BU YADYOK P1

Spring 2020-2021 A Week 2

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE CHANGING FAMILY

Pre-Reading
I. Discussion Questions
1. Look at the picture on the right. Where and when does the scene
take place? What are the people doing?
2. How is the scene similar to the situation in your family or
community? How is it different?
3. How do you think family life is changing? How might it change in
the future?

II. Vocabulary Exercises

A. Match the following words with their meanings on the right.
a. a period of ten years
1. (v.)consist of g b. a social unit that contains the nuclear family together with
2. adopted (adj.)e blood relatives
3. divorced (adj.)h c. increase in rank, amount or value
d. a person who has lost their partner by death
4. widowed (adj.)d
e. a child who has been legally taken by another family to be
5. rise (v.)c taken care of
6. decade (n.)a f. to maintain (a person, family etc.) with things necessary to
7. support (v.)f existence
g. to be made up or composed
8. extended family b
h. someone whose marriage has been legally dissolved

B. Fill in the gaps with the words above.

1. A/An extended family may need a bigger house to live as it may involve 3 or more
generations.
2. Her responsibilities consist of answering the phone and greeting visitors.
3. As a widowed mother of three, she had to struggle to bring up her children alone after her
husband’s death.
4. After they tried hard to have their own baby for years, they decided to get a/an adopted
child.
5. When you put yeast in bread and bake the bread, it rises.
6. When we say 1940s, forties, it refers to the decade from 1940 to 1949.
7. After ten years of marriage, they realized that they were not an ideal couple and decided to
get divorced_______________________.
8. She has to work at two jobs to support_______________________ her family.

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C. The words below are from the text. Find them and read that paragraph. Can you
guess the meanings of the words? Choose the best option.
1. nuclear (adj.) a. powered by atomic energy
b. consisting of the basics of a unit
2. foster (adj) a. to bring up (a child, etc)
b. to look after a child without becoming their legal parent
3. blended (adj.) a. containing individuals from different biological families
b. containing two or more different types of the same product
4. decline (v.) a. to go down in amount or quality
b. to refuse something
5. household (n.) a. a group of people, often a family, who live together
b. the living spaces and possessions belonging to a family

D. Check the sentences below. If they are meaningful, put a tick () if not put a cross
() next to the sentence. Compare your answers with your friends from other groups.
You can use a dictionary for help.
1. An extended family may consist of children, parents and grandparents.
2. A nuclear family may consist of children, parents and grandparents.
3. A stay-at-home mother works outside the home.
4. Industrialization began in Europe in the late 18th century.
5. A two-paycheck family means that both mother and father work and earn money for the
family.
6. A single mother does not mean that a woman raises her child/children on her own.
7. In a foster family, there is no biological relationship between parents and children.
8. A widow is a woman who has lost her husband by death and has not married again.
9. A decade is a period of twelve years.
10. Head of household is the adult who supports the family by paying the bills and the rent.
11. In the US the birth rate has declined since 1900s.

Reading
A. Scan the text and fill in the blanks below with the topic of each paragraph. The 4 th
one has been done for you.
1. definitions of the kinds of the family
2. the different kinds of family around the globe
3. reasons for changing of the structure of the family
4. the typical family in the 1930s and 1940s
5. the typical family was returning back
between 1960 and the end of the twentieth century
6. How might family structure change in the future?

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B. Read the text and answer the questions.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE CHANGING FAMILY

1 Like the community, the family is a social institution. Long
ago, human beings lived in loosely related groups. Each group had
a common ancestor (a family member from the distant past). But
for over a millennium (a thousand years), there have been two
main types of families in the world: the extended form and the
nuclear form. The extended family may include grandparents,
parents and children (and sometimes, aunts, uncles and cousins) –
in other words, relatives living in the same house or close together on the same street or in the
same area. In contrast, the nuclear family consists of only parents and their biological or
adopted children. Because of industrialization in the nineteenth century, the nuclear family
became the most common family structure.
2 Today there are many different kinds of families around the globe. Some people live in
traditional families – that is to say, a stay-at-home-mother, a working father, and their own
biological children. Others live in two-paycheck families – that is, both parents work outside
the home. There are many single-parent families: in other words, only a mother or a father
lives with the children. Still others have adoptive or foster families (i.e., adults take care of
children not biologically theirs) or blended families – in other words, divorced or widowed
men and women marry again and live with the children from their previous, or earlier,
marriages. There are also same-sex partnerships – with or without children, childless
marriages, unmarried live-in partnerships, and so on.
3 What caused the structure of the family to change? In the early 1900s in the United
States the divorce rate (i.e., the percent of legal endings compared to the number of
marriages) began to rise, and the birthrate (i.e., the number of births per 100 or 1000 people)
began to decline; in other words, couples stayed married for fewer years, and they had fewer
children. Women often chose to get an education and take jobs outside the home. Decades
later, the same changes began to happen in other industrialized countries. Today, they are
happening in many of the developing nations of the world as well.
4 The decades of the 1930s and 1940s were difficult years in the industrialized world.
Many families faced serious financial problems because the heads of households lost their
jobs. During World War II (1939-1945), millions of women had to take care of their homes
and their children alone. Because so many men were at war, thousands of these “war widows”
- that is to say, women whose husbands were away at war – had to go to work outside the
home. Most women worked long hours at hard jobs. There weren’t many “perfect families.”
5 During the next decade (a period of ten years), the situation changed in many places.
There were fewer divorces, and people married at a younger age and had more children than
in the previous generation. Men made enough money to support the family, so a mother
seldom worked outside the home when her children were small. Children began living at
home longer – that is, until an older age, usually after high school or even college. The
traditional family was returning in the United States, it seemed – as in many other countries.
6 In the years between 1960 or so and the end of the twentieth century, however, there
were many new changes in the structure of the family around the globe. From the 1960s to
the 1970s, the divorce rate greatly increased and the birth rate fell by half. The number of
single parent-families rose, and the number of couples living together without marriage went
up even more.

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7 Many people today would like the traditional two-parent family back – that is to say,
they want a man and a woman to marry for life; they also think the man should support the
family and the woman should stay home with the children. However, very few families now
fall into this category. In fact, if more women decide to have children on their own, the single-
parent household may become more typical than the traditional family in many countries.
Also, unmarried couples may decide to have more children – or they might take in foster
children or adopt. And because people are staying single and living longer (often as widows),
there may be more one-person households. On the other hand, some people believe similar
events happen again and again in history: if this is true, people may go back to the traditional
extended or nuclear family of the past. Others think the only certainty in history is change: in
other words, the structure of the future family could begin to change faster and faster – and in
more and more ways.

Questions
1. Match the important events in the history of family forms in Column A with the time
phrases in Column B. The first one has been done for you.
Column A Column B
1. Many families had money problems, so women
began to work outside the home. d_____
2. There have been two main types of families: the
extended and the nuclear. _b____
3. Industrialization made the nuclear family the most
common form. _c____ a. over a millennium ago
4. Many new family forms became common, such as b. since the year 1000 or so
single parenthood and unmarried couples living c. in the nineteenth century
together. __f___ d. in the 1930s and 1940s
5. People lived in loosely related groups, not in e. in the decade after the World
small family units. __a___ War II in the U.S.
6. Men supported the family, and women stayed f. from the 1960s to the end of
home to take care of the children. There were the twentieth century
fewer divorces. __e___ g. today and in the future
7. There are and will continue to be many different
family structures: “traditional” two-parent
families, families with two working parents,
single-parent families, adoptive or foster families,
blended families, etc. __g___

2. What event made the nuclear family a norm in 1800s?

Industrilization
3. Which of the following is true according to paragraph 2? Write A, B or C in the blank.
a. I live in a two-pay-check family as my mom is a housewife.
b. I live in a traditional family since my father is the only breadwinner.
c. I live in a blended family because my parents are not my biological parents.
4. At the beginning of the 20th century, fewer people continued their marriages and married
couples had fewer children. In other words, the _divorce

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rate_________________________ started to go up while the _birth

rate__________________________ started to go down.
5. During 1950s, the traditional family structure came back. Which of the following is not
one of the reasons of that change? Write A, B or C in the blank.
a. People stayed married longer.
b. Men could not support the family financially.
c. The number of working mothers dropped.
6. Which idea makes some people think that traditional and extended families will return in
the future?
The idea of believing that similar events happen again and again

Post-Reading Activity
Word Formation: Choose the correct word form to complete the sentences.

industrialization (n.) / industrialized (adj.)/ industry (n.)/ industrial (adj.)

 The car _____ industry ___________________ in China is growing at an unexpected
rate.
 During the American Civil War, the Northeast clearly emerged as the _____ industrial
___________________ center of the nation with 85 percent of the nation's
manufacturing.
 ____ Industrialization ____________________ around the world has increased the
global demand for rubber.
 The global economic crisis seems to be so severe that even people in _ industrialized
_______________________ nations cannot protect themselves.

traditional (adj.) / tradition (n.) / traditionally (adv.)

 The Democratic Party won a seat in the Senate that has __ traditionally
______________________ been held by a Republican.
 It is a western ___ tradition _____________________ for brides to wear white.
 The dancer were wearing traditional ________________________ costumes during the
parade.

adopt (v.)/ adoptive (adj.)/ adopted (adj.)/adoption (n.)

 Some couples may have to wait a number of years before they can legally ___ adopt
_____________________ a child.
 After her husband’s sudden death, she had to give up her children for ________
adoption ________________.
 We spent most of the session talking about her relationship with her ______ adoptive
__________________ father
 They've got two ____ adopted ____________________ children and one of their own.