For centuries Family has been one of the main values of life. People tried to create long-lasting marriages where they could feel themselves comfortable, grow children, take care of each other, and just live and love each other.

But today there are a lot of girls who like moths flying to a fire, rush to satisfy their material needs. They live one day, leading an immoral way of life, thinking of neither their own future, nor of their future children’s health. Such is our reality. In this way, I am not a modern girl.

I would like to have an ideal family, a loving husband and two nice kids, but it seems not an easy thing to do. It is so difficult to find a reliable man who could be your second half. Sometimes I meet a young man who looks handsome, neat and sociable, but when I get to know him better, I understand that I can’t agree with his views on life in general and on family in particular; his moral norms and values are unacceptable and extraneous for me. I don’t think that it is only my problem; all my girl friends and acquaintances of my age are also anxious about their future family life

No doubt, youth is an unforgettable time for any person, when you feel yourself free to choose any way of life and believe in the better future. You think that you can manage your fate, and that your life depends only on you. On the other hand, youth is also the time when you begin to reflect on the true sense of life. You are like a young knight from a Russian folk tale standing in a wide open field with a lot of paths to choose. You can go ahead to selfperfection, notwithstanding storms and disasters, which include life impediments and obstacles, and follow this way in accordance with your goals and desire. But there is also another way, the way of stagnation, sometimes even leading to a person’s degradation, which includes such temptations as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug addiction, an immoral way of life. It’s a pity, but there are a lot of young people who take the second path.

But it is much easier to make the right decision and to overcome problems of life when you are in love, when you two live one life and follow hand in hand along the wide way of family. The choice of a companion of life is a very important and responsible point, on which the family’s microclimate fully depends. I am sure that our relatives can be good advisors in this affair: only the near relations can help you to make the right decision of your problems. For me, the nearest advisor is my mummy, and she tells me to choose my boyfriend taking into consideration the values which are dominant in his family: how the young man treats his parents, how the elder members bring him up, what their relations are, and whether education is one of the priorities. She may be right, of course, but I often come across the cases when a young from a well-to-do family with educated parents grows into an alcoholic or a drug addict, leading a purposeless life with no desire to get any education. On the contrary, sometimes a person brought up in a single-parent family does everything to study hard, to be successful in life, to get a worthy career and to have a happy family in future. So I think that the development of an individual to a greater extent depends not on the family but on the social surroundings, on a young man’s friends and acquaintances: if the latter live an immoral life, we can hardly speak of any values.

One clever man said that any person has two ways to a friendly and united family: a happy path and a miserable one, and your future life depends on whom you take as a life companion. I may be not quite right, but nowadays we can rarely meet a reliable young man who can make a girl happy: when I go along the street, I often see young couples with a guy holding a bottle of beer in his hand and speaking foul language. At such moments I become thoughtful of their future family life: what awaits for the young girl and what kind of father this guy is going to be. Fortunately, my best friend Dasha has found a true loving man, considerate and tender. He adores and respects her, and their interrelations are perfect. I‘m happy for her, and this is a good example for me that true love exists, I should only believe in it and take the right way.

For a long year, a marriage lasted for the whole life, and divorces were rare. The matrimony was considered successful if a husband and his wife had their own flat, kept house well and occupied a worthy status in the society. Family relations were strong, married couples lived friendly, looked after their children, bringing them decent. People considered such marriage to be ideal. Unfortunately, now the situation has changed: one marriage of three ends in divorce. Most girls consider that an ideal marriage is only loving interrelations between a man and a girl; others think that wealth is the main factor for happiness, love is not important for them. And there are also a lot of girls who try to get high education in order to make a good career, to be independent, and only then to found a family.

However, it is not enough to have the right conception of matrimony; sometimes the problem is to accept your husband’s family traditions and values. It is especially difficult when a couple belong to different nations; with another culture, traditions and views. For example, in Muslim culture man may have three wives if he can afford it. I think that not every young Russian girl could take this as a norm. At least, I wouldn’t.

But I think that to live with a man who belongs to another nation with its different traditions, views on life and values is interesting; it’s great to see how Muslims celebrate religious feasts, which you before knew only from TV. A year ago I had a boyfriend who was a Tatar, and we had been dating for a year. We got on well, but when my relatives knew about it, they said that I should not meet with a man of another religion. I loved him, and no one could forbid me from dating with him; we even wanted to get married. The only person who supported me was my mum. She had the same situation with her best friend Helen, who also loved a Tatar guy, but her family forbade them to meet, so she married a man who was Russian by nationality, but who didn’t love her, drank alcohol and used to beat her. It was terrible, and she divorced with him. But soon she met another young man, and he was a Tatar! They married, and now they have two nice daughters and live a happy life. That’s why my mummy says that there is no escape from fate: if you feel that you two love each other, nation does not matter. Of course, everybody has to believe in a better future.