Family support in the representations of students

Abstract

The research is aimed at studying the relationship of family mutual assistance. The aim of the work is to establish the nature of these relationships and the factors influencing their reproduction based on the study of family mutual assistance relations in families with student children. The methodological basis of the research is the development of the theory of reciprocity by B. Malinovsky and K. Polanyi, as well as the works of leading foreign and Russian scientists. The study was conducted using General scientific methods, such as system analysis, questionnaires, generalization and systematization, and comparisons. The empirical base is based on a survey of 500 students and 15 individual semi-structured interviews of students of the Ural state University of Economics and the Ural Federal University, collected in 2020.As a result of the study, it was found that the relations of family assistance in families with student children are arranged in accordance with the principle of reciprocity, that is, they reflect the interdependence of family members, the symmetry of support acts, when the roles of the recipient of a gift or service and the donor alternate, and are also characterized by non-equivalence of received (transmitted) gifts and services. The main types of family support are for student children-financial support for parents, for parents-assistance for children in household management. Emotional and psychological support is provided by more than half of the students and their parents. The reproduction of family mutual aid relations is influenced by social, economic and emotional factors, among which the factors of kinship, attachment, family solidarity, as well as the objective possibility of providing support as the economic basis of the relationship of assistance are of high importance.