What kind of families are there?

The question of classification, family typology, on the one hand, is very important, because the presence of such a classification makes it easier for a person to find "oneself" in countless families to borrow experience of organizing life, by analogy with them, most successfully solve their problems. But, on the other hand, it is very complicated. Until now, there is not even a more or less generally accepted typology of personality, and the family is an education even more complicated, because it not only unites several different personalities, but also uses different forms, systems of connections, relations between them. Therefore, a strict family typology is still out of the question, but the first classifications or, at any rate, attempts at differentiation of the family in modern science about the family are already being undertaken. In particular, families are distinguished by such parameters:

According to married spouses' family experience. Here the following families distinguish: a) the family of the newlyweds. This is a newly born family, the family in the "honey period", which lasts for different people different times. Typical for such a family is a state of euphoria: they have not yet dissolved rainbow dreams, hopes and plans, often divorced from reality. They still have everything ahead of them, they understand everything, everything is simple for them, the first obstacles, of course, are already noticeable, but they are "easily overcome", because "maybe someone will help," "maybe it will be solved by itself."And they are still quite sure that together with him( with her) they can turn mountains.

b) Young family-the next stage( in some in six months-a year, and in others much earlier, if the "honey" period is reduced).This is a family that has come up against the first, though theoretically known, but for them unexpected obstacles. Here the spouses suddenly discover from their own experience that one love is not enough, that more is needed so that he( she) has more kindness, compliance, caring, tactfulness so that he( she) shows proper attention to her( his) parents, relatives, close. Some actions of the spouse sharply wound, reduce the warmth of the attitude towards him, give rise to resentment towards him. There are first quarrels, the desire to change, remake it( her), eliminate too obvious flaws, "lapping of characters" begins, and the spouses are increasingly getting each other's small, but rather painful clicks of self-esteem. C) A family waiting for a child. At this stage a young family is rising, waiting for the first-born. At this time, the spouse usually changes noticeably, and the future father becomes unrecognizable. It is like returning the very first period of courtship of future spouses, but already at a new stage. Caring young husband in relation to his wife knows no boundaries. Of course, in some families it also happens in a different way, but in most families the husband does just that. And this attitude is necessary at this time of the future mother and child. D) A family of middle matrimonial age( from three to ten years of cohabitation).This is perhaps the most dangerous, responsible period in her life. Because it is in these years that there is boredom, monotony, stereotypedness in the relationships of spouses, conflicts are erupting and for the specified period, most divorces in our country occur. E) The family of the oldest married age( ten to twenty years of marital status).The morally-psychological well-being of the spouses at this stage largely depends on the wealth of their personalities, mutual concessions, the coincidence of needs, interests. E) Older married couples. This kind of family arises after the marriage of their children, the appearance of grandchildren. Spouses are included in the new roles of grandparents, master new functions in the family. Their interests are increasingly shifted to their grandchildren.

In terms of the number of children, the following types of families are distinguished: a) childless( or infectile) families, where a child has not appeared for ten years of cohabitation. In our country there are about sixteen percent of the total number of families. And one percent of them remain childless for medical and biological reasons, the rest because of unwillingness to have children. Every third family from this group disintegrates, most often on the initiative of men. However, this is not necessarily due to the fact that there are no children, but mainly due to dissonance in the relationships of the spouses.

B) Single-child families. Such families in the cities are 53.6 percent, and in the village - 38-41.1 percent. Of these families, about every second disintegrates. However, one can not say that these families break up because they have only one child. On the contrary, the family is limited to only one child, as the spouses are convinced or simply believe that they will not be able to live together for a long time and therefore do not risk acquiring another child. But if such a family is preserved, then its pedagogical capabilities, the conditions for growth, development of the child are usually not favorable enough. From a one-child family, people often develop well-developed intellectually and information-rich, but very impaired in terms of moral, psychological and communicative. Many psychologists and sociologists note that these people have irresponsibility, lack of diligence, individualism, lack of will, and often egocentrism, inability to maintain normal relations with people.

c) A small child family( a family with one or two children).The stability of the family with the birth of a second child in comparison with a one-child increases, according to observations of sociologists, more than three times. If every single couple is divorced in a single-child, then only every sixth-seventh family.

d) A large family is now considered to be a family with three or more children. In this type of family, divorce is already extremely rare, and if it happens sometimes, it is only because of the economic or moral-psychological insolvency of the husband. This, perhaps, is quite natural: after all, this family from the very beginning was distinguished by the spouses' confidence in each other, in their family future, which allowed her to have many children. And a lot of children, in turn, had a binding effect on the family. Naturally, the main merit here belongs to a woman, wife, mother( apparently, it was not for nothing that the title of the hero fathers was not introduced), and, presumably, not the majority of women are now capable of the feat of having many children.

According to the composition of the family, these varieties are distinguished: a) part-time family - when there is only one parent with children in the family( most often a single mother).This occurs either as a result of the death of one of the spouses, or as a result of divorce, but often as a result of the extramarital birth of the child, or even the adoption by a single woman of another's child. This type of family in the social plan, perhaps, is the least effective. Children here spend a lot of time away from home while their mother is at work, and 50 percent of offenders are from these families. At the same time, the children growing up in these families are characterized by great independence, sensitivity, responsiveness, and emotionality. As a rule, they begin their working life earlier.

b) Separate, simple( or nuclear) family( from the word nucleus - the nucleus).It is formed by spouses with or without children, living separately from parents and other relatives. They have complete independence and, therefore, organize their lives in the way they want themselves( more often than not).Here the best conditions for self-expression, manifestation of abilities, personal qualities of each of the spouses are created. However, since among these qualities there are not only positive, but also negative, in nuclear families it is often possible to meet excessive incontinence and self-confidence, negligence of spouses in relation to each other. And so quarrels here, under certain conditions, can, starting from any trifle, grow uncontrollably and bring the family to a serious crisis and even collapse.

c) Complex family( it is called still extended) - consists of representatives of several generations. Now, submitted to sociological research, up to 70 percent of young spouses under the age of 20 live in such families. Of the older( at the age of 30 and over) in such families live only 20-25 percent, and even then only with the parent of one of the spouses. Families, including two married couples, there are only five percent.

In such a family, life is better established, young people tend to have more free time, rarely there are big quarrels over various trifles. Here, each family member is usually more attentive to the opinion of other family members. Emerging quarrels are usually extinguished in the very bud with the help of senior family members who try to reconcile spouses. And even the very presence of an outsider, the third, makes you behave a little differently than face to face with "his".

At the same time, such families often face the issue of a "divorce" with their parents - because of the interference of some of them in the lives of their children, petty custody of them, strict control, and also because of the natural desire of the youth for independence, and thenand because of the unhappiness of one of the spouses.

d) A large family consisting of three or more married couples( for example, a parent couple, and a few children with their families).In the European part of our country, such families are now extremely rare even in rural areas. They also usually have less quarrels, open conflicts between spouses. Here, all members of the family, as a rule, have fairly clearly defined responsibilities with respect to the whole family, spontaneously develops the order of execution of certain family affairs, etc. But one thing is that there are few such families, a modern person who is overloaded with forcedcommunication in the workplace and on the street, they are not suitable.

According to the type of leadership, family management distinguishes two main types of family. The first of these is an egalitarian( equitable) family. According to sociological surveys, we have about 60-80 percent of these( depending on the region, on national and other characteristics of people) of the total number of families. Most of all, they are common in large cities. The distribution of household duties is carried out democratically, depending on who gets a better job, in sense of responsibility, duty. The struggle for power usually does not happen, because the spouses are family-oriented, have common values ​​and do not seek to command each other.

The second version is the authoritarian family , based on the unquestioning obedience of one member of the family to another. Of the total mass of families, according to some data, one-sixth of the members are matriarchy-type families( with a woman at the head), and one-eighth - patriarchal type, with male superiority. Families of this type are often torn apart by the struggle for power or "rebellions of slaves", and are therefore full of all sorts of conflicts, most often of small, "local" significance. But among them there are also quite "peaceful" families, when the "subordinate", "slave" quite suits his role, when he is a person without initiative, independent, "controlled from outside" by nature, insecure. The least stable among authoritarian families are families in which the head is the wife.

According to family life, family way of life, the family's orientations are formed depending on the orientation of the spouses' personality, on the values ​​that they prevail over all the others. According to surveys of sociologists, from 80 to 82 percent of people believe that the best qualities of the

family man are manifested primarily and mainly in relation to their loved ones, to family members, and especially to children. Health, development, education, and upbringing of children lie at the center of the aspirations of many families. Type of families in which this orientation of the spouses, the sociologist, prevails. N. Obozov called detocentric families.(A typical example of such a family can serve as the famous "experimental" Nikitin family).

At the same time, a significant part of the population of our country is made up of people who see the meaning of the family in creating the warmth for its members( according to E.K. Vasilieva, 45 percent of the respondents noted this factor).The family gives people the opportunity to communicate with relatives, people close to the spirit, moral and emotional support, peace of mind, consolation in difficult times. This, in the terminology of AN Obozov, is a family-vent. In such a family, sensitivity, trust of relationships prevail. Here, maybe, and not always you can see the most delicious dinner, and the order in the rooms is not always the most ideal. But here the main attention is paid primarily to the spiritual comfort of family members.

A little less than 37 percent of those surveyed by sociologists see the main quality of the family man in helping and participating in household chores. The focus here is health, nutrition of family members, correct mode of work and rest, "maritime order", accuracy, cleanliness in the apartment, adherence to all recommendations of medical and other popular science magazines on a healthy lifestyle.

Finally, there is another type of family that seems to be more like a sports team or a discussion club, or maybe an informal group. The members of this family usually have quite clearly expressed inattention, disdain for "everyday trifles", for every "order", curtains and rugs there. And food here is far from being the object of worship, worship. But here everything is fun, interesting, there is no monotony. This is a family of bivouac type, its members travel a lot and on foot, and on bicycles with backpacks behind, and in organized tourist trips. Members of such a family usually know a lot, they know, they have time to see much, and they constantly put forward and discuss new plans for travel, trips to a regular holiday or even on holidays and weekends.

By the homogeneity of the social composition, two types of families are distinguished. The first type is socially homogeneous( homogeneous) families. According to sociological surveys, about 70 percent of the total number of families we have. In these families, both husband and wife and their parents belong to the same layers of society: for example, they are all workers, or all employees, or all are people of art, etc. Belonging to one cultural and professional stratum provides for better mutual understanding betweenspouses, and between them and their parents, because the atmosphere in such families is usually calm, benevolent, the management of the family is democratic, egalitarian and there are fewer divorces. But this same community of origin, interests, professions, places of work sometimes prevents people from disconnecting from the production problems in the family after a day's work.

The second type is socially heterogeneous( heterogeneous) families. They number, submitted the same studies, about 30 percent of the total mass of families. Spouses in them have a different education, different professions, the general interests of the production plan are usually much smaller. Egalitarian relations are less common here, authoritarian ones predominate. Yes, and with the parents of each of the spouses, relations usually develop slowly. At the same time, there is a very high social or, more precisely, family activity, the desire for self-education of spouses is often observed, because the unevenness of the educational level stimulates the "lagging", and even the "advanced", "overtaking" often encourages self-improvement. The quality of relations in the family is distinguished by many types, but there is no clear difference between them. In particular, families are distinguished: a) happy, happy, which, according to L.N. Tolstoy, all "are alike", although he himself miraculously depicted two completely different happy families( Pierre with Natasha Rostova and Maria Volkonskaya withNikolay Rostov);b) stable;c), problematic( there is often no mutual understanding, cooperation between family members, and therefore often there is a cold psychological atmosphere, quarrels and conflicts break out);d) conflict, where family members are not satisfied with their family life, and because these families are unstable and pedagogically very weak;d) Socially unsuccessful, in which the cultural level of the spouses is usually low, drinking is widespread, the children leaving these families often constitute the main contingent of hard-to-educate, pedagogically neglected adolescents. And, finally, f) disorganized families where the cult of strength flourishes, the dominant feeling is fear, each member of the family lives by itself, there are almost no normal human contacts between them. In 90 percent of these families, children usually have deviant behavior.

According to the type of consumer behavior, families are distinguished: a) with a physical bias, where in the first place are usually the problems of biological existence - food, clothes occupy all the interests of family members, not from its poverty, but from the level of significance for them of these values;b) with an intellectual type of behavior - these families can not differ at all from the first type of family in material security, they can not boast of well-being of everyday life, but their members prefer to have a good book more often than a tasty dish or some prestigious garment. The most common type of family, perhaps, is widespread, c) a mixed family in which interests, material and even physiological needs are harmoniously combined with spiritual and cultural interests; in any case, there is no apparent domination of some over others.

Finally, families also share the special conditions of family life. On this basis, in particular: a) student families( by the way, now in about every third marriage in our country, at least one of the spouses is a student).The peculiarity of such a family is the lack of housing for young spouses, a chronic lack of money, almost complete material dependence on parents. At the same time, these families are characterized by great cohesion, activity, and emotionality. Usually these are the most progressive families, they firmly believe in a better future, the spouses are ready to absorb everything new - in the organization of everyday life, in cooking, in the organization of family life, etc. Material motives for choosing a spouse in such families usually play a very weak role( especially with regard to the demands on the husband by the wife).B) Distant families. They have already been mentioned above, when it was about the existence of marriage without a family. We have about four percent of such families, that is, about every twenty-fifth family belongs to this type. These are, for example, the families of sailors, polar explorers, artists, geologists, large athletes, cosmonauts, etc. Here the family is largely nominal, as the spouses do not live together most of the time. There is much more danger of marital infidelity and the collapse of the family on this basis. Although sometimes such families, on the contrary, are extremely stable. The fact is that they also have their advantages: spouses in such families have a longer freshness of feeling, because it is constantly renewed by periodic separation.

Of course, the above list does not exhaust all the varieties of the family. We did not touch on, for example, the typology of the division of families according to their material security, pedagogical potential and other parameters.