▶ Your Answer :
A substantial number of people believe that
the extended family is still important compared to the past. They insist that
younger family members can learn a variety of knowledge from older generations.
However, in my opinion, the extended family is less crucial nowadays than in
the past. This is because it is difficult to compose extended families in nowadays
society, and people can get almost the whole information via a variety of
media.
To begin with, living with multiple
generations is hard in these days. This is mainly because nice schools and workplaces
are mostly located in the downtown, and elderly people prefer to live in the
quiet place, such as small town. In other words, each generation has their own preference
of an ideal living place. A recent research conducted by Korean Senior Research
Center has shown that most old generations do not want to impose a heavy burden
on younger generations. In other words, they prefer to live without their
younger generations, and they want to focus on their own senior life. This
implies that the different point of view of each generation makes it hard to
compose an extended family.
On top of that, nowadays people can get a great
deal of useful information through variable media, such as Television and
Internet. This means that the information from the media can replace the
experience and knowledge of older generations. The rationale behind this is
that modern people are able to obtain whatever information they want with one
mouse click on the internet, and a diverse of Television programs offer useful
information to us. In other words, elderly’s transmission of experience is not
effective in these days. For instance, my parents had learned cooking recipes and
how to perform ancestral rites from their parents and grand-parents. However, nowadays
the internet takes the place of older people’s know-how. The internet provides
the whole process of an ancestral rite in detail, and we can learn useful
recipes, both creative and traditional, through cooking programs on television.
As this example demonstrates, media would substitute the elderly’s knowledge
and know-how.
To sum up, the different way of life among each
generation makes it difficult to organize an extended family, and the elderly’s
knowledge and experience would be superseded by nowadays media. In this regard,
I strongly agree with the statement that nowadays the extended family is less significant
than in the past.
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