ABSTRACT
Family is an important societal sphere in people’s lives in almost all societies; for many, it is the most important. Such an assertion may come as a surprise from a comparative book emphasizing societal differences, but empirical evidence overwhelmingly supports this statement. The European Values Study asked citizens from different countries how important different aspects of their life (work, politics, religion, family, leisure time, friends and acquaintances) were to them. Respondents could choose between the following alternatives: “very important,” “quite important,” “not important” or “not at all important;” 85.5 percent consider family “very important;” for comparison, only 7.8 percent give the same worth to politics. Country values for the family sphere vary from 66.8 percent in Lithuania to 97.2 percent in Turkey.
