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The main purpose of the chapter is to analyze social research data on divorce in the USSR and Russia. The main method is literature review of statistic data on divorce since WWII and the results of representative opinion polls and local surveys, including author’s data.

The central conclusion is that methodological level, theoretical basis and continuity in empirical divorce research has been lacking in the last 25 years in the USSR and Russia (it concerns research techniques never piloted before; lack of clear definition and operationalization of variables when studying different aspects of divorce, etc.).

The chapter offers original research framework of divorce analysis – socially maladaptive family. It is includes external contexts of family functioning (changing legal norms concerning divorce and public opinion on it) and three aspects of “reproduction of human being” in family (material means for living; quantitative reproduction of the population, including birthrate; and qualitative reproduction of the population, including personal characteristics of family members and relationships between them).

Acquaintance with the content of the chapter will be useful for researchers of the family (especially who are interested the problems of divorce and quality of marriage) as foreign as Russian.