C roatia, Families in

Abstract

A historical review of the Croatian family since the late eighteenth century shows some specificities peculiar to Croatian society. Some of these specificities helped to maintain traditional family values while some led to the family assuming a modern distribution of work roles much earlier than in most western societies. Thus the contemporary Croatian family is a mixture of old and modern values, the patriarchal values being a hindrance to progress and at the same time providing protection and support to the family. The influence and deconstruction of patriarchal family values is analyzed with a special emphasis on the major negative forces of economic crisis, unemployment, and aging in Croatian society.

Relationship satisfaction as a function of mate value.

“…Thus, the lack of an effect of a woman’s perception of the man’s quality as a mate on his satisfaction (in contrast to Croatian men) might be explained in terms of a relative irrelevance of further investments (by men) for the future of the relationship in Iran. The fact that divorce in Iran is rare, whereas in Croatia every third marriage ends in divorce (Cudina Obradovic & Obradovic, 2006), is in line with this notion.…”

“…Furthermore, to test the proposition that the psychological mechanism in question is universal, we collected data in two cultures—Iran and Croatia—differing on various levels of comparison: in dominant religion (Islam/Catholicism), political (theocratic republic/parliamentary democratic republic), and geographic (southwestern Asia/southeastern Europe). In Iran, marriage is viewed as the sole socially approved pathway to sexual access, and sex before marriage is still a rare exception (Hojat et al, 2000); in Croatia, sex before marriage is practically the norm, and cohabitation, which was traditionally viewed as a step leading to marriage, is nowadays recognized as an alternative form of marriage (Cudina Obradovic & Obradovic, 2006). Obviously, the criteria for a satisfying relationship differ among cultures (as they depend on specific societal norms), but we hypothesized that, large cultural differences notwithstanding, a similar pattern of relationships among perceived mate values (one’s own and his or her partner’s) and overall relationship satisfaction would emerge in both countries.…”

Internet Addiction Through the Phase of Adolescence: A Questionnaire Study

“…Online communication has a strong influence on the developmental stages of adolescence. Adolescents share their experience through new forms of communication; they seek their own position within a group and report their friends as being a great source of social support, even greater than their parents [ 31 ]. According to our results, there is no statistically significant influence of the purpose of Internet use on the level of Internet addiction, while there is a statistically significant influence of the age of adolescents on the level of Internet addiction.…”