Family strategies of the population of the Republic of Belarus

The accelerated pace of social change characteristic of modern society entailed significant transformation of the entire social life. The growing influence of information technology, the shift of labor activity towards the service sector, the accelerating pace of the social life, high mobility result in changes in the organization of an individual’s life and individuals themselves. The family, being an open sub-system of a wider social system, is in constant interaction with it, which makes it more difficult to study possible areas family transformations. The purpose for the article is to identify basic strategies of the population of the Republic of Belarus in the sphere of family relations and analyze their differences among urban and rural population. The review of the subject field reproducing the features of the transformation processes of the family institution helps distinguish three aspects of transformation: functional, structural, and value. The article focuses on the value aspect which reflects the general social significance of a family and family values of individuals. Such analytical separation based on factor and cluster analysis has helped identify four major strategies of respondents’ behavior in the sphere of family relations determining the direction of the process of family transformation in the Belarusian society. Urban residents are focused on professional fulfilment and harmonious combination of career and family, while rural residents find family values more important. A significant number of rural residents are disappointed with family and professional sphere. Parenthood is viewed in more detail - as a family value vital to the country’s population. Based on cluster analysis, we identify two areas which organize the respondents’ basic educational impacts: focus on the child, development of child’s personality and the “formal” approach which focuses on the implementation of the “procedural” side of education. Attention to the value aspect of family transformation provides deeper understanding of the nature of the ongoing changes and contributes to the development of effective measures of the family policy taking into account the variety of behavioral strategies.