Who is the head of the family

Who is the head of the family - a husband or wife. The content of the concept of family primacy is associated with the implementation of managerial (regulatory) functions: general management of family affairs, making responsible decisions concerning the family as a whole, regulating intra-family relations, choosing a method for raising children, allocating a family budget, etc.
In this case, there are two types of headship: patriarchal (the husband is the head of the family) and egalitarian (in the family, leadership is exercised jointly).
Male dominance was noted by 27.5% of men and 20% of women, and the number of families where both spouses considered the husband head of the family constituted only 13% of the total sample. Women’s headship was more often indicated by wives than husbands (respectively 25.7% and 17.4%), and only 8.6% of families had a coincidence of opinions of spouses. More women favored joint leadership than men (25.7% and 18.4%, respectively). At the same time, the concurrence of opinions on joint leadership was in 27% of families. In more than half of the cases, there was a difference of opinion as to who was the head of the family: the husband considered himself as such, and the wife himself, which often created a conflict situation.

When comparing the data of studies conducted in our country over the past decade, the following dynamics is clearly visible: the older the respondents are, the more often the opinion that the family should be built according to an egalitarian type is encountered. Below are data confirming this conclusion.
Adolescent boys more often than girls of the same age believe that the husband should be the head of the family (53% and 36%, respectively); if preference is given to the mother (which happens less often), then girls do it more often than boys (respectively 20% and 6%). At the same time, such a distribution of roles is mostly caused by that part of the boys, who realized themselves as representatives of the male sex. The same boys, who have not yet managed to finally definitively identify themselves, equally often prefer both patriarchy in the family and biarchy (that is, they consider that both the father and the mother can be the head of the family). In girls, the same trend is observed: a group that is identified as having identified the head of the family as a woman and the rest of the girls towards gender equality.
As boys and girls grow up, their view of the primacy of the husband or wife family changes somewhat. So, according to N. V. Lyakhovich, young men believe that the head of the family must be either the husband (35% of the answers), or there must be equal title (biarchy) - 65% of the answers. The same tendency is observed in the responses of girls (husband - 23%, biarchat - 73%), with the difference that 4% named the wife the head of the family.
Among married people, even fewer respondents give their headship to the husband. According to T.A. Gurko, 18% of brides, 9% of brides did this. Among men, patriarchal views mostly (about 40%) are natives of the village and having only a secondary education.
According to research conducted in our country, 15 to 30% of women over the age of 30 declare themselves the head of the family, while only 2-4% of their husbands and 7% of adult children acknowledge this.
These answers reflect the gradual transition now emerging from the patriarchal type of family organization, when its head was only a man, to a democratic one, based on the legal and economic equality of men and women. These management functions are not concentrated in the hands of one spouse, but are distributed more or less evenly between husband and wife. Despite this trend, there are still many families, where the dominant role, as before, is played by the husband, although in many respects this primacy is of a formal nature. There are also families where the head is the wife.