The Life Cycle and Urgent Problems of the Rural Family

Abstract

To strengthen the family as the most important unit in socialist society; to create conditions more conducive for women to combine motherhood with participation in the workforce and civic activity; to improve the system of public child and invalid care; to increase the average lifespan and the population's involvement in the labor process—such are some of the most important objectives of the Communist party's policy for social development, advanced at the Twenty-sixth CPSU Congress. The measures aimed at achieving these goals, which may be defined as comprising a demographic policy, constitute a relatively new course in improving the nation's prosperity. Its effectiveness depends to a considerable extent on the scientific soundness of its approach. The present study offers one way of defining the objects of demographic policy, namely, the socio-demographic groups within the population. A demographic typology of families, based on the stages of family life, was used to divide the population into groups. Th...