1. Do you live in a nuclear or in an extended family?

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of these types of family?

3. Would you like to live with your grandparents? Why?

4. What is the perfect number of children to have?

5. Do you have any problems in your family?

6. Do you often argue with your mother or father? What about?

7. Do your relatives help you to solve your problems?

1. What’s the best thing about your family?

READING

Which of these sentences are true about the American family? Decide in pairs or small groups. Read and check.

1. The traditional American family unit is a nuclear family.

1. The husband and wife normally share important decision making.
2. American parents establish strict control over their children.
3. It is unusual for elderly grandparents to bring up their grandchildren.

THE AMERICAN FAMILY

Most American families consist of a mother, a father, and three or four children living at home. There may be relatives – grandparents, aunts, uncles, and in-laws in the same community, but American families usually maintain separate households. This familial structure is known as the “nuclear family”. It is unusual for members of the family other than the husband, wife, and children to live together. Occasionally an aging grandparent may live with the family, but this arrangement is usually not considered desirable. Although the nuclear family unit is economically independent of the rest of the family, members of the whole family group often maintain close kinship ties. Visiting between parents and their married children and between married sisters and brothers is frequent when they live close to each other. If they live in different communities, they keep in touch by writing letters and by telephone.

In the American family the husband and wife usually share important decision making. When the children are old enough, they participate as well. Foreign observers are frequently amazed by the permissiveness¹ of American parents. The old rule that “children should be seen and not heard” is rarely followed, and children are often allowed to do what they wish without strict parental control. The father seldom expects his children to obey him without question, and children are encouraged² to be independent at an early age. Some people believe that American parents carry this freedom too far. Young people are expected to break away from their parental families by the time they have reached their late teens or early twenties. Indeed, not to do so is often regarded³ as a failure, a kind of weak dependence.

This pattern of independence often results in serious problems for the aging parents of a nuclear family. The job-retirement age is usually 65. The children have left home, married, and set up their own households. Elderly couples feel useless and lonely with neither an occupation nor a close family group. Many communities and church groups sponsor social centers for “senior citizens”. At these centers older men and women can make friends and participate in a variety of planned activities, including games, trips, lectures, and discussion groups. These programs may help some old people, but they do not provide the complete solution to the problems of old age.

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¹ permissiveness – вседозволенность

² encourage – поощрять, поддерживать (в чем-л.)

³ regard (as) – расценивать, считать (кем-л. / чем-л.)

Match the definitions with the words in the box.

1 all the people living together in a house

2 to let (someone) have or do something

3 a disposition to allow freedom of choice and behavior

4 to do what a person says that you must do

5 a way to deal with a problem

6 done many times at short intervals

7 the action or fact of leaving one’s job and ceasing to work