Amrican Family 英语ppt.ppt

* 演讲：李慧 Many Americans formed their idea of family life in the nineteen fifties. Popular television programs----like Ozzie and Harriet奥兹和哈里特的冒险 and Father Knows Best----showed a family with two or three children. Mother stayed at home to cook, clean and raise the children. Father earned enough money at his job to provide for all of the familys needs. These television programs are still shown sometimes. But that kind of American family has become increasingly less common in the last thirty years. Beginning in the late nineteen fifties, a wave of social change swept through American life. Almost every American family was affected. Historians say the American family has changed more rapidly in the last thirty years than in any other time period. Social historians say the most far-reaching change in the family has resulted from changes in womens work. A majority of married women in the United States no longer stay home all day to cook, clean and raise children. They now have paid jobs outside the home. So their young children spend at least part of the day in a child-care home or center. Changes in the family also resulted from changes in marriage traditions. During the nineteen-sixties, many young men and women began to live together without being legally married. Some had children. They were a family, but not in the traditional sense. At the same time, more people ended their marriage if it was unhappy. The rate of divorce in the United States increased more than three times in about twenty years. And finally, birth control became more acceptable. Fewer babies were born. The birth rate fell to its lowest point ever in the history of the nation. With divorce and fewer babies, American families got smaller. They began to look less and less like families in the television programs. Many more families were made up of only divorced mothers and children. More two-parent families contained children from a husbands or wifes earlier marriage. More familie