Peculiarities of Youngsters’ Attitudes Towards Family And Marriage

Recent researches have shown that family is not a publicly condemned phenomenon. Various changes are influenced by the epoch, political regime, and financial and spiritual environment we live in. The present master’s theses „Peculiarities of Youngsters’ Attitudes Towards Family And Marriage“ is aimed at revealing the modern youngsters’ views on family and marriage and on family virtues. The tasks of the research are the following: 1. To establish pupils and students’ attitudes towards family and marriage. 2. To highlight peculiarities of relations with parents. 3. To reveal the impact of mass media and press on youngsters’ attitudes towards family and marriage. 4. To draft certain suggestions and recommendations for secondary and high school teachers. The first part of the research paper is concerned with the analysis of scientific pedagogical, psychological, sociological and methodological literature. The author endeavours to define the notion of a family, its functions and theoretical aspects of marriage together with some observations of changes of contemporary family and growing tendencies of illegitimate relations. Mass media, as one of the factors influencing youngsters’ attitude towards family and marriage, is also discussed in the first part and followed by some observations of previous researches of family issues. The second part of the theses paper devotes its attention to methodology and organisation of the research. The research applies diagnostic methods: questioning of pupils and students (qualitative and quantitative), methods of mathematical statistics. The analysis of the results gained displayed a certain ambivalence expressed by the respondents: on the one hand, they express themselves in favour of traditional family, but on the other hand, they do appreciate illegitimate relations. The major factor to influence the youngsters’ views on family, marriage and family relations is mass media, leaving only a trifling per cent to up-bringing institutions, i.e. family and educational institutions. Pupils put family as a virtue in the third place after love and health. Whereas students highlighted education as the major virtue, leaving family behind. As far as the scale of family virtues is concerned, students value mutual understanding, love, faithfulness, fatherhood and motherhood most. About one third of students are satisfied with their family, their parents’ tolerance and friendly relations. However, more than 40 % of the respondents noted that sometimes their parents are being rude with them. The respondents’ evaluations display an emerging tendency of liberal attitudes towards marriage.Švietimo akademijaVytauto Didžiojo universiteta