭ i tip otnosheniĭ mezhdu eё chlenami [Public opinion about the ideal family:
the number of children and the type of relationship between its members], Zhenshchina v rossiĭskom obshchestve, no. 4, pp. 18—34.