Marital Relations in Modern Culture: Value and Legal Aspects

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze the contradictions of the culture of marital relations in modern society. The study is based on the methodology of complex socio-cultural approach. Marriage is considered as the basis of communicative, ethical and aesthetic experience of family life. At present, the state has set a large-scale task of strengthening the institution of family as a traditional spiritual and moral basis of Russian society. Its solution is faced primarily with the contradiction of the institutional framework of marriage relations between a man and a woman and their value aspect. The author reveals the main reasons for this contradiction. The ideals of equality and freedom of self-determination are embedded in mass perceptions of what constitutes the content of family life and its core - the union of a man and a woman. This happens at the level of upbringing and absorption by the younger generation of images cultivated in the mass media. The value aspect of family life and matrimony in accordance with the neoliberal feminist discourse is interpreted in the categories of "gender partnership". As a result of the research, the article critically assesses the prospects of projecting the ideology and meanings of such a partnership onto marriage, as it is based not on the criteria of moral perfection of family life, but on personal success and self-assertion.