Introduction. The paper is devoted to studying the ideas of a family among a group of students at the teachers’ training university. The conducted research is especially significant for educative work with the students.

Materials and methods. The paper presents the analysis of psychological educational literature on family problems. It also contains the results of our empirical research conducted in 2009 and 2017.The aim of the article isto define the features of students’ idea of a family, concerning the stages of family development and the distribution of family roles; to demonstrate the dynamic pattern of those ideas. Methods of the study are: analyzing scientific literature on family problems, the diagnostic method of questionnaire survey and the data processing method.

Results and discussion. Thepeculiarities of students’ ideas of a family were defined, such as the stages of family development and the distribution of family roles. The dynamic pattern of those ideas was also described. The obtained results, on the one hand, corroborate the psychological studies on the family problems. On the other hand, our study reveals the change in peculiarities of modern students’ family images.

Conclusion. The paper draws a conclusion about the peculiar characteristics of the students’ ideas of a modern family, such as family development stages and roles distribution within a family. The article brings to light the dynamic patterns of the mentioned ideas. The significance of the conducted research for educative work with the teachers’ training university students is highlighted. In the nearest future the students are going to become teachers and educators themselves and to mold their own students’ family values and ideas.

• The paper has revealed the specific characteristics of the teachers’ training university students’ ideas of a family development stages.
• The study has presented the teachers’ training university students’ ideas of family roles in detail.
• The dynamic pattern of students’ ideas of a family is also given in the paper. 

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