University Students As Subjects of Family Support Relationships

Abstract

the article is aimed at studying the relationship of family support. The scientific literature gives ambiguous assessments of the nature of mutual assistance between parents and their adult childrenstudents. Therefore, the main research tasks are to establish the nature of parental support in families with student children and to assess the impact of the gender factor on support. The methodological basis of the study was 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 on the basis of a set of general scientific methods, such as system analysis, generalization and systematization, comparison, and questionnaires. The empirical basis of the study is a survey of 300 students and 12 individual semi-structured interviews of students of the Ural State University of Economics, collected in 2020. The survey data and interviews were analyzed in order to identify the peculiarities of the nature of family assistance in families with student children, as well as the influence of the gender factor. As a result of the study, it was found that the relations of family assistance in families with student children are interdependent, symmetrical, and non-equivalent in nature, and they are based on the principle of reciprocity. Children help their parents, as a rule, according to the situation, if necessary. The main types of assistance are household management, as well as emotional and psychological support. Gender influences family care relationships. Thus, daughters are more concerned about their parents than sons. In these families, student children are much more likely to help on a regular, permanent basis, more often provide parents with financial assistance, emotional and psychological support, assistance in caring for parents and in household management. Material and emotional and psychological support from parents is at a high level, regardless of the child’s gender.