Criteria for selecting a partner in modern society: ethnological aspect

The paper builds on the ethno-sociological approach to family formation patterns and change tendencies. Rapid and fundamental political, social and economic changes over the recent decades have led to significant changes in family types and relationships in Lithuania. The issue of a diverse range of family and cohabitation types, which undermine the traditional family, are widely debated in the discourse of the official media. The paper seeks to identify the characteristics of and changes in the family types, to contribute to the analysis of the destruction of the traditional family and cultural values in contemporay Lithuania. The goal of the paper is to investigate the criteria males and females use for selecting a partner that lead to cohabitation or marriage in modern society. The objectives are: to identify the physical and moral characteristics (ideal/real) of a desirable partner for meeting/dating; to overview the criteria for selecting a marriage partner; to analyze the reasons for family formation or cohabitation, to define the model of the modern family. The research draws on scientific literature and works of various theorists and on the ethnographic survey designed by the author and carried out in 2014–2015 in Western Lithuania. The survey sample: 75 females and 75 males of the Lithuanian nationality, aged 25 (average). The descriptive and comparative methods were used, the collected data were processed using SPSS and interpreted. The research showed that nowadays, despite a diverse range of family types and the egalitarian model of family formation, the traditional family and the main family and cultural values remain the ideal in modern society. On the other hand, changes in family formation are an integral part of the modernization process. An increasing popularity of online dating, building the image of an ideal partner by the image of a pop culture icon, disappearing boundaries between the traditional concepts of femininity and masculinity show that mass media has a huge impact on partnership and family formation. The research showed that even in consumer culture love remains the main driver behind family formation, be it late marriage or cohabitation. Cohabiting couples tend to dissolve their relationship quickly