IELTS Writing Actual Test (March 5th, 2016) – Topic: Family

It is true that a lot of things are different in the structures of families and the roles of their members in recent decades compared to past times. Many children nowadays either go abroad to pursue their university degrees after finishing high school or live alone. These changes have had several positive impacts on the development of families, as I will explain.

To get started with family structures, I can say that people did not have opportunities to go abroad to study in the past, so the families’ sizes were big. But nowadays, people either go abroad for studying purposes or living alone. Therefore, family sizes became smaller and smaller as time passed. This is one of the significant changes that was occurred in the family structure.

When it comes to the roles of family members, it is not arguable that there have been some significant changes. In the past, there was a discrimination between wives and husbands in terms of the sorts of work they needed to accomplish. For example, males had to work and buy all the necessities for the house, but females needed to stay at home and take care of their children or cook meals. Fortunately, we have stamped out discrimination almost completely, so we are able to live freely.

In my opinion, all these changes are positive and increased the lives of family members considerably. So, people at present have an increasingly better and fairer life compared to the past.

In conclusion, I strongly believe that all of these things are good and beneficial for many families. For example, nowadays we do not have big family sizes and a difference between males and females.

Reply

Nowadays, there have been a lot of evolution occuring over the couple of years, family pattern and duties of the individuals in these structure are not an exemption. This essay discusses into detail the changes and give reasons why these changes have their merits and drawbacks.
To begin with, some centuries ago, family members consisted of the nuclear and extended family members. However, in recent times, this has changed as a result of high cost of living in the urban cities. With high inflations on commodities, accomodations, utility bills and transportation fares, it’s very difficult to have a large family in the city centers. Therefore people prefer to have a nuclear family, where members can be given high quality of care. In addition, because of the aforementioned challenge above, the women or wife’s in the household leave the housechores for the children to take up jobs offer’s to support their husband’s or men in the family. For instance, because the wife’s are now becoming career women, their responsibilities are now shifted to the children in the family. Whereby, minors now cook and care for their younger siblings.
On the other hand, these occurances can be positive in the sense that, people living in a family with a maximum figure of five can put away some money for savings. Which can be used in the future when the need arises. This can not be achieved in the case of an extended family, due to high standard of living in the metropolis. However, there are some drawbacks as living with a small family size of two or three can lead to loneliness and induce depression. As well as, having negative effects on a child’s behavior, such as they becoming antisocial.
To conclude, I perceive the size and role of family members have been compromised, due to the rapid standard of living in the city. However, this has both positive and negative effects on the family and society as a whole.

Reply

Family can be known as the smallest unit of society where humans start learning, interacting, and developing their personalities. It consists of some major characters as parents and their children. In current days we can see the roles of these characters keep changing compared to the old times. This essay will discuss the changes that can take place in a family and their positive and negative outcomes.
In ancient times a complete family means a male and a female living together with their little ones. Usually the male character who is known as the father provides for the family by working while the female character or the mother takes care of their babies and house chores. However, nowadays this pattern has changed and both parents work hard in order to give their children a better and comfortable life. Apart from that, we can also see many families where the father stays at home with the children and the mother follows a career in order to complete the needs of the family. Not only that it’s common to see families with single parents who can balance both house and work-life. In my opinion, the reasons for these changes are globalization and high living cost of in the world.
As mentioned in beginning this can have both positive and negative outcomes. one of the positive outcomes is the freedom of people. Unlike the old days now people can follow what they really like to do without worrying about their roles in the family. As an example, a woman can follow a dream carrier path without any barriers. On the other hand, this brings negative outcomes such as less emotional attachment in the family, stressed parents, less attention to the babies when needed and etc..
However, it is completely normal to have imperfect families and change is always inevitable. So, in the end, it’s better to choose the most practical and balanced way of living than to compare it with others.

Reply

There is a common change in the structure of family and in the role of family members nowadays. In this essay, I will mention recent changes in modern families and the influences they bring up.

It is unusual to see large families with brothers and sisters in modern society. In china, a policy of family planning was established last century which allow only one child to be born in a family. The policy was abolished last year but had a deep impact on family structure in china. Besides, mothers used to raise their children at home while fathers went to work to support the family in the past. Nowadays, mothers also play the role of financial supporters in order to provide better environment for the child.

This changing trend is prevailing have both negative and positive consequences. On one hand, people who are the only child in their family are likely to feel lonely in their lives. Without a peer companion, the role usually played by brothers and sisters, people deal with their problems by themselves instead of discussing the difficulty with others. For long term, they will lack communication skills which is the key factor of making friends and finally lead to loneliness. However, the good news is that the changes in family structure can bring positive effects. With a increasing number of mothers step into their career life, the financial condition of their families will be improved. From the view of whole society, there are more workers to boost the economy growth, thus accelerating the development of city. Not only individuals can benefits from the change, but also the whole society can make progress with the help of the change.

Every coin has two sides. The changes in family bring both problems and benefits.

Reply

Recently, family structures have been reshaped. In Iran, women have become more independent compare to its 90s, on the other hand they now think working in an office and having a career at corporations is better for their future versus being a housewife. However, that choice of shift changes the culture and the structure of what we have known as traditional families.
The upside of having more women joining the labour markets in a nation, in particular has its enhancement to the productions of the community. By contrast, by not having women joining the workplaces, the public’s productions halves, since we can count women population is about half in a given people. Therefore, Iran is certain getting its benefits from the difference. Even though we shall take a look at the other side of the spectrum.
The downside of the family structure changes owing to the increasing female workers is the attentions that were supposed to pay for children, although now being sucked by companies. In addition, by developing a corporate career, women will have to encounter more responsibility that their firms delegated to them, as a result, those women will have difficulties to have the proper amount of time to invest in their children as mothers. In my view, the notion of this diversity is more idealistic than practical, particularly when it comes the future of children, early education matters the most over children’s lifetime, and that notion will enlarge the problems that have been discussed here.
To sum up, recently, the roles in families have been facing a structural innovation. As in Iran, women are liberal for office work rather household works. Another option could be a society can expect a boost of productivities from that family role modification, moreover a downfall to the mother holds education for the next generations.

Reply

Over the past few years, families have gone through many changes. Comparing today’s families with that of a couple of decades ago depicts how important these changes are. Although one might argue that changes cannot be labelled as positive or negative, I believe that most of these changes are positive.

First, and perhaps one of the most important ones, is the change in size. Back in the days, families used to have numerous children. Agricultural families depended on children as farmhands and also believed that their children would take care of them when they get older. Although this still could be a valid argument for families in rural areas, most people who live is cities nowadays prefer to have one or 2 children, if any. The reason to that is mainly a change in lifestyle and also cost of raising children which has skyrocketed in recent years. As a result of this change, parents have more time to focus on their sons and daughters and can tailor their parenting to them.
Second, the change in role of women in society which has its roots in families. In the past, it was believed that women should stay at home, do the chores and raise children. Even the name they’d been given showed their responsibilities: ‘a housewife’. However, this has drastically changed over the years. Women have the same rate of education and also higher education as men and have found their way into the workforce. In today’s families, both men and women work and have income. As a result, they usually split the housework. In my opinion, this is certainly a positive change, as it has given women equal opportunities, not only in families, but also in the society.

In conclusion, families today are so different to those of decades ago, both in terms of size and structure and I believe that most of these changes, if not all, are positive and beneficial to both families and society.

Reply

A family, which is known as the society’s cell, has always changed due to the regular affection of life, thus resulting in manifold discrepancies in the structure and members’ role compared to the past with the aim of adapting to the new environment. Based on my viewpoint, I strongly concur with the idea that these familial changes are positive.
It can be claimed that almost aspects of family have changed under the influence of the temporary society from the method which it originally worked on the inside structure. These days, most families have a familiar tendency to simplify their home when there are such a significant number of nuclear families with only 2 generations under the same roof in the relation to the minor extended families, where over 3 generations shared a house. Moreover, role- changes have been also recorded with the equality between the husband and the wife in manifold fields such as supporting the whole family, making for a living or childcare. Furthermore, children’s opinions seem to be much respected and considered as an integral part by adults.
Above changes, contributing to forming such a world, are inevitably positive for human. First, the recent evidences have proved that everyone deserves to gain equality and respect, and their voice should be highly appreciated because of their potential power inside. Therefore, the rising importance of housewives and children has devoted to the general development of the human. In addition, the simplification into some home structures is immensely suitable for the life these days, especially in the urban area, as it can be recognized to be the symptom of self-modifying.
To conclude, these above changes made by several families during the long period in the history have revealed that human has always self- adjust to the changing inhabitants, affecting on the essential and positive transformation in those so- called society’s cells.

Reply

Currently，traditional family formation and the roles that men and women play are all altering. There are two main diverse developments in the family patterns, which have both merits and demerits.

Despite the traditional family composition, there are two main household patterns. One is the single-parent family. The whole social is progressing, whereas the sense of responsible of individuals is decreasing. As a result, with the increasing divorce rate, there are more and more children can only experience love from one parent. Another change in a family is that women are the breadwinner and men stay at home. It has become common for women to gain qualification and purse their own career paths, which is a sharp contrast to decades ago when women was the one were in charge of household chores.

In my point of view, the two changes described above could have both merits and demerits. In terms of the single-parent family, it has both negative effects on society and children. On the one hand, high divorce could lead to unstable of the whole society. On the other hand, children who grow up in single-parent family could be sensitive and self-abased. However, it is good to see women showing their value in the workplace, rather than just doing housework and childcare at home. What’s more, it is symbolizing the equality between two genders.

In conclusion, i believe that the changes in family roles and composition are both advantages and disadvantages.

Reply

In recent years, we do see a positive change in how flexible ‘family’ as a social institution has emerged. The social stigma surrounding adoption, surrogacy, divorce, late marriage, child-less marriage is getting less importance in liberal urban neighborhoods.

We see the role of men changing from just being the breadwinner to also an equal parent to the children at home. Both the sexes combine their expertise to run the household smoothly.

The decisions at home involve children, elderly, the man and the woman of the house. The filo-centric approach to manage affairs have children at the forefront. The children participate, negotiate and alter decisions due to access to knowledge through internet.

There are also single parent families which are functioning if a woman decides not to marry but have a child. Additionally, live-in relationships are common among working professionals in the cities. This could turn negative financially or legally if the couple decides to break-off.

Overall, we do see changes both positive and negative. In rural as well as urban family structures change due to migration for work, study or marriage. Although, nuclear and joint family structure are more common than the rest.

Reply

It is no doubt that the family structure of today differs from that of the structure that existed decades ago. Now these changes can be seen even in the role that each member plays and I am of the opinion that these are mostly positive changes

The reason for my affirmation that these changes are all positive point to a myriad of reasons . Earlier men were considered as the sole bread-winners of the family and women were constrained to the four walls of the kitchen and considered merely as care-takers. But now we as a society have reached a stage where both the genders work actively towards bringing a share of income to the house thereby ensuring more financial stability and sharing of duties and responsibilities between both male and female.

It helps in breaking dangerous stereotypes involving a particular role that a family member has to play .For instance earlier the women of the family were the designated cooks and cleaners of the house , but now with every girl child going to schools and most of the women working besides their husband , it has made the males realise the need to share the responsibility of getting chores done at home .
With each member realising the mutual dependency that they have on each other , it helps to make each memeber more sensitive and understanding of others which can lead to societal harmony and co-operation.

Reply