Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

The family is an institution protected both by the Constitution and by Article 9 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which provides that the right to marry and the right to found a family are guaranteed in accordance with the national laws governing their exercise.

How the institution is protected is not analyzed in this brief note, but those who have an opinion and are interested in the subject are invited to engage with it.

The issue is whether the family, as a social unit and as an institution, is respected, whether it is supported by citizens, and whether it is going through a crisis, and of what kind.

It has been observed that most young people find it difficult to create permanent commitments and even more difficult to create an independent family.

In Greece, men and women decide to create a family at an age close to forty or even later, and a similar trend is observed in the rest of Europe, unlike in the countries of Asia and Africa.

Today, families break up easily, unlike in the past, a few decades ago, when the family was regarded as a permanent, indissoluble and unshakable institution, divorces were the exception, and courts dissolved marriages sparingly and only after a lengthy procedure lasting many years.

Now the creation of a family is not one of a young person's dreams, but something distant, which does not hold a place of priority.

A young person's first interest is financial self-sufficiency, professional advancement for that purpose without special effort, the acquisition of goods, mainly luxury goods, minimal effort, entertainment without interruption and holiday entertainment.

The young person has no incentives to create a family, and it appears as if the family as an institution, as well as the having of children, and indeed more than one child, is disapproved of.

Women, moved by the instinct of motherhood, when they begin to approach the age of forty, seriously consider having a child and creating a family, without being particularly interested in the choice of the man who will become their husband, after the search for the ideal husband, who must gather virtues and conditions that will secure for the woman a carefree life. The result of this pursuit is the formation of superficial relationships and marriages that are not going to last, because the spouses do not manage to understand each other even in trivial matters or to coexist in a community of life, and indeed a lasting one, as was taught in the past.

Men have corresponding wishes and pursuits. They seek the ideal woman, who must provide them with at least what their mother provided, and even more, and, above all, the future wife must have financial comfort, so that a carefree life is secured for the man and so that she satisfies all erotic desires and fantasies to the fullest, obeying and carrying out his orders without objection.

These, in broad outline, are the modern views that do not support the family and its institution.

The question arises, however, whether the family institution deserves to be supported and for what reason, and whether it should yield its place to another institution, and to which one.

We shall return to this issue together with other opinions and views.