Family as a value in the consciousness of contemporary Polish women

This paper aims at an analysis of the meaning of family as a value in the consciousness of contemporary Polish women. Main results of empirical research carried out as a part of a PhD dissertation entitled "Preferences of the normative orders in women's attitudes towards values in Poland at the turn of 20th and 21st century" have been presented. The article consists of five parts, first of which deals with the rank of family declared by the interviewed women. The second part concerns motherhood as the aspect of family life and, as the research revealed, the separate and crucial value for the significant number of women. For many of them being a mother is much more important than any other social role: wife, employee, student, etc. This fact refers to culture patterns and gender identity. The third part of the text is about the relations between family and professional career. The empirical study enabled observation of the main differences in life priorities in consecutive life-stages. The fourth part of the article focuses on the different ways in which women define some notions like "happy family" or "success". The fifth chapter deals with components of life-styles which indicate different systems of values and different models of family life