Burmykina O.N. Intergenerational relationships in changing social and family contexts. In: Russian family and children's welfare: [monograph] ...

Abstract

Intergenerational family relationships are one of the main factors that support the stability of the family itself as a social institution and a small group; they perform an essential function - the transmission of values ​​from generation to generation, ensuring the cultural continuity of society and the socialization of young people, as well as the adaptation of traditional norms to the new reality and perception by the older generation of the skills demanded by the present. The cardinal changes in the family that occur with this institution, on the one hand, are caused by social transformations, both global and the transformations of Russian society, on the other hand, they are conditioned by their own laws. An indicator of the evolutionary changes of the family, including the relations between its generations, is both the increasing differentiation of types and models and their simultaneous existence in modern society. In other words, the family and intergenerational family interactions are those spheres of life in which traditionality and continuity are preserved, and at the same time they are open to new things. Intergenerational interactions in the family are transformed, becoming diverse and problematic at the same time, but they do not lose their significance. The mechanisms of these transformations are based on changes in the intergenerational demography of the family and in the technological context, as well as the nature of family relations and intrafamily interactions. The aim of this study was to study changes in intergenerational family relationships over the past decades. The tasks consisted of examining intergenerational relationships in changing social - demographic and technological - and family contexts, which included studying the influence of fundamental trends in family development and determining the specifics of the transformation of intergenerational interactions. The empirical base was made up of materials from official statistics and statistical surveys; secondary data from sociological research and data from our own research conducted in St. Petersburg over the past two decades.

Content (in russ)