d) Expand them to describe exhaustively the most perfect wife / husband and mother-to-law.
8. One of the main problems of family life is the relationship between young adults and parents. Discuss the problem considering the following:
1. When do usually young people move out of their parents' home and start living in their own place? Is it different for sons and daughters? How and why?
2. What are the advantages of living with parents? What are the disadvantages? What kind of problems do young adults have when they live with their parents?
3. Should young adults live with their parents until they get married? Why or why not? When should they move out, in your opinion?
4. Are you living with your parents or relatives now? Would you rather be living in your own apartment? Why or why not?
5. In many countries young married couples live with their in-laws after marriage. Is this good? Why or why not?
6. If you are a parent, do you want your children to continue living with you until they get married? When do you think your children should leave home?
7. Pair work. Read the quotations given below and agree or disagree with them. Your opinion should be followed by some appropriate comment where possible:
1. Love is just like the measles; we all have to go through it (Jerome K. Jerome)
2. A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband. (Montaigne)
3. All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Leo Tolstoy)
4. Man for the field and woman for the hearth;
Man for the sword and for the needle she;
Man with the head and woman with the heart;
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion. (Lord Tennyson)
5. Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse. (G. B. Shaw)
6. Marriage is like life in this that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses. (R. L. Stevenson)
8. Work in groups of three or four. Decide which of the following statements yon agree with and which statements you disagree with. Discuss these with the other members of your group. Be ready to report your discussion to other groups:
1. You should always ask your parents for permission to marry.
2. Children should only leave home after they are married.
3. You should always be ready to help a member of the family.
4. The members of a family should live in the same area so that it is easy for them to visit each other.
5. Old people should be encouraged to stay in old people's homes rather than with the family.
6. Family life is less important in the modern world than it was in the past.
9. In many women's magazines there is a column on personal problems where a journalist running the column tries to answer the readers' letters. Below you'll find a woman's letter to Mr Know-It-All and a stereotyped reply to the letter, imitating the kind of "sensible", inoffensive advice offered hi such columns in women's magazines.
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a) Read the letter and the reply. The expressions in bold type show the ways English people give advice. Note them down:
Dear Mr Know-It-All,
My father-in-law died about two years ago. Of course my mother-in-law was very upset and lonely, so my husband invited her to live with us. I don't know what to do I'm going crazy. My mother-in-law and I don't get along very well. She's a wonderful person and is very helpful to me in many ways, but she thinks she's the boss in our home. If I try to discipline the children and tell them that they can't do something, they go running to their grandmother and she tells them they can do it! My husband and I have no privacy. What's worse is that she constantly criticizes me to my husband behind my back. I'm afraid this is going to break up our marriage. What should I do?
Jean
Dear Jean,
Do you think you could bring yourself to ask mother-in-law to leave? (Maybe explaining that now the children are growing up they need more space.)
If you think that the old lady would then be too lonely don't you think it would be a good idea at least to ask somebody, probably some of your husband's relatives, to invite her for a couple of weeks. It would somehow release tension in your family and entertain the old lady. I realize it's much easier to give advice than really tackle the problem, but if I were you I'd think of some regular house chores that would keep her busy. And, Jean, why don't you try to show now and then that you appreciate her help. However it is very important for your mother-in-law to feel that she is needed in the house, but let her know that the children are your responsibility. Your husband will no doubt be grateful for your effort and things will turn out for the best I hope.
