Changing Attitudes towards Marriage in the lowest-low Fertility Country

Polish society represents traditional family values with marriage remaining constantly the dominant form of a relationship. During last 30 years the number of marriages decreased which was accompanied by postponement of marriage, decreasing stability of relationships, enormous increase in the number of divorces and extra-marital births. Those signs provoke the discussion about reasons for such a change. Assuming that not only the objective determinants shape the process of union formation but the subjective attitudes as well, the goal of the study is to develop a set of distinctive perceptions of marriage characterized by the individual values associated with formal relationship. The explanatory method of latent class analysis was applied to distinguish attitudes towards marriage based on the subjective evaluation of incentives and socio-cultural norms attributed to marriage. The study was extended to test the expected changes in time as well as the influence of life’s experience i.e., experiencing formal relationship, having children, opinion on cohabitation, religiosity. As hypothesized, a map of distinct perceptions of marriage was created, including various traditional, modern and destandardized approaches. Expected age and life’s experience effects were confirmed, counter to expectations opposite effect of time was revealed