1. Translate the underlined expressions and word combinations into Russian.

2. Find synonyms for the following words.

manifold

adjacent

powerful

appropriate

complexity

to retain

fabulous

a response to

3. Find English equivalents to the following Russian words and word combinations.

отдать должное

беглый взгляд

общественное положение

нет недостатка в доказательствах

недооценивать

основываться на

начать обсуждение

4. Learn the following collocations and add some more.

Belief

• To cling, to adhere, to stick to the belief that…

• To question, to undermine smb's belief

• To confirm, to support, to reinforce one's belief

• Contrary to popular belief

• Common, popular, widely-held belief

Distinction

• To draw, to make a distinction

• Essential, fundamental, rigid, broad, strong, clear-cut distinction

• A historian of great distinction

Standing

• High, low, international, academic, professional, social standing

• To have, enhance, improve damage one's standing (Professor Green has a high standing in the academic world)

5. Make up a mind map of the first paragraph. Supply it with key words and compress it into one or two sentences. Write an introduction of your own. Changes in the life course

The full impact of changes in values and functions on-the condition of the family today can be best understood in the context of demographic changes affecting the timing of life transitions, such as marriage, parenthood, the "empty nest", and widowhood. Since the end of the nineteenth century, fundamental and dramatic changes have occurred in the family cycle and have affected age configurations within the family and generation relations.

Beginning in the early nineteenth century the American population has experienced a steady decline in the birth rate, except for the baby boom in the immediate post-World War Two period. This decline has had a profound impact on the life course, especially on the timing of marriage, the birth of the first child and subsequent children, and the spacing of children. It has also considerably influenced the very meaning of marriage and parenthood. In traditional society little time elapsed between marriage and parenthood, since procreation was a major goal / objective of marriage. In modern society contraception has made possible a gap between marriage and parenthood. Marriage has become recognized as important on its own, rather than merely a transition to parenthood.

One widely-spread myth about the past is that the timing of family transitions was once more orderly and stable than it is today. The complexity that governs family life today and the variations in family roles and in transitions into them are frequently contrasted to this more placid past. The historical experience, however, reveals precisely the opposite condition; patterns of family timing in the past were often more complex, more diverse, and less orderly than they are today. Paradoxically, voluntary and involuntary demographic changes that have come about since the late nineteenth century have brought about greater uniformity in the timing of transitions along the life course, despite greater societal complexity.

The increasing uniformity in timing has been accompanied by a shift from involuntary to voluntary factors affecting crucial events. An increase in life expectancy, the decline in fertility, and earlier marriage age have considerably fostered the chances for temporal overlap in the lives of family members. Families are now able to go through a life course much less subject to sudden change than that experienced by the vast majority of population in the nineteenth century. This trend toward greater uniformity in the life course is counteracted only by divorce. Over the past few decades the "typical" cycle of modern American families has included early marriage and early commencement of childbearing, with only a small proportion of children closely spaced.

Families tracing this type of cycle experience a compact period of parenthood in the middle years of life, followed by an extended period without children (encompassing one-third of their adult life), and finally often by a period of solitary living after the death of a spouse, most frequently that of a husband. This type of family cycle has important implications for the composition of the family and for relationships within it in contemporary society. Husbands and wives are spending a relatively longer lifetime together; they invest a shorter segment of their lives in child rearing; and they more commonly survive to grandparenthood. This sequence has been uniform for the majority of the population since the beginning of the twentieth century.

By contrast to past times, most families see their children through to adulthood with both parents still alive. As Peter Uhlenberg has pointed out, the normal family cycle for women – a sequence of leaving home, marriage, childbearing, child rearing, launching of children from home, and survival at age fifty with the first marriage still intact unless broken by divorce – was not the typical pattern of family timing before the early twentieth century. Prior to 1900, only about 40% of the white female population in the United States experienced this ideal family cycle. The remainder either never married, never reached marriageable age, died before childbearing, or were widowed while their offspring were still young children.

The significance of various transitions in family roles also differed in the past. In the nineteenth century, when conception was likely to take place very shortly after marriage, the major transition in a woman's life was represented by marriage itself. The transition into the "empty nest" have been more generally experienced and were clearly marked in the twentieth century until a decade ago. The trend has reversed recently with the tendency of young people to return to their parental home, or even not to leave it at all.

The overall historical pattern pf family behavior has been marked by a shift from involuntary to voluntary forces controlling the timing of family events. It has been also characterized by greater rigidity and uniformity in the time of people's passage from one family role to another over the life course. For instance, the transitions into adult roles experienced by young people leaving home, getting married and establishing a separate household follow a more orderly sequence and are accomplished over a shorter time period in a young person's life today than was the case in the nineteenth century. Prior to the beginning of this century life transitions were timed in accordance with family needs and obligations rather than to specific age requirements.

The changes in the family cycle discussed above reflect major discontinuities in the life course. Some of these have resulted in increasing problems in the middle and later years of life. It is precisely in this area that problems of family life and generational relations are lodged today.

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