EN
Family may be defined as a relatively durable group of persons which is based on blood relations, is caused by marriage eventually by adoption and its main functions are reproduction, upbringing, but also carry over cultural models. Meaning of marriage institution is very often discussed topic not only in context of this definition. These discussions are provoked not only by opinions and questions in terms of marriage as an outworn institution, but also by the results of demographic statistic. In these results we can see trends of decreasing nuptiality, perhaps even weakening of family in the basic word sense (low fertility in general, growth of proportion of extramarital born children etc.). Introductory part of this article affords view of continuance of nuptiality during the twentieth century and also outline of some aspects that contribute to current nuptiality situation. The second part is focused on attitudes of Czech public towards marriage and on their ideas about importance and sense of marriage as well.