Socioeconomic Situation and Satisfaction in the Family Life

In this chapter, the attention is paid to two fields which are linked with family lifestyle. The first one concerns socioeconomic situations in a family and shows that the economic side of family functioning is actually very essential these days. The importance of family economic situation is affirmed also in the results of our international survey. We asked what was the main family income, experience with unemployment and whether our respondents had possibility to save some money. Furthermore, we were interested in expenditure items and in evaluation of an overall standard of living by respondents. The Germans and then Czechs evaluated it as the best, the worst was found in families in Latvia. The second part monitors life satisfaction as a subjective feeling of well-being and is understood as a part of quality of life. To the question “How do you imagine a satisfied family?”, the most frequent response was—harmonic coexistence without conflicts, well-being, good health of all family members and material security. For the question “What do you lack to your satisfaction?” respondents stated—financial security and lack of free time for the family. However, there were specific differences among individual surveyed countries.