Психология и социология /14. Кадровый менеджмент

К.ф.н. Игебаева Ф.А.

Башкирский государственный аграрный университет, Россия

The relationship of demographic development of the city

and the stability in the family

It should be noted that a city is not a closed self-reproducing social and demographic system. One of urban population reproduction characteristics is its rather unstable demographic structure. If in rural settlements proportion of younger and elderly people has been the same for many years, in urban areas depending on their size, location, age, rates of economic growth, indicators of demographic development are considerably different.

Higher dynamics of social and demographic structure of a city is sure to result in distortions in the ratio of gender and age groups. It, in turn, has an effect on lifestyle of population as many young people having no wedded partners cannot get married thus reducing marriage and birth rates in the city. It goes without saying, sooner or later there will be married couples but the optimum grooms and brides age difference will be broken. According to studies harmony relations in a family mostly depend on an age ratio between a wife and a husband. According to some family researchers age difference between spouses must be 4-6 years [1, с.35].

The optimum age difference of spouses is dependent on both biological and social reasons. Women live longer but grow old earlier while social maturity of men comes later (years of studies, service in the army delay their independent life). Therefore if the early marriage of women is somehow well taken, early marriages of men aren’t approved at all. The situation when husband is much older than his wife or wife is older than her husband mostly ends up with disharmony in sexual life, and as a result, disharmony in family life in general. Disharmony in spouse relations is generated by social factors as well as physiological growth of partners. Sexual distress in marriage arises from internal reasons, however sexuality is sure to be one of the main values of marriage.

Female dominance in a city population structure brings in another very important moral result: considerable number of men gets married for the second or next time to younger women who haven’t been married before. For example, according to the statistics data in Bashkortostan the second and next marriage were entered by 12-14% of men and only 9-10% of women [2, с.82]. If you take into consideration the fact that in next marriage men mostly (about 35-40%) get younger women while divorced women very seldom get wedded to men who haven’t been married before, it becomes obvious that gender disproportion turns to the so-called men polygamy. It is also due to the fact that the increasing number of divorced women and men do not enter other officially registered marriage but live with their partners outside marriage. It is proved by population censuses data with more married women than married men. Difference is explained by the fact that unmarried women consider themselves married and neither do their partners. Besides, it must be taken into account that men become single twice rare (annually about 300 thousand men get widowers in the country) than women and no more than 1/3 of men whose marriage broke up last year enter another marriage. Recently the number of unmarried men is known to be growing (both legally and in practice).

It should be also noted that “bending” of the demographic structure of the urban population, violation of its proportions by sex and age, generates a specific social phenomenon as “arivalry” of girls and women in creating wedlocks. If we add to that part of the women, who are doomed to be unmarried due to the lack of marriage partners those ones who are divorced and not re-married, we get a large proportion of female population that falls out of the process of reproduction of new generations. Meanwhile “excess” of unmarried women has a psychological impact on fragile families, creates additional conditions for adultery, it reduces the level of claims to potential male partners. In particular, divorces that easily occur in cities can be explained by not only the simplified procedure of divorce, but also by psychological confidence in a choice for another spouse. So, in big cities divorced men have chances to get marry again three times higher than women. To a certain extent women “rivalry” as a result of less marriage opportunities stimulates extramarital affairs and adulterate children [3, с.141].

Among measures to improve and control population reproduction and family development there must be those of ideological as well as social and psychological character. Our research of different families showed that as far as material wants are met moral and psychological factors in the life of a man and the family become more important. Developing preferences on the number of children in the family, ways to spend free time, communication modes, spouse expectations and claims are moving towards mental and moral realm. Particularly lower stability, destabilization of family relationships in some part of the population can be due to new values that somehow break family values. We claim that these values are both real and fabulous and they are developed not only at the expense of the state but mass common sense. Here arises need for special measures to influence social mind to make it healthy and draw attention of state and public organizations to the problem of the family and population reproduction. Awareness campaign with the help of mass media to inform people about the population, family, children education, indirect influence on public opinion, moral norms and ideals by law enforcement institutes are a part of methods and means to do to develop public opinion in agreement with the demographic policy conducted in our country.

References:

1. Vasil’eva E., 2001. Semia i ee phunktsii. Demographo-statistichesky analiz - Family and its functions. Demographic and statistical analysis. Moscow, Nauka Publ., 2001, - Р. 246.

2. Demograficheskie protsessy v Respublike Bashkortostan. 2012. Stat. Sbornik [Demographic processes in the republic of Bashkortostan. 2012. Collected statistics], 83 p.

3. Igebaeva F., 2013. Way of life of the city family and factors of its destabilization.

Sotsial'no-politicheskie nauki [Social and political sciences], 2013. No.1, pp.140 - 142.