The british Family

Discuss the following.

I. The All Nations English Dictionary gives the following definition of the family: “family – any group of people related by blood or marriage, especially parents and their children”. Use the text and your own ideas to extend this definition. Try to view the notion ‘family’ from different points of view.

2.Find a family photograph. Write a short description of it. Read your description to the class. You may start with…. This is a photograph of … when we/they were on holiday/at the party

Useful language

In the background you can see

In the middle/the center is…

My mum/dad/relatives that are kneeling on the bottom row are….

The ones on the top row are, from left to right….

I am at the far right /left side.

2.2. How common /different families are?

Reading

Ø The number of nuclear families in the world is decreasing year by year. What are the consequences of this process? Is situation similar in all countries?

Ø You are going to read two short texts about family life in Britain and the USA. What is common? What are the differences? Make the list of problems/tendencies and share it with your groupmate.

Ø Now read the texts to check if you have guessed right.

“There is no such thing as society,” Mrs. Thatcher once said. “Only individual men and women, and families.” many people disagree with her, but there remains a strong feeling that the immediate or ‘nuclear’ family is the basic unit of society, and that traditional family values remain the mainstay of national life.

The nuclear family is usually pictured as a married couple, with two children, ideally a girl and a boy, and perhaps their grandmother, or ‘granny’, in the background. As a picture of the way most British live, this becomes increasingly unrealistic each year. If the picture includes the traditional idea of the man going out to work while his wife stays at home, it is probably true of less than 10 per cent of the country. Even without such a limited definition, only 42 per cent of the populationlive in nuclear family households, an even within this group a considerable of parents are in their second marriage with children from a previous marriage.

Social attitudes and behaviour are undoubtedly changing. The number of people living alone has risen significantly. The British are clearly becoming a more solitary nation in their living habits. This will have social implications, for example housing needs in the future.

There is an increasing proportion of men and women living together before marriage. For example, in 1961 only 1 per cent of first-time married couples had previously been living together. By the year 2012 it was estimated that most couples lived together before marrying. Others living together, or ‘ cohabiting ’, never get married.

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