By Yuliya YAKUBOVA,
Ukrainian Institute of Social Studies
A long-term sociological survey dubbed The Young Family of Ukraine in the 1990s was launched by the Ukrainian Institute of Social Studies in 1994 and will continue until 2015. Since 1994, 2000 young couples in 11 regions have been polled. The survey findings hows that 60% of the young families live with parents or relatives, 10% rent an apartment, and 6% reside in hostels. Only a one-fifth of the respondents have an apartment or house of their own.
The picture is pretty much the same concerning young families’ incomes. As a rule, its living standards begin to worsen during the first years of marital life, because the spouses cannot afford the level of comfort they had before marriage. More often than not, “gifts” by parents make up 50% of their family budget. And this can last for years with only slight reductions in the size of assistance which eventually makes the young marriage partners totally dependent financially on his or her (or both) parents. According to the survey, as many as 93% of the young couples appear to live off their parents who provide them with money, food, clothes, and other things. The negative effect of such assistance on the young people’s morals is not long in coming. Some become inactive and irresponsible.
Most young families are trying to improve their financial situation. Thus, 25% of the men and 8% of the women work part-time in addition to their major jobs; 6% and 3% respectively hold two official jobs. A third of spouses own land plots in suburbs or the countryside on which they grow vegetables and fruits; 26% of the young spouses keep cattle and poultry. A small percentage of the young couples (5% of the women and 6% of the men) goes abroad “for consumer goods”. In short, the current economic situation forces young people to supplement their earnings.
Financial and daily life problems prove to be a major cause of family crises. At the beginning of the survey, one third of the respondents said that they had been quite happy in their family life and had no conflicts. Two years later, only 10% were satisfied with their marriage. A third of the respondents who experienced marital discord complained that fights were usually caused by a lack of decent housing, unsatisfactory living conditions, parental meddling, and incessant financial problems. Fatigue (33%), fights over what should be the female and male roles in the family and how housework should be divided between the spouses (22%), alcohol abuse (15%), carelessness by the man in his duties as a husband and father (13%), and a loveless marriage (2%) were also named as the causes of marital discord.
The studies of the answers provided by the female and male respondents have revealed a difference in their understanding of family values:
* marriage is more important to women than to men;
* women tend to be more open and sincere in marital relations than men;
* women tend to idealize marriage, and that is why they are the ones who suffer more when their expectations fail to come true;
* husbands appear to be more ambitious than their wives in pursuing success outside of the marital world, especially in their occupations;
* husbands are usually overcritical and judgemental about the way their wives keep house;
* in comparison with the women, men show more common sense during family conflicts, whereas women often go to extremes, being either dictatorial or submissive.
The steadily decreasing birth rate is a factor in this country. Only 6% of young families have two children. The overwhelming majority (62%) has one child, and almost a third (29%) no children at all. When asked how many children they would like to have, respondents produced quite opposite answers: the number of young couples who wanted to have two children was as high as 67%, 24% said they wanted only one child, and 5% were planning to have three and more children. High incomes and good living conditions were named by the young couples (45% and 35% respectively) as a necessary condition for having two or more children.
The difficult social and economic situation in the country has resulted in a dramatic fall in the birth rate. There are problems that obstruct the ability of young couples to plan their families. According to the survey data, 23% of the young women have had an abortion, and as a consequence 9% of them cannot have children now. Ten percent of women refused to answer this question. 22% of young couples complained that a low level of knowledge about contraceptive methods and techniques as well as the insufficient quantity of contraceptives (18%) contribute greatly to the increasing number of abortions.
The economic difficulties Ukraine is living through is forcing the government to give priority to the young couples’ most essential needs such as paying wages regularly and providing them with housing. The awareness is high in this society that young families have to be provided, besides a proper legal, financial and social support, also with adequate and timely psychological counseling. According to the survey, 35% of the couples polled need the assistance of a psychiatrist, 33% need a therapist’s advice, 17% seek professional legal help, 17% need advice of a sex counselor, and 7% of an instructor.






