Reproductive attitudes of young families: driving forces and implementation conditions (on the basis of in-depth interviews)

Promoting population reproduction is one of the key tasks from the standpoint of ensuring national security. In the conditions of aging motherhood, the young family becomes the most important object of demographic policy, since it is a prosperous two-parent family with children that is the main resource of quantitative and qualitative parameters of human capital. The article analyzes reproductive attitudes of young families and the drivers of their implementation. We reveal that, on average, young people are focused on creating a family and having few children. The registered failure to fulfill reproductive intentions (the desired number of children is more than their expected number) is due to the financial and economic situation of the family, the uncertainty (possible risks) of the future, and intra-family relations. The formation of young people's reproductive attitudes largely depends on their parents' example, the quality of child-parent relations and the immediate environment. With a high probability, those raised in a family with few children or those who have no siblings at all may not want to have many children or have children at all. As for children from medium and large families, they may have different views on having children. Reproductive attitudes are linked to marital ones. As a rule, the orientation toward a legitimate happy marriage is reinforced by the desire to have children. A variant of child-centered motives is observed in girls and manifested in the desire “to have a big family and many children”, which somewhat shifts the focus of the priority of intra-family relations. The importance of the housing issue and ensuring a decent standard of living for oneself and one's children is determined by the fact that the unresolved nature of these problems influences the intention to have the first child and reduces the chances of having a few and many children even if they are desirable. State support for young families is needed, despite differences in the estimates of its effectiveness. The difference lies in determining the most desirable mechanisms - it is either direct support in the form of allowances, benefits, etc., or the creation of conditions for raising children (affordable quality social infrastructure) and the possibility of decent earnings for parents. Today, a young family needs state support, and, undoubtedly, the needs of young families should be taken into account in the national demographic policy.