8. Family Problems in Great Britain and Russia

Many people think that there was a golden age in which the world was filled with happy families. The mother ran the house, and the father went out to work to bring back enough money for this ideal family to live on. The family - mother, father and three or four healthy children - would go out for an occasional treat. Roles were very clear for the parents and children. Discipline within the family unit was strong, and moral standards were high.

But in recent years there have been many changes in an "ideal" British family. Some of these have been caused by new laws and others are the result of changes in society. For example, since the law made it easier to get a divorce, the number of divorces has increased. In fact one marriage in every three now ends in divorce. This means that there are a lot of one-parent families.

In the majority of one-parent families it is the mother who is the single parent. A lone parent with a well-paid job may be able to pay for a nanny, but this is rare. Around 70% of lone parents rely on state benefits as their main source of income. Women are clearly at a disadvantage in a society where the state assumes a man will be the main breadwinner, and there are few opportunities for lone mothers to earn a good income while continuing to look after their children.

A big problem for working mothers in the UK is the low standard of childcare facilities for pre-school children. Employing a nanny or child-minder to look after children during the day is very expensive. An alternative is child-care centers run by the local council but it is not always easy to get a place there.

However the majority of divorced people marry again and they create stepfamilies. Although stepfamilies look like intact nuclear families - composed of married adults and children living in the same household - they are different in many ways. They are far more complex. They create new roles, such as remained absent parents, stepsiblings, half-siblings and step grandparents. Thus we are witnessing the emergence of a truly new pattern of life, and questions naturally arise. Do stepfamilies work as substitutes for biological families? How will do stepfamilies prepare children to be emotionally healthy, socially adapted, and capable of forming relationships?

Another problem has been caused by the fact that people are living longer nowadays, and many old people live alone after the death of their partners. There are about 10 million old-age pensioners in Britain, of whom about 750 000 can't live entirely independently.

The government gives financial help in the form of a pension but in the future it will be more and more difficult for the national economy to support the increasing number of elderly. At the present time, more than half of all old people are looked after at home. Many others live in Old People's Homes, which may be private or state-owned.

Relationships within the family are different now. Many children are given more freedom when young; when they move away from home, they move earlier (usually at around 18), and go further. People experiment with relationships before committing themselves to marriage and there is greater acceptance of homosexual relationships. In Britain's multicultural society there are many examples of different ways of living.

One might think that traditional family life in Britain is a thing of the past. Whatever the truth is, the family is definitely a powerful symbol, but its nature keeps changing and a great variety of family forms may lead to new families rather than to no families in British society.

It is high time to begin discussing the complicated matter of the family in Russia today and the factors that have had a destabilizing effect on family and marital relations. We must give serious thought to these problems and to the best ways of creating a family policy to deal with them.

The best approach to develop such a policy is in defining certain fundamental principles that should guide the government and society as they seek to improve the health of marital and family relations.

Any family policy for Russia must be realistic. There are many factors influencing the stability of families and marriages - material security, living conditions, state support, alcoholism etc. We must identify and focus on those that bend themselves to some sort of action.

It would be senseless, for instance, to pull all one's energy and resources into trying to improve the demographic situation in Russia - the ratio of men to women - which, though a true hindrance to marriage, belongs to the broad sphere of social policy. It would be far more realistic to concentrate on creating an explicit system of privileges, benefits, improved living conditions, day-care, kindergartens and the like designed to promote the family.

All families must be made to understand that they can no longer count on state aid expert in the most difficult and desperate situations. This harsh attitude is the only way to rid ourselves of the psychology of social dependence that has been cultivated in Russia over the last 80 years. To this end, we should increase the number of jobs and provide retraining opportunities for displaced workers. We must also advocate socially desirable models of family survival and develop a fair tax policy and special social programs that are specifically intended to support families.

Questions:

1. What was the perception of an "ideal" family life?

2. Are all families necessarily composed of a husband, a wife, and their children?

3. Please, speak on the problems of one-parent families.

4. What problems docs a stepfamily face?

5. What are the problems of old people living alone?

6. Please, describe the contemporary relationships within the family.

7. What are the predictions of the family system in Great Britain?

8. What factors effect marital and family relations in Russia today?

9. How do you think the demographic situation in Russia can be improved to meet the demands of our society?

10. What are the functions of the family in modem society?

11. Speak about your family, your parents and kin viewing them from the sociological perspective.