Starting in the 1960s, researchers in many countries have expressed concern over the state of crisis of monogamy, addressing the phenomenon as a direct function of global social transformations. The author finds it is difficult to agree with the negative assessment of the current status of the family, noting that centuries of evidence confirm the family as a very stable institution, and that what some interpret as crisis, others view as transformation or modernization, with more emphasis on the personality characteristics of each member of a union. The author analyzes a group of problems related to themes of the family, marriage, gender, procreation, and sexuality, based on materials collected in Russia over the past fifty years. (Contains 36 notes.)