The processes of modernization in this country's economy require a well-qualified work force that is mobile in social, professional, and geographic terms. The necessary basis of a successful solution to this problem is the stability of the family, which is the basic active agent of the reproduction of new generations of workers. Family stability is a condition that in many ways is a derivative of the stability of society. Families with many children were traditional in the industrial Urals before the Revolution; that kind of family was the foundation of the region's demographic well-being, which was of enormous strategic importance to the state. Data from a sociological study in the Sverdlovsk region shed light on the place of the family in the system of values of urban factory workers, their motives for getting married, the main characteristics of their reproductive behavior, and the factors that influence the number of children in a family. They also show the economic factors that influence the life and activity of the family. (Contains 5 notes.)