Text 5. Family life is changing - for better or worse?

Years ago it was important to have large families. The best Victorian mother was the mother who had the most children. The proudest Victorian father was the father who had the most sons. It was important to have many children so that the family remained strong. If you were rich, you needed sons to inherit your property. If you were poor, you needed sons to help you with your work and take it over when you were old. Rich or poor, you needed daughters to help with the running of a large household and to make good marriage with other families.

Not only children were important. Everybody in the family was important: grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and cousins of cousins. Even when branches of the family quarreled (and they often did) at least they were still there, and that gave people a sense of stability and order.

Nowadays, things are quite different. Young people move away from the places where they were born, and they take their immediate family (wife and children) with them. Slowly, they lose touch with their distant cousins and their great-aunts. Their own family unit becomes more and more important as they forget their other relations.

In Britain, families have been getting smaller and smaller, too. People have fewer children because children are very expensive and they take up room. Who can afford a large house? Who can afford food for more than three children when the cost of the living is so high? And now, there is the problem of overpopulation, too. We are always being told in Britain that a family should have no more than two children. Britain is a small island (93,026 sq. miles) and it has a population of more than 55 million. Nearly 9 million of those live in London. People can't have big families when they are living in a small space. So they live in tiny houses or flats and they get more and more isolated. Sometimes they live very close to other people but they don't get to know each other. They have hundreds of neighbours but they are lonely. They only have each other to talk to, so they get bored and cross with each other. What is to be done?

Read the text and decide on an appropriate title. Discuss with a partner advantages and disadvantages of being the youngest in the family.

Text 6.

The role I play in my family has definitely helped shape my personality and character. I am the only girl and youngest in my family, coming after three boys.

As a child, my brothers always introduced me to their friends as "my little sister". I felt secure in being the youngest because I knew my brothers were always there to protect me. Sometimes, however, this sense of security overpowered me. For example, when my friends told me of their adventures abroad or at a sleep away camp, I was afraid to try these experiences myself. I felt so loved and protected with my family that I would rather stay home then go far away and meet new people.

Being much younger than all three of my brothers does create other problems. Soon I will begin to apply to colleges, and I am already anxious about this situation. All three of my brothers attended Ivy League schools. Therefore, there is pressure on me to get into a "good" school, too.

Although it is sometimes difficult to be the youngest with three оlder brothers, this position has many advantages. For example, whenever I have a

problem, I always have someone to turn to. This has helped make me a more understanding person and has given me a special viewpoint on life. I wouldn't trade my position as the youngest for anything in the world.