Young people opting for a European life style
This article’s headline is a conclusion that may be drawn from a broad survey of 4,665 senior high school and college students conducted at the request of the State Institute for Family and Youth and funded by a presidential grant. The poll showed that 85% of Ukraine’s young people put education and career before starting a family. Postponing marriage and childbirth until after graduation and acquiring a profession signals a shift to the European system of life values. Eighty-six percent of respondents said they want to continue their education: schoolchildren want to attend college and university, and university undergraduates dream of graduate and doctoral studies. This figure is especially striking against the backdrop of a similar survey conducted in the now distant year of 1983, when a mere 5% wanted to continue their education.
Young people’s attitudes to unskilled work have also undergone a dramatic change: today only 5% plan on earning a living immediately after school, whereas in the 1980s, 50% of young people expressed this intention. The 1983 poll also showed a higher percentage of those wishing to marry and have children. According to Dmytro Dmytruk, winner of a Presidential Grant for Talented Youth, the education boom has been triggered by the growing gap between the salaries pulled down by white-collar and blue-collar workers. Whereas before a school graduate could become, say, a coal miner and earn more than a research fellow, now wages and salaries are in direct proportion to the level of intellect and prestige of the diploma. The specialties that young people are choosing today are ample proof of this: economists top the list, with lawyers hot on their heels. Young people consider these to be the highest-paid professions. Today’s young people also make no secret of their desire to earn money. According to Olha Balakireva, deputy director of the State Institute for Family and Youth, this desire has always existed, but the dual morality of the Soviet era prompted people to hide it. Thus, a pupil would say s/he needed a socially important profession, but in fact s/he would try to find a plum job. Conversely, the young people of today say bluntly that money comes first. In other words, financial success is being gradually “legalized” in the mass consciousness.
Most young people strive to move from a village or a small town to a bigger city. Only 4% of the 22% currently living in the countryside expressed a wish to stay behind. The main factor behind this kind of migrational attitude is, again, the desire to obtain an education and find a high-paying job. Interestingly, Lviv oblast residents showed the highest “rural patriotism,” while those living in Kyiv oblast displayed the deepest affection for big cities.
Most worrysome is a flagging interest in “high” culture. The survey shows that 36% of respondents have not visited an exhibition or a museum; 58%, a theater; 35%, a concert; 44%, a movie theater; and 11% have not read a book over the past year. In the opinion of Tetiana Bondar, field studies sector chief at the Family and Youth Institute, the root cause of this is not so much young people’s indifference to exalted things as financial inaccessibility of most varieties of entertainment. For example, the cheapest movie ticket costs ten hryvnias, a pretty penny for many.
Experts also claim that the low interest in starting a family is the result of the influence of European and US mass culture. Ukrainian youth tend to follow the example of Western film characters, so girls do not want to have children before, let’s say, the heroine of Beverly Hills chooses to do so. Hence, the somewhat paradoxical statistics: young men attach greater importance to marriage and children than young women (9% of the former and 6% of the latter noted that starting a family was their main goal in life). At the same time, being in love is very important for 80% of the fair sex and 67% of males.
It is gratifying to see that 66% of those polled think that indifference to one’s country, history, culture, and language is a very bad thing. In addition, 51% agree that living a poor life in an independent country is better than living an affluent life in a colony. Incidentally, 68% of the 16- and 17-year-olds favor Ukraine’s admission to NATO.
