Perri Klass and her mother, Sheil a Solomon Klass, both gifted professional writers, prove to be ideal co-writers as they examine their decades of motherhood, daughterhood, and the wonderful ways their lives have overlapped（重叠）.

Perri notes with     1     how closely her own life has mirrored her mother’s: both have fulltime careers; both have published books, articles, and stories; each has three children; they both love to read. They also love to travel ---- in fact, they often take trips together. But in truth, the harder they look at their lives, the more they acknowledge their big     2     in circumstance and basic nature.

A child of the Depression（大萧条）, Sheil a was raised in Brooklyn by parents who considered     3     a luxury for girls. Starting with her college education, she has fought for everything she’s ever accomplished. Perri, on the other hand, grew up     4     in the New Jersey suburbs of the1960s and 1970s. For Sheila, wasting time or money is a crime, and luxury is     5     while Perri enjoys the occasional small luxury, but has not been successful at trying to persuade her mother into enjoying even the tiniest thing she likes.

Each writing in her own unmistakable voice, Perri and Sheil a take turns     6     the joys and pains, the love and bitterness, the minor troubles and lasting respect that have always bonded them together. Sheil a describes the adventure of giving birth to Perri in a tiny town in Trinidad where her husband was doing     7     fieldwork. Perri admits that she can’t sort out all the mess in the households, even though she knows it drives her mother crazy. Together they compare thoughts on bringing up children and working, admit long-hidden sorrows, and enjoy precious memories.

Looking deep into the lives they have lived     8     and together, Perri and Sheil a tell their mother-daughter story with honesty, humor, enthusiasm, and admiration for each other. A written     9     in two voices, Every Mother Is a Daughter is a duet（二重奏） that produces a deep, strong sound with the experiences that all mothers and daughters will     10     .

The evidence for harmony may not be obvious in some families. But it seems that four out of five young people now get on with their parents, which is the     1     of the popularly—held image of unhappy teenagers locked in their room after     2     family quarrels.

An important new study into teenage attitudes     3     shows that their family life is more harmonious than it has ever been in the past. “We were surprised by just how positive today’s young people seem to be about their families,” said one member of the research team. “They’re expected to be rebellious and selfish but     4     they have other things on their minds; they want a car and material goods, and they worry about whether school is serving them well. There’s more negotiation and discussion between parents and children, and children expect to take part in the family decision-making     5    . They don’t want to rock the boat.”

So it seems that this generation of parents is much more likely than parents of 30 years ago to treat their children as friends. Maybe this     6     view of family life should not be unexp-ected. It is possible that the idea of teenage     7     is not rooted in real facts. A researcher comments, “Our surprise that teenagers say they get along well with their parents comes because of a brief period in our social history when teenagers were regarded as     8     beings. But that idea of rebelling and breaking away from their parents     9     only happened during that one time in the 1960s when everyone rebelled. The normal situation throughout history has been a smooth     10     from helping out with the family business to taking it over.”

Family Patterns in Modern Britain

There are many different family patterns in modern Britain. The family is a central institution of modern British society, at least in the     1     that almost everybody has had experience of living in a family at some time in their lives.

One pattern that was     2     in the 1950s and covers about one in eight families today is where the parents and married children live     3     together but in separate houses. The family bond     4     strong and mothers and daughters are     5     to meet each other most days to talk or help each other. This pattern     6     more often in settled communities rather than in     7     ones, in the north of England rather than in the south, and in working class rather than middle-class families.

Another pattern is where parents and married children live further apart (usually about an hour’s car     8     from each other). Many of them meet only once or twice a month but keep in     9     by telephone and help each other when necessary. This pattern is growing and     10     about half of the population. It is found especially in middle-class families in the south-east of England.

The science of sibling rivalry

We don’t choose our siblings. Brothers and sisters are just sort of there. And yet, when it comes to our development, they can be more influential than parents.

Part of sibling’s influence has to do with their     1    . Eighty-two percent of kids live with a sibling (a greater share than live with a father), and about 75 percent of 70-year-olds have a living sibling. For those of us who have brothers or sisters, our relationships with them will likely be the longest of our life.

Whether these relationships make our life better or worse is a more complicated question. On the upside, positive interactions with siblings during adolescence     2     empathy, prosocial behavior, and academic achievement. This effect can be complicated by a full house, however. Kids with more siblings do worse in school—although the     3     of this finding has been challenged by several studies.

When a sibling’s relationship is bad, however, it can be really bad;     4     siblings relationships make people more likely to be depressed and anxious in adolescence. Moreover, sibling bullying makes a kid more likely to engage in self-harm as a teen and to become pyscholtic by age 18.

Whether a person models herself after her siblings or tries to     5     herself has particularly important consequences. One study found that siblings who felt     6     about each other tended to achieve similar education levels, while those who spent unequal time with their dad and got unequal parental     7     had different educational fortunes. Research suggests that as siblings’ relationships with their parents grow more different over time, their relationship with each other may become warmer. And     8     your sibling can be a mistake, depending on what she’s up to: Girls are more likely to get pregnant in their teens and teenagers are more likely to engage in risky behavior if an older sibling did not first.

One way or another, sibling influence is     9    . A study of more than 1 million Swedes found that one’s risk of dying of a heart attack rises dramatically after a sibling dies of one, due not only to     10     DNA but also to the stress of losing such a key figure. It makes sense that most of us are different people than we’d have been if our brothers or sisters were never born. Sibling s seem like they’re just there only until they aren’t.

Crazy is our new normal. With two teenage boys and three little boys, our family is     1     — to the baseball field, track field and piano lessons. Even though we’ve limited each boy’s activities and try our best to defend our family time, it seems that we’re in a     2     state of flight.

“Embrace it. Roll with it,” my husband, Lonny, says, “It’s going to be like this for a while.”

He is right. It’s likely that life will continue to go forward before it slows down. But I remembered the    3    , quiet days that our family used to enjoy. I missed long walks through the park when we     4     the boys’ little hands. I longed for lazy Saturday afternoons under the tree in our backyard. I wanted to slip back a few years, when busyness was the exception and not the     5    .

One night, after a particularly full day and evening games, our family     6     on the porch for ice cream. Two parents, two teens, and three small boys     7     on one old swing and a couple of rocking chairs. We were together, in one place, for a small slice of time.

The moon was full. The Mississippi River, flowing past our home, was smooth as glass. I wrapped my own arms around the son who sat on my lap and breathed deeply to inhale his little-boy     8     — dirt and sweat. My heart was still and content.

I realized that while crazy is our new     9    , happiness is as usual. They may look different from before, but they are still there — even if they’re in the form of a single moment on the porch. Maybe I just need the     10    to see.

Family problems come in all shapes and sizes; some are short-lived and easily managed, while others are more chronic and difficult to handle. Stress points include events such as illness and injury, changing jobs, changing schools, moving and financial difficulties. Each family develops its own ways of coping with these stresses, some of which work better than others. Unsuccessful coping can be recognized by a number of characteristics, including the following:

This usually occurs because family members avoid discussing problems or even avoid admitting that problems exist. Some families just have not learned the skills of negotiating or, for some other reason, cannot let go of bad or hurt feelings. Children are likely to     1     their behavior after their parents' behavior and may learn to refuse to talk about feelings and problems.

Families often have not decided how family responsibilities will be divided among family members. When that happens, family life can become chaotic, and many things do not get     2    . At the other extreme, some families are not     3     at all, and family members do not help one another out or fairly reassign responsibilities as family circumstances change.

Families are, especially for children, the most important source of emotional support. During the middle years, children find it hard to obtain this emotional support outside the family. Children do not perform or develop well without this support.

Families     4     best when the individuality of each family member is acknowledged and appreciated. At the least, even if someone else's personal traits or characteristics are not highly     5    , each family member needs to tolerate these traits and respect that individual. Otherwise children are likely to have a difficult time developing a healthy self-image, and they will have low self-esteem and poor social skills.

Children need to succeed in order to feel     6     of successfully managing life's stresses and challenges. If they are taught or encouraged to rely on others (within the family or outside it) to solve their problems, they will have low self-esteem and lack     7     and will have trouble succeeding in the world.

Many parents have toyed with home schooling. The idea conjures up idyllic(田园诗般的) images of bright-eyed children and earnest parents clustered at the kitchen table, unravelling the mysteries of maths, science and languages free of the dogma and structures of     1     education.

This week, parents have confronted a more chaotic reality－not home schooling in the usual sense, but enforced schooling, from home. Kitchen tables strewn(布满) with books and cereal bowls;     2     parents trying to remember how to do improper fractions while taking part in a Google Hangout(一款群聊视频软件) with work colleagues; fights over laptops as children insist they need to log on to online lessons—such scenes will have been repeated in households across the world.

A video that went     3     this week depicted the feelings of parents around the world.It showed a mother who broke after just two days of trying to marshal(安排) the schedules of her children as well as dozens of messages on WhatsApp:“If we don't die of corona, we'll die of     4     learning,”she ranted.

Some will have taken instantly to schooling from home, pleasantly surprised at the     5     to be gained from teaching young minds and at their own aptitude as teachers. For others who find the whole thing a Sisyphean(不可能完成的) task, the idea that schools may be     6     for months to come is daunting.

Home learning, as more usually understood, is not a new idea. The modern homeschool movement emerged in the 1970s, promoted by the likes of John Holt, an American teacher and education writer. He advised parents to     7     the curriculum to fit the child's interests, not the other way around.

The most recent estimates suggest that close to 60,000 children are home schooled in England, for reasons including mental health issues and special educational needs. Some parents have given up on what they see as a     8     “one-size fits all” education system.

Many technology entrepreneurs, including Google founder Larry Page, have talked about their formative years attending Montessori schools,     9     them with helping to promote a sense of questioning and self-motivation.

For parents settling in for the long haul during today's health crisis, technology is proving a     10    . School by Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams or Zoom has been hugely popular to keep children focused as well as connected as a class.

How best to make it work? Experts say children should rise, breakfast and work according to a clear timetable in line with normal schooling and parents should take a deep breath and keep calm.

I'm a 50-something male, the father of two mostly grown girls. I'm happy to say that both my parents are still kicking. I'm on good     1     with my brothers and sisters most of the time. I am blessed with good friends and other relations, and tend to get on well with my co-workers. I am fortunate in so many ways, but feel like I consistently disappoint everyone I know.

I cannot, for the life of me, give a genuine     2    . It simply doesn't come naturally. When I try, and I do, in order to maintain all the relationships, it feels forced, more a matter of     3     than a gift that might put wind in the sails of someone I truly care for. I feel strongly that giving should spring from joy, or at least from a     4     desire to see the recipient enlivened by it. When I have nothing to offer in response to a job well done, everyone loses. I feel like I've twisted the emotional and social development of my children, alienated（疏远）any number of perfectly wonderful lovers, and generally kept the world at arm's length.

After years of psychotherapy and the obsessive self-examination common to my generation, I believe I know where this meanness of spirit comes from. Six kids in total, at a very tender age, there were five younger, cuter kids standing between me and object of our     5    . Mama was driven to     6    , to put it mildly, by the demands placed on her, but it was the 1950s and she set a selfless and hardy example. I had complete     7     for her difficult situation, even at the time. The fact remains, however, that, as a young child. I needed more than I got. I     8     for my mother's attention. I needed to know that she     9     me as more than her helper, her strong little man. I clearly recall, at the ripe old age of 7, coming to the conclusion that I would never get it. "That's OK," I reckoned, " I can get by without it". "it" being her love.

You can imagine the sibling rivalry in a big family. Eventually I took haven in the written word to get away from it. But even before I learned to read, I had realized that giving any sign of approval or encouragement to my brothers and sisters could only     10     to increase the gulf between me and my mom. Does that make sense? I can rationalize otherwise, of course, and now we're all "one big happy family", but the damage is done. I want to be gracious and giving, but when I even think to reach into that purse, however, it's pretty much empty.

Giving kids allowances in the smart-phone

Allowances are a constant. No matter how much technology interferes with the parent-child relationship, kids still want money and parents still want to impart(赋予)a basic work ethic. But putting stickers on chore(日常事务)charts and dropping coins in piggy banks don't cut it with the smart-phone generation.

Parents in search of more     1     ways to teach children the value of money are turning to allowance-tracking apps, where kids can see their     2     rise and fall in real time.

Bonnie Koon, a mother of three in Crawfordville, Fla., used to post a calendar on her refrigerator     3     her kids chores, to the embarrassment of her 16-year-old twins. After seeing a Facebook ad for the app Green-light, she     4     it.

Green-light links to parents' bank accounts so that the payout can be seamless. Parents can encourage saving by paying interest on the money that isn’t spent     5     -- interest out of the parents' own pockets, of course.

It's the first taste of     6     freedom for many kids, and it's set in a relatively safe environment. Parents can determine spending limits and choose the retailers(零售商)where a child can make     7    . If a child attempts to buy something at an unapproved store or to spend more than the limit, the transaction(交易)is     8     and parents get a notification. And if a kid loses the card, parents can immediately cancel it from the app.

One of Ms. Koon's twins. Brenna, works part time at a restaurant. She's putting half of her pay check into a car-insurance savings fund she set up in the app, whit the goal of saving $450 by July. With each     9    , the app gives Brenna a progress update.

Some parents might worry that relying on apps to get kids to do chores only encourages them to be on their phones more. But parents who have chosen this approach argue that they are meeting their kids where they are and that it takes the     10     nagging(唠叨)out of the equation. The real-time look at their accounts makes the concepts of saving and spending more tangible than reviewing a bank statement.