FAMILY STRUCTURE AND AVERAGE AGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YASINIA HUTSULS SPOUSES IN 20 – 40 YEARS OF THE XXTH CENTURY

Abstract

Based on the available archival sources and scientific literature, this publication presents a review of the family structure between the spouses of the Yasinia Hutsuls in the 20 – the 40s of the last century. The author considers the quantitative indicators of families with and without children, determines the share of complete, incomplete families and singles, outlines the number of families by generation. He also analyzes his ethnographic data collected in 2015, comparing the data reflected in them and those available from archival documents. Along with this, a family structure comparison and its constituent elements, which are affected by the study, taking data from the previous historical period - the end of the XIXth – the first two decades of the XXth century and 1970 – the 1980s in order to trace the influence of the two world wars on the object of study. Using the mathematical analysis method, the author conducts a study of fluctuations in the average age difference between husband and wife in 20 – 40 years, based primarily on the available archival data from the State Archives of the Transcarpathian region correlating them with the available ethnographic data. The average age difference between married couples, the author follows the books of the household accounting of the village of Stebnyi for the early 1970s in the records of which there is the necessary data on the study period. For comparison, in the chronological context, the indicators of average age difference in the village of Yasinia for the first two decades of the last century are taken. As a result of a detailed analysis of the narratives, the author concludes that the structure of the Yasinia Hutsul family in the Czechoslovak and Hungarian period has undergone significant changes: there was a fracture in the general spread of large families, were trends in the formation of small families, which consisted of a married couple and 3-5 children. At the same time, the First World War slowed down the decline in the average age difference by almost two decades, while the Second World War slowed down by only one. In general, the study of the family structure and marital relations of the Yasinia Hutsuls requires a more significant expansion of the source base, especially the further study of new archival materials, their introduction into scientific circulation.