The aim of the article is to prove that the study of Ukrainian wedding, funeral and maternity rites using the method of structural and functional analysis can provide significant scientific prospects. To do this, the author proposes to use the method of Claude Lévi-Strauss, which he used to break down the myth into mythemes and similarly break down national family rites into episodes. However, this is not enough to get a full structure, so one should also indicate the change of chronotope in each of the episodes, identify the culminating episodes, find episodes of mediation and characters-mediators that provoke and make possible further action.

From the ritual cycle in the process of studying the structures are distinguished rites of passage, in which the main characters change social statuses. At a wedding, such rites are engagement, wedding, and komora; in the funeral – a prologue to the ritual cycle, burial in the cemetery and a funeral repast; in the maternity cycle these are delivery, giving names and baptism; and the change of status falls on the culminating episodes of these rites. Namely in places of culmination, along with the change of social statuses of the main characters of the rites, the division of a cycle into stages takes place.

The main achievement of the study of the structures of family rites should be considered determining the nature of the action in the episodes and the result of such a procedure. Due to this process, the use of structures and structural and functional method, it was found that all episodes, except the culmination, are based on limited actions, which are periodically repeated and divided into seven groups: 1) arrangements, 2) invitations, 3) arrivals and returns, 4) feasts and festivities, 5) veneration of sacred acts, elements, objects; 6) creation of a ceremonial attribute, 7) blessings and gifts.

Thanks to this discovery and the use of ritual structures of family cycles – wedding, funeral and maternity – it was possible to determine a universal scheme that is acceptable for any rite.

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