▶ Your Answer :
The number of nuclear families is increasing
rapidly. It is not awkward for one to say that the importance of an extended
family is decreasing as well. In my opinion, however, an extended family still
means a lot to the people living in this society. This is mainly because the
number of people who are raising their grandchildren and spends great amount of
time with their extended family has not been decreased at all.
First of all, numerous grandparents help parents their
grandchildren these days. This is due to the fact that, lots of today’s parents
work and are out of time for raising their children. Therefore, numerous grandparents
are looking after their grandchildren on behalf of their parents. For example,
when I was little, both of my parents had jobs. They were teachers. So, I was raised
by my grandmother and that created a special bonding with my grandmother. To
date, this special bonding is still in effect since I always feel like I have three
parents. This indicates that in this highly competitive society, grandparents
and their grandchildren often build more substantial relationship than in the
past.
Secondly, people travel a lot with their extended
families. This is attributable to the fact that we can easily observe numerous family
tourists in the airport during the vacation seasons. It is obvious that the
number of family who live in an extended family has decreased compared to the
past. However, people try to do lots of things together with their family in
order to maintain their bonding as a family. That is, albeit the number of family
members living together has been decreased, the amount of time that an extended
family spend together has not been changed significantly. In a recent
statistical research conducted by the Korean government revealed that the
number of people traveling in extended family increased by 20% compared to that
of people 10 years ago. This illustrates that an extended family still means a
lot to the people.
In summary, there are countless number of people
who take care of their grandchildren and travel periodically with their
extended family. In this regard, I strongly disagree with the statement that the
extended family is not as important now as before. |