Warming-up.

Why is family important for you?

Which are more important to you: your family or your friends?

     Read the following text. Do you agree with the view on the family it gives?

Make sure you understand the meaning of the following words and word-combinations:

stable

to give a sense of stability

to feel secure

to trust and rely on your family members

to share values and ideas, joys and sorrows

to treat children with respect

to form relationship with their peers

What is a family for you?

Family is very important for every person, because it gives you a sense of stability and tradition, a feeling of having support and understanding. You feel secure when there’s a family behind you. They are people you can trust and rely on, people who won’t let you down and who share your joys and sorrows. In happy families parents are frank and honest with their children, they treat their children with respect without moralizing or bossing them, and children in their turn learn how to treat other people and how to form relationship with their peers.

I enjoy the honest and open relationship in my family. I like it when parents trust their children, give them enough freedom and respect them. I think these things make family relations warm and pleasant. There is no so-called “generation gap” in our family, though we may argue and disagree on certain issues. I can always bring my friend home and my parents are very positive about it, although they don’t always approve of our tastes, views and clothes.

In fact I have a closer relationship with my mother. We understand each other better, which I think is quite natural. We can spend hours and hours talking about our family problems, fashion, views on education, people’s relations, their ambitions and the like.

I guess, when people spend more time together they are closer to each other. It’s a pity, but my parents and I are usually very busy during the weekdays and we seldom have a chance to spend time together. Sunday is the day when we can sit at a table and talk over everything that happened during the week. Eating together makes us feel close and we often have our most frank conversations at these times. Also once a week my parents give the flat a big clean. Of course I help them with it. By the way it’s not so boring. I turn on music and we even have fun. Then we may go shopping together. I like to go shopping with my parents because they always buy me something. During our shopping rounds we discuss a lot of things and make plans for the next weekend.

Almost every weekend we visit our grandparents; sometimes we visit my uncle  and his family.

I’d like to become more independent from my parents in future, nevertheless we’ll always be the best friends because my parents are the most important people in the world.

Questions to discuss:

1. How do members of a family support each other?
2. Who do you think has the most power in the family? Why?
3. Do you agree with the saying “Children should be seen and not heard”? Why do you agree or disagree?
4. Are good family members or good friends more important? Why?
5. What problems do parents have to solve as their children grow up?
6. How close are you to your extended family? (cousins, aunts, great uncles etc.)
7. What is the perfect number of children a family should have?
8. What do you think of people who marry and decide not to have children?
9. How do you think western families and eastern families differ?
10. What do you think is the most important thing to make a happy family?
11. Is it better for mothers to stay at home with kids or go to work to earn more money for the family?
12. Many families send their children to private institutes or daycares for most of the day. Is this good or bad?
13. How do you define the word “home”? Is it where you live? Where your family lives or where you grew up?
14. When married people talk about having children they talk about “starting a family”. Can two married people be a family if they don’t have kids?
15. How do you think family life is changing in your country? (example: wife working, husband cleaning, kids at institutes) Is this change good or bad?
16. What do you think of gay marriage?
17. Is spanking or hitting a good way to discipline children? Why or why not?
18. What age is too young to get married?
19. Why do people get married?
20. If you were offered an excellent job abroad could you leave your family and country for 5 years?