Text III

There have been many real changes in family life in recent decades. The changes in education, the labour market and benefit system have all had their impact on family life, sometimes causing financial hardship and increased strain on families. Furthermore new forms of housing design, such as high-rise blocks, and new forms of consumption involving indoor activities, such as watching television, have also changed family life. There has been increased strain on family relationships. Families have become more vulnerable. The “primary” relationships within families (husband – wife / or parent / and child) were the most likely to come under strain, and we see some consequences of this in the higher rate of divorce and the greater number of children who have experienced the breakdown of their parents’ relationship and sometimes, in consequence, the breakdown of their own relationship with one of their parents.

The most significant change in recent decades has probably been in the increased labour force participation of woman, so that the likelihood now is that married women with dependent children will be in employment and therefore have additional roles to those of homemaker, domestic labourer and career. This means that it is more obviously inappropriate to think of the family in the wider society with the male head of the household as “sole breadwinner”.

These changes mean that although most young people have had experience of normative family structure (two generations, consisting of parents and children) at some stage in their lives, there are increasing numbers who experience family dissolution and consequently non-nuclear family structures.

(Taken from: Youth, family and citizenship. Open University Press.

Buckingham. Philadelphia, 1992).

1. Give a title to the text and think of 10 questions on it.

2. Find in Text III the English equivalents of the following words and expressions:

Семейная жизнь; финансовая трудность; семейные отношения; развод; хозяйка дома; домработница; структура семьи; рынок труда; зависящий; находящийся на иждивении; система пособий; замужняя; поколения.

3. What is the main idea of the text? Sum it up.

Focus on Grammar

I. Use the proper article:

1. Does your brother go to … school? – No, he isn’t … schoolboy yet.

2. Ann’s sister has … family of her own. She has … two children, … son and … daughter. … children are … same age. They are … twins.

3. Mary is playing … piano, … grandmother is reading … book, … boys are playing … chess.

4. My cousin is … nurse and her husband is … builder.

5. Have you got … uncle? – Yes, he is … teacher of … English.

6. I’m … aunt to my brother’s son.

7. His sister is … ten-year-old girl.

8. In England children usually begin school at … age of … five.

9. Uncle James came up to his little niece, patted her on … head and took her by … hand saying she was such … pretty girl.

10. She is … middle-aged woman of 43. She is like … mother to Jane.

B.

1. They all love Kate. She is … youngest in … family. She has always been … apple … her parents’ eye.

2. Tom is in … second form. He is … hard-working boy and … good pupil.

3. … man and … woman in … photo are … husband and … wife.

4. … Knights are … charming people.

5. Bobby is … youngest member of the family, grandmother is … oldest.

6. Mary is … daughter of … Doctor Smith, … eldest of … children, to be more exact.

7. I like … girl. She has … straight nose, … wavy hair and … fresh complexion.

8. My elder sister is … girl of twenty with … large eyes, … golden hair, … pleasant smile. She has … good figure too. She is … tall and slender. She is … real beauty.

9. She is … most beautiful woman I have ever met.

10. He hasn’t got … family … his own yet. He is under … school age.