▶ Your Answer : A family is an entity that every people spend their whole life with, and considered to be amazingly important, in all over the world. However, recently there have been controversies about whether the extended family is not as essential as the past or not. Although there would be inevitably some people who contend that the big family is as important, or more important than before, I think that the extended family has less importance than the past for specific reasons.
First of all, the number of overall young generation is becoming exponentially less than before in the countryside. In the past, there were indeed more extended families in the rural areas than the urban areas. Different from the past, when there were extended family in the rural areas and all of the family members lived together, more young people went to big cities in order to get broader job opportunities as the time went by. As a result, there have been young generation in urban areas, with the elderly being left in rural areas, which means that there are virtually no more extended families, in the countryside. The young people who went to the rural areas would get the job, marry, and make their families at there, which gives rise to nuclear families. Nowadays, these small families are becoming larger in their number, and the extended family is no more prevalent and important to people than before.
Second, compared to the past, people are becoming busier. At the past, people had relatively much leisure time or spare time to spend with their many family members. They would devote their much time into being with family because people thought the extended family important, and it is still thought to be right. Nevertheless, because of low-employment rate becoming lower, they do not have any leisure time, or even spare time to spend with family because they have to do various things to get the job, such as getting a certificate, taking official examinations, and so on. They do not have much energy to care and cope with all of the members in the extended family. Consequently, people do not put priority in spending time with their family members, especially in the extended family because there are so many people to take care of.
To sum up, I do not agree with the statement that the extended family is as important as, or more essential than before. Nowadays, the big family is indeed declining in its number, and people do not have leisure time to spend with the extended family's big number of members. |