Экономическое поведение семьи

A family as a subsystem of the society

The essence of the term “family” demands a close attention and research. On the one hand, family is a complex social formation, which is in a tight connection with other social institutions. On the other hand perceiving family as a small social group is determined by the regularities of formation, functioning and disintegration of family as an independent social unit.

The family is generally regarded as an important social institution and a locus of person's social activity. It is a social unit created by blood, marriage or adoption, and it can be described as nuclear or extended [2].

Most modern families take one of two forms: nuclear or blended. The nuclear family is a family group consisting of a mother and a father and their children. The second most common type of family is a blended family, which a family group is created by remarriage that includes stepparents or stepsiblings or both.

Functionally arguments related to defining the family are most often dependent on one's paradigm of social interaction and one's purpose in defining the term. Thus, perspectives on what constitutes family vary greatly. The family becomes what the individual or the researcher perceives it to be depending on the purpose for which this term is being used. In defining family, there are often vigorous discussions contrasting form or process.

In all of the complexity of defining family, however, there is a strong emerging international theme within the scientific community that is based on evidence [3].

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Functional structure reflects the dynamic of family changes on various stages of historical development. Under the term “function”, the family understands the manifestation of subject’s ties to other objects of the society. They are determined out of a subject’s needs and express the direction in activity of family.

The economic functions of family are important for the society. The family is important so that there are its members available for manufacturing and distributing goods and services. Without families in society, there would not be a continuing population to sustain this.

Families are also important for goods and services. Most of production is geared towards families, for they need to be provided with everything. Without consumers, the economy is useless; therefore, families are extremely important for the economy.

With the family as the foundation of society's economic institutions, we see how important it is to support strong work and ethical values, and motivation. Sociologists are especially interested in this as they study and focus on the development and growth of the individual's social structures [4].

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In our work, there will be models presented, that characterize economic behavior of families overcoming social and economic difficulties. The characteristics of economic behavior of families in conditions of social and economic crisis are the following:

Increase of labor activity. Characteristic feature of this strategy of economic behavior is the focus mainly onto labor forces of the family members and onto earnings at the main and the additional working place as well.

Defending one’s labor rights. Representatives of this family group are ready to defend their positions and demand what belongs to them according to their rights.

Partial transfer to the natural economy. It is connected to the increased usage of the piece of land that belongs to the family with a purpose of manufacturing food products for the family needs in case of deterioration of its financial situation.

The use of a family capital. The main characteristic of this strategy is a use of social resources.

Converting of material resources of family. This economic behavior is aimed at the use of available internal material resources of the family that were accumulated. For this behavior strategy, the accumulation or conservation of material resources is not true to type but on the contrary, the use and spending of the resources that leads to the decrease of resource potential of family and to the probable deterioration of present conditions of its being.

Territorial mobility. The reason for potential move to another city or country in this case is the search for higher earnings.

Organization of one’s own business. This behavior is focused on active and maximally effective usage of available economic and social resources of the family.

Passive behavior or lack of strategy. The tenth part of all families chooses a passive type of economic behavior in case of increased poverty risk [1].

Conclusion

In our work, we generalized the existing approaches to the description of economic behavior of families having determined that family is a subsystem of society and it influences its economic development. In its turn, family performing a number of functions reacts to the changes in the society and this affects the changes and transformations of family and its economic behavior.

Researchers and public figures perceive family as a social institution inseparably connected to the society and thus up to a certain degree the society determines functions of the family.

Analyzing the offered models of economic behavior of families, we can make a conclusion that economic behavior can be characterized as active and passive. To the active behavior, the following models relate increase of a labor activity, partial transfer to the natural economy, territorial mobility, creating one’s own business and converting of property resources.

Accordingly, the passive models of economic behavior include the following: defending one’s labor rights, passive behavior and the lack of strategy.