It is often said that family is the smallest society. This is because in the past family were quite large including grandparents, aunts and uncles. However, nowadays, things are different and concept of the extended family is not crucial. There are two main reasons for this: first of all, family’s life style has been change a lot. Also, since mothers started to work, they do not want to have many children.
To begin with, extended family is less important nowadays because people’s lifestyle changed dramatically. In the past, most families did farming. Since there were not many people to cooperate, the large family was required. However, current families rarely do farming and live their own lives. There is no need to cooperate for a living. So extended family is not being required. For example, since my grandmother owned a peach orchard, she used to live with third generation families. Large family was quite helpful that time because they all worked together for a living. However, since both of my parents are teachers, we do not need to work together for food. They rarely need kids’ help for a living.
In addition, it is a well known fact that women are no longer housekeepers or housewives. They want to have their own jobs and lives, which result in no more mothers in families. Parents of new generation rarely have a child and they do not have enough time to serve their parents. This is why they live separately with their family. To illustrate, according to the study conducted by Korean Times, almost 60% of the working women tend to live separately with their family. They added that they cannot manage time doing both taking care of family and working.
To illustrate, extended family is not an obligation to people nowadays. This is because current life style is totally different with the past. Furthermore, since the number of working women is growing, nuclear family concept became common. |