Family Life and Generation Gap
"The problems of fathers and children"
Relations between parents and their children have always remained a very important problem in our society. Parents love their children; they try to do their best to make their children happy. Parents buy all things their children need, but sometimes it is very difficult, because they don't have enough money. So, parents do all their duties to bring up their loved "babies" and to give them a good education. And of course, some misunderstanding appears between parents and children. The problem is as follows.
Parents always try to plan their children's lives. They choose clothes, school and even friends for their children. But children want to be independent; especially when they become older. But their parents still think they are children and continue to treat them as if they were small. It makes "children" cross and there can be quarrels in the family, because of over caring.
On the other-hand there are a lot of families where parents don't attend to their children. Children need love and care, and if they are not looked after and have too much freedom they want to do something exciting and sometimes it can end badly.
Old people are always saying that the new generation are not what they were. The same comment is made from generation to generation and it is always true. It has never been truer than it is today. The young are better educated; they have a lot more money to spend and enjoy more freedom. They grow up more quickly and are not so dependent on their parents. They think more about themselves and do not blindly accept the ideals of their elders. Events, which the older generation remembers vividly, are nothing more than the past history. This is as it should be. Every new generation is different from the one that preceded it. The old always assume that they know more for the simple reason that they have been around a bit longer. They don't like to feel that their values are being questioned or threatened. And this is precisely what the young are doing. They are questioning the assumptions of their elders and disturbing their complacency. They doubt that the older generation has created the best of all possible worlds. And it can be a cause of problems between youth and the older generation.
But parents shouldn't punish their children, because it isn't a way of solving problems. They have to explain what is good and what is bad. Children must have good childhood, and parents should try to make friends with their own children. Parents must understand that their children are not copies of themselves. Their children are new people, different from their parents. Yes, I agree that children try to repeat parents' actions and try to be similar to them, but they have their own opinion, and their characters differ from their parents. Parents have to remember that they were children too and must bear accountability for their children. Everything has to be balanced.
Today's graduates have different aspirations from the Boomers in their 50s and 60s. According to research conducted in North America and Britain by David Cannon of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. The new graduates, labelled Generation X, wanting to keep their options open as long as possible, ?annon told at the conference. They have a great fear of boredom and prefer short-term projects. They love facts and processes and feel Powerful from knowing "how". They crave continual feedback, desire jobs that are 'sexy' in the eyes of their peers, believe they are inherently good, and want marriage, family and material success.
Cannon said Boomers love adventure, independence and risk; can work to general goals; and can tolerate ambiguity and multiple answers. They want to be "artists" at what they do and want to do things "my" way. They can write, speak and conduct self-directed research well. They can be suspicious of corporate ideology, distrust authority; but can be forgiving if it errs. They loathe evaluation.
In contrast, Generation X graduates love information; work best to concrete goals; expect clear standards and procedure; want to be experts at what they do, like guided practice supervised by organized people; and ...
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Cannon said Boomers love adventure, independence and risk; can work to general goals; and can tolerate ambiguity and multiple answers. They want to be "artists" at what they do and want to do things "my" way. They can write, speak and conduct self-directed research well. They can be suspicious of corporate ideology, distrust authority; but can be forgiving if it errs. They loathe evaluation.
In contrast, Generation X graduates love information; work best to concrete goals; expect clear standards and procedure; want to be experts at what they do, like guided practice supervised by organized people; and over-estimate their communication and research skills. They demand corporate ideology, trust authority, but find it hard to forgive if it errs. They love evaluation.
Now I want to tell about family life in England and in Russia.
In England ...
An average British family lives in a semidetached house with a garden in the south of England. They own their house, which is situated in the suburbs of a large town. The house has three bedrooms. On average they have two children and a pet. The family drives a two-year-old Ford Cortina.
He works in the office of an engineering company for 40 hours a week and earns pounds 200 per week. He starts at 9.00 in the morning and finishes at 5.30 in the evening. He goes to work by car, which takes him 20 minutes. He doesn't particularly like his job, but there are chances of promotions.
She works in a service industry for three days a week and earns pounds 95. She works locally and goes there by bus. She quite likes her job as it gets her out of the house, she meets people, and it is close to the children's school.
The children go to state school which a few miles from home. A special bus comes to pick them up every day. They are at school from 9.00 to 3.30.
The most popular evening entertainment is watching television or video, which the average person does for two and a half hours a day. After that, the next most popular activity is visiting friends, going to the cinema or a restaurant, or going to the pub. The most popular hobby is gardening and the most popular sports are fishing, football and tennis.
But in recent years there have been many changes by new laws and others are the result of changes in society. For example, since the law made it easier to get a divorce, the number of divorces has increased. This means that there are a lot of one-parent families. Society is now more tolerant than it used to be of unmarried people, unmarried couples and single parents.
Another change has been caused by the fact that people are living longer nowadays, and many old people live alone following the death of their parents. As a result there are many households, which consist of only one person or one person and children. However, the majority of divorced people marry again, and they sometimes take responsibility for a second family.
Members of a family - grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins - keep in touch, but they see less of each other than they used to. This is because people often move away from their hometown to work, and so the family becomes scattered. Christmas is the traditional season for reunions. Although the family group is smaller nowadays than it used to be, relatives often travel many miles in order to spend the holiday together.
In general, each generation is keen to become independent of parents in establishing its own family unit.
Relationships within the family are different now. Parents treat their children more as equals than they used to, and children have more freedom to make their own decisions. The father is more involved with bringing up children, often because the mother goes out to work. Increased leisure facilities and more money mean that there are greater opportunities for the individual to take part in activities outside the home. Although the family holiday is still an important part of family life (usually taken in August, and often abroad) many children have holidays away from their parents, often with a school party or other organized group.
People say that children today grow up more quickly. The law sometimes makes this possible. For example, at the age of 13 children can be employed part-time: most of the young people in England who are still at school and over seventeen try to get a job at the post-office at Christmas. The boys deliver and sort parcels and the girls sort the letters. And children who are younger take a holiday job in a shop, shops always have too much work to do at Christmas and like to have extra help from schoolgirls. At the age of 14 children are allowed in bars but not to drink alcohol. Every child who (come of age) reached the age of 15 called legally a 'young person' not a 'child'. And at the age of 16 children can leave school, home, they can drive a moped, marry with parent's consent, buy beer with a meal. At the age of 17 they can drive a car or motorbike. Age 18 is the age of majority, when people can vote, get married without parents' consent, own property, drink in pubs and other things. The time when people get married depends on the social lay (position), which they belong to. For example, if both of the young people are workers they get married earlier than, for example, people who decide to connect their lives with science, or people who study or build their career. But there can be an exception to the rule. So we can say that children in England become independent very early (at a very young age).
There is not such a social institution as 'grandmother' in England. There are about 10 millions old-age pensioners in Britain, of whom about 750,000 cannot live entirely independently. The government gives financial help in the form of a pension but in the future it will be more and more difficult for the national economy to support the increasing number of elderly. At the present time, more than half of all old people are looked after at home. Many others live in Old Peoples' Homes, which may be private or state owned.
In Russia ...
A typical Russian family consists of mother, father and one or two children. Grandparents can live together with their children too and it is typical for poor families, which don't have much accommodation/place to live. And the number of children depends on what social lay this particular family belongs to. Nowadays it is very difficult to have many children and especially in big cities, because life becomes more expensive year-by-year and parents have to work very hard to provide for their children, to give them good education and sometimes just to live on in our dull world. And I think it is much easier to care about one child than to do you best to provide for two. Of course if parents earn enough money they can have more than only one child. Children like animals and psychologists think animals make people kinder. Children always ask their parents if they can have a pet and if the family can afford it parents usually buy a dog or a cat to their children.
As for the father he is usually a busy man: he works as a constructor/builder man and doesn't earn big money but it is usually enough to live. He goes to work at 7 o'clock in the morning and returns at about 7.30 in the evening. The father usually has an extra work that gives him a little money to make presents to the children and his wife. He tries to do his best but sometimes it is very difficult because he works for a state company where the rate of salary is not a constant paid thing. In Russia there are two ways of getting high salary: the first way is that you have to work really very hard, forget everything except work, or you have to be a burglar or a thief and get your money illegally. So you can choose what way to follow.
Return back to the head of the family. When he is at home he usually likes to sit down to his dinner or supper and then to watch sport programs on TV. After that he can do some odd jobs and help children with their homework. But if the father is an extra busy man he just returns home, kisses the children and his wife, has dinner, watches TV a little and goes to bed ready for tomorrow.
A typical Russian mother is a super woman: she in time everywhere. She works, looks after the children and her husband, does housework and at the same time she looks very pretty. Women coming from different European countries are very surprised at our women and they sometimes pity Russian women. But Russian women say 'it is usual for us to do so much in such a short period of time'.
So her day begins when she wakes up everybody in the family/all the family: first the father then the children. When all members of the family are out of home she makes herself up in a hurry, picks all things she needs and runs to work to be in time and not to be late, because if she is she can be paid off. After work she comes home and begins doing her everyday duties: she cooks, cleans the flat, helps children and meets her husband. The mother is the last person in the family who goes to bed. And every day this situation repeats again and again. But Russian women get used to it. They do the same things that their mothers did.
As for grandparents that can live with their children they don't disturb them. (In Russia we can see the same situation as in England). In Russia parents usually help their children even when they have their own families. But usually grandparents live apart their children and grandchildren. The institution called 'grandma' is a typical one for Russia. It means that grandmothers take grandchildren for weekends, holidays or when their parents don't have time to be with them. That way grandmothers try to help their children and at the same time they try to be with their loved grandchildren.
Children in Russia are not so independent as children in England. The laws are particularly the same, but it is more difficult to realize them in life. For example, you won't be able to get work at the age of 14, because when you come to get work you are asked what experience have you had. And what can you answer if you just want to start work. Many children don't have an opportunity to have good education because they have to begin working at the moment they finished school.
As in England young people get married after the age of 18 without parents' consent. And the time when they get married depends on what social lay they belong to.
VOCABULARY
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