Family is a result of historical development of the humanity. It means that family itself is younger than the mankind. Hence family appeared not by chance, and does have its great history. But does it belong to the contemporary list of values or not? Do we ourselves preach that family is something to be built, kept and saved? Let's see.

Family is an everyday life practice, its basis. Family is a universal answer to the questions of how to live, what to possess, what rights to have, what duties to execute, how to build relationships with your nearest and dearest. Family also gives answers to eternal questions of continuation of the kind, of how to educate your successors, who will do the same when their turn comes.

Thereafter, family is something that is in the best way possible adapted for development and continuation of Its Majesty Life.

What wonderful pictures of family life are drawn in the works of L. Tolstoy, I. Turgenev, Ch. Dickens, W. Thackeray, J. Ostin and many, many others... What is the point of attraction? What values are being incarnated? For example, in "Emma" by J. Ostin there's a number of "family nestles", all of them differ from each other, but all are so lovely in the eyes of the beholder. This is  Emma’s family   (she is the main character): her father, her married sister (with a family of her own), and the hearth that her ‘rival’ got, and other lines of narration. In every young person we can observe something G. Flaubert called "senses upbringing", and it happens not only as a result of somebody's love to another person, but also as a consequence of relations with close people in a parental family. And the only logic and ‘appropriate way out’ of love here is creating a new family...

But on the other hand, there is a plenty of works written about destructive ways of family behavior: "Of Human Bondage" by S. Maugham, "The Forsyte Saga" by J. Galsworthy, "Vanity Fair" by W. Thackeray, "The Red and The Black" by Stendal and many, many others. However, they also assert family values, "reductio ad absurdum".

So, it has been preached in the world literature (which is in fact the humanity’s main source of self-depiction), that family values are not something inflexible and stable that might be easily enumerated. Moreover, they can extremely differ if speaking about various nations, social layers, historical periods, ethnic groups. For instance, in many novels of the British authors it's often underlined that in this or that family healthy way of life is lead (walking, horse riding, dancing, etc.). In Russian literature usually something different is emphasized: sincerity, kindness, family members’ mutual help, ‘extreme’ hospitability.

That doesn't mean, for sure, that in Russian families immobility and apathy were blessed to blossom (well, I'm not speaking about 'oblomovschina' now - I. Goncharov deserves special attention with his baby).

Family is an entire world ('continuum', philosophers say), consequently it should be harmonic, well-balanced, able for development as something existing in accordance with ‘the divine law’. It means that in any family both adults and children should bear mutual respect and love; the youngest should follow the example of the eldest, analyze their life experience and wisdom - the eldest should feel their responsibility for the upbringing of their offsprings, lead their socialization in the appropriate way. All the members of the family should realize its unity, should do everything possible to defend their nestle, to keep its honour and to be proud of it.

So it used to be...

Well, nowadays nobody shouts "No family!" and nobody evidently, openly banishes it from their presence. But contemporary life practise shows that family relationships are next to a stage of crisis.

How is it being displayed?

It might seem a bit strange, but ‘Captain Evidence’ shows that the absolute majority of young families today crave to live separately from their parents. An essential desire, at the first glance. But in my personal opinion, it's connected with the fact of decreasing the number of new families, in other words, young people tend to live separately even from each other!

So, contemporary overpopulation, causing automatical human isolation (when we've got not enough private space, we try to circle ourselves - it happens subconsciously) has led to the family collapse: people's resistance towards each other has mutilated into a global one.
At the initial stage, the desire of being individual and independent didn't contradict the human nature. Moreover, it has even been praised and valued: a person who is free, having his goals and accomplishing them, has a freedom of mind and choice - such a person has always been highly respected in any society. But - look! - this ‘ideal man’ never forgot his family, realizing that first of all he should execute his reproductive role, if I can turn it like this.

What is happening now? We've entered the Age of Money. Power is all we breed. As I've already touched upon this problem, the population of the planet is reaching 7 billion in the nearest future, but the territory can't be expanded. So they try to execute ‘natural selection’ inventing various artificial viruses like H₅N₁. No room, no food, no water - such an outlook makes everyone think only about himself (yes, the reproductive instinct is strong. But the instinct of self-preservation naturally dominates).

"Family? Why? I'd rather care about myself" - exclaims the man of tomorrow. You might object and notice a contradiction between overpopulation and family crisis. Nothing of the kind. The answer is as plain as 2+2 makes 4. The growing world population is provided by Asian and African countries - and those children are very often brought up beyond the poverty level. Besides, in western countries there're a lot of single-parent families (usually mothers are left face to face with their children and consequent problems). Such families can't be considered normal; fathers (as a rule) go on a free trip, closing eyes on their women and small children. This is also an approval of the mentioned above idea: selfish interests (having their roots in the global social descent) exterminate everything human.

So, the family institution is loosing its fundamental positions in the society. Unfortunately, we have this fact to accept. It is accompanied by a stable decrease of birth rate in western countries, living together in  a relationship widely practiced by everyone, ‘tolerance’ towards sexual minorities and many other sides of our life to a certain extent annihilating family. Social global consciousness tends to get accustomed to any position of a contemporary man: "Are you married? Great! Are you single? Wonderful! Don't you belong to sexual majority? Well, everyone has a right for flexible views..." This is a disgusting ‘tolerance’, must confess. Indifference bears indifference.

It's next to impossible to correct the vector of our life now. But it could be changed if family life and family values were appropriately propagated. A contemporary man has TOO many things to change his family for. I mean not only different means of entertainment we are being bombarded from everywhere; a modern human being is usually so overloaded at work that he has neither enough time nor adequate desire for family life.