The complexity of the demographic situation in contemporary Russia determines the relevance of the analysis of factors that determine the reproductive behavior of modern youth. The aim of the study is to analyze the features of value orientations, attitudes regarding parenthood and childbearing, as well as barriers to realize students’ reproductive intentions planning to have a different number of children.
The paper shows that young people planning to have one child are characterized by a typical competition of needs between individual values of well-being and the presence of children, contributing to their perception of various kinds of instability (economic crises, pandemic, lockdown) as a sufficient condition for refusing (or postponing) the birth of subsequent children based on the materials of the applied pilot sociological study “Children in a Modern Family”, conducted by the Institute of Agrarian Problems of RAS in May 2022. They are characterized by maximum demands on the state system of social support for families with children. Young people planning to have two children are characterized by typical normative attitudes and stereotypes, high value of family and children and perception of them as an important sphere of individual life, are largely oriented to the search for effective mechanisms for the realization of individual life goals and their coordination with the goals of family lifestyle. The planned large number of children, more often characteristic of natives of rural areas, is associated with a high value of the family way of life, child-centeredness, traditionality in the succession of generations, orientation to life in rural areas and employment in agriculture. The research results justify the development and implementation of a differentiated set of interventions for different groups of young people to minimize refusals of future parenthood
Keywords
reproductive intentions, reproductive attitudes, youth, attitudes toward children, parenthood, sociological study