“There is a senseless concept that children grow up and leave home when they are 18, and the truth is far from that,” says sociologist Larry Bumpass of the University of Wisconsin. Today, unexpected numbers of young adults are living with their parents.
Analysts raised a variety of reasons for this return to the nest. One important reason is that the marriage age is rising, a condition that makes home and its pleasantness particularly attractive to young people, which is second to skyrocketing housing costs to which young people find their wings attached. Besides, a high divorce rate and a declining remarriage rate are sending economically pressed and emotionally hurt survivors back to parental shelters. For some, the expense of an away-from-home college education has become so great that many students now attend local schools.
Living at home, says Knighton, a school teacher, continues to give her security and moral support. Her mother agreed, “It is ridiculous for the kids to pay all that money for rent. It makes sense for kids to stay at home.” But sharing the family home requires adjustments for all. There are the quarrels over bathrooms, telephones and privacy. Some families, however, manage the delicate balancing act. But for others, it proves too difficult. Michelle Del Turco, 24, has been home three times — and left three times. “What I considered a social drink, my dad considered an alcohol problem,” she explains. “He never liked anyone I dated, so I either had to hide away to meet them at friends’ houses.”
It is really hard to say how long adult children should live with their parents before moving on. Nevertheless, it is commonly recognized that lengthy homecomings are a mistake and they accidentally destroy the advantage of brief visits that will strengthen the relationship between parents and children. Children, struggling to establish separate identities, can end up with “a sense of inadequacy, defeat and failure.” And aging parents, who should be enjoying some financial and personal freedom, find themselves stuck with responsibilities, which is definitely a stress for them.
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最近国家教育部(State Ministry of Education)要求在学校课程(school curriculum)中设立 中国传统毛笔书法课(Chinese calligraphy course)，引起社会诸多争议。请你就此谈谈自己的看法。
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Are Emails and Text Messages Destroying the language?
Technology has undoubtedly brought about a revolution in communication. Most people would agree that this has been a positive development. Recently, however, there has been concern over the negative effect that modern methods of communications are having on the English language.
On one hand, the increasing use of e-mails and text message is changing the way we use grammar. By this in mean that certain words are dropped in order to keep message short. In my view, this cannot be avoided. In a text message, for instance, there is neither the time nor the space to write complete sentences. The same applies to e-mails, which are supposed to be a shorter, more direst form of communications. In both cases, the need to be brief often means that the grammar is changed in some way.
On the other hand, it is fashionable nowadays to shorten the spelling of words, particularly in text message. One example of this is when people write ‘CU later’ instead of ‘see you later’. To purists or to it simply shows that the language is changing in much the same way as it has done for centuries.
In my opinion, writing English correctly is not so important as getting the message across. If, for example, you send someone an e-mail or a text message telling them to meet you in a specified place at a certain time, making yourself understood is much more important than your grammar and spelling. As far as I am concerned, we should allow a certain amount of flexibility. Not everyone has a perfect command of the language but that should not stop them from being able to communicate.
To sum up, the effect that e-mails and text messages are having on written English is a significant one. This may , in the future, result in major changes to the language. However, we should not let rules get in the way of communication. After all, isn’t that the reason language was developed in the first place--- so that we could communicate?
