Students’ attitude to children and parenting: gender and rural-urban comparisons

Since 2015, Russia has shown signs of a demographic decline, and for the first time in many years, the decline in the birth rate has also affected the countryside. Transformation of marital and family, of reproductive and child-parental orientations extends to all socio-demographic groups of young people, but is internalized in different ways by people from the countryside and urban residents. Among the rural youths, there are more of those who value family and children highly in the system of life orientations, who have traditional ideas about the distribution of gender roles, who are focused on having many children and successful parenting. Rural girls are characterized by maximum reproductive attitudes, child-centric and positively parenting oriented. With a high orientation towards achieving well-being through a successful career and material independence, they are more likely to give birth to the desired number of children due to high social regulation of reproductive behavior, which is typical for rural local community. Urban girls are distinguished by the desire for self-realization in many areas of life that makes them reduce their reproductive orientations despite high normative ideas about children and parenthood. Realization of their reproductive potential lies in developing tools for an effective combination of motherhood and possibilities of individual self-development. Urban youths represent the group least interested in family and children. Among them, there is a high proportion of those inclined to consider children financially and morally costly, they are characterized by minimal reproductive attitudes. Thus, measures are needed to prevent consolidation of such attitudes and expansion of orientations towards childlessness. It is concluded that it is necessary to develop state family policy tools that take into account, on the one hand, the specific needs and preferences of different socio-demographic groups of young people, and on the other hand, that are aimed at harmonizing individual interests of potential parents’ self-development and demographic goals of the development of Russian society.

attitude towards children, parenthood, youth, sociological studies