IV. Thinking and discussion

1. Answer the questions, discuss in small groups:

1. What is a nuclear family / an extended family? Which type of a family is typical for the USA, for Belarus?

2. What is a marriage considered to be? Why is marriage becoming not so popular today as it used to be?

3. At what age do people usually marry in the USA and in our country?

4. What changes are happening to the traditional American family?

5. What is an engagement? Does such a thing exist in our country?

6. What kinds of marriage do you know?

7. Why has the number of divorces increased in recent years? Does it mean more unhappy marriages?

8. Are the American parents strict or permissive to their children? What can you say about the Belorussian parents?

9. When do the American young people leave their parents and start living separately? What can you say about young people in our country?

10. How should parents bring up their children? Should they be strict or permissive?

11. Should the household duties be shared by all the members of the family? Why?

12. Should women work and make their own career or should they keep house and bring up children only?

13. What is a generation gap? Why do problems in relationships between parents and their teenage children appear? How to solve them?

14. Why do marriages break down? What are the rules for a happy marriage?

15. Family life and an institute of marriage are less important in the modern world than they were in the past. Do you agree? Why? / Why not?

16. Youth is said to be the best time of life. Others think that it is childhood. Which stage of life is the best in your opinion?

17. What advantages & disadvantages are there in being a child / a teenager / a young person / a grown-up person?

18. What are the main advantages & disadvantages of

1. living single

2. having children

3. being married

4. living with parents

5. being the only child in the family

6. having many sisters or brothers

7. being a teenager

8. having an arranged marriage

9. having children when you are very young

10. strict up-bringing and punishment for children

2. Comment on the following quotations and sayings.

A

1. "Many men can make a fortune, but very few can build a Family". J. C. Bryan.

2. "Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold." Andre Malraux, French novelist.

3. "To us family means putting your arms around each other and being there." Barbara Bush

4. "The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have possessed at home in the bosom of my family. Thomas Jefferson.

5. "Every family has a skeleton in the cupboard." John Galsworthy.

6. "God gives us our relatives: thanks God we can choose our friends." Ethel Watts Mumford, humorous writer.

В

1. Home is where the heart is.

2. All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

3. Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut after.

4. We never know the love of our parents until we become parents ourselves.

5. A family is a group who have the same name and sit together in front of a TV-set.

6. Like father, like son.

4