https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4i2Kwg-IMo
Showing posts with label Family Issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family Issues. Show all posts
Thursday, 16 October 2014
Family Issues - Divorce
There are 2 videos about divorce, choose one annd give a comment in 10 sentences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4i2Kwg-IMo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVD3rEGNP5M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4i2Kwg-IMo
Sunday, 12 October 2014
Single-parent families - Text 5
Single-parent families
A Single-parent families are generally categorized by the sex of the
custodial parent (mother-only or father-only families). Mother-only families
include widows, divorced and separated women, and never-married mothers. In the
case of divorce, mothers are usually given custody in the United States
and other developed countries. In Italy, in 1997, for example, 90
percent of children whose parents divorced went into the custody of their
mothers. Regardless of sex, single parents share similar problems and
challenges.
B In the past, father-only families formed as a result of widowhood,
desertion by the mother, or wives refusing custody. There has been a 25 percent
increase in the number of single fathers in the United States from 1995 to 1998. In 1997, Canadian
fathers received sole custody in 11 percent of the cases and joint custody in
28 percent. The increase in father-only families is due, in part, to the
efforts of fathers to obtain custody
of their children. Although most fathers in the United States do not request
custody during divorce proceedings,
about one-half to two-thirds of those who do are awarded custody.
C In 1995 2.5 million U.S.
children resided with a single father. Single fathers in the United States
are twice as common in white families (16%) as compared with black families
(8%). Although single fathers are slightly better educated than single mothers,
on average, both groups are less likely to be college graduates and more likely
to have dropped out of high school
than married parents.
D There are an estimated one million noncustodial mothers in the United States,
with 75 percent voluntarily giving up custody. The primary reasons women give
up custody include: inadequate financial resources, child's preference for living
with the father, difficulty in controlling the children, threats of legal
custody battles, and physical or emotional problems experienced by the mother.
Almost all (97%) noncustodial mothers actively maintain a relationship with
their children.
E Fathers increase their chances of getting custody when they pay child
support, when the children are older, and when the oldest child is male. Single
fathers report that they feel competent as primary parents and, in taking
responsibility for the activities of caregiving usually assigned to mothers, are able to develop intimate and affectionate
relationships with their children. Single fathers report that they feel
competent as primary caregivers and are able to develop affectionate relationships
with their children.
obtain – získat
proceeding – proces
drop out – odpadnout, vzdát
assign to – přidělit
1) Read the article and match each of the headings to a paragraph.
1 Mothers usually become custodial
parents
2 Chances of fathers’ getting
custody
3 Reasons for being a noncustodial
mother
4 There are a few father-only
families
5 Single fathers are
usually white and better educated
2) Read the article and answer the questions.
1 What is the article about?
2 What is the situation of
single-parent families in the world?
3 Are there more single-parent
mothers or fathers? Why?
4 When is the situation
better for fathers?
3) Explain the following words.
1 custodial parent
2 widow
3 separated woman
4 desertion
5 jointly
4) Answer the following questions.
What is custody? What are its
types? Why do parents get separated? Who are members of an extended family?
Adjusted to:
Proposal seeks to include right to adopt in registered partnership legislation - Text 4
Proposal seeks to include right to adopt in registered partnership legislation
A The Green Party has recently brought forward a proposal to change
legislation so that gay and lesbian individuals in the Czech Republic
who live in a registered partnership would be able to adopt children. The
proposal is based on an analysis by the Committee for Sexual Minorities. Within
Europe, individual adoption for gays and lesbians in registered partnerships is
legal in a number of countries, including Germany,
Norway and the UK.
B Lucie Otahálová works for the Government Council for Human Rights,
which has declared the current adoption law an act of discrimination against
same sex couples who live in registered partnerships. She says: “Both married
heterosexual couples and individuals of both orientations can adopt children. A
person who enters a registered partnership is the only individual that is not
legally able to adopt a child.”
C Psychologists have different opinions. Child psychologist Jaroslav
Šturma opposes the proposed change
in the adoption law. “The optimal model is the model of the family that is
based on a relationship between a man and a woman. So I believe that such a law
would be a wrong signal for the public.” But other psychologists cite research
findings that paint a different picture. Dr. Hana Polašková, whose research
activity includes work with families with lesbian partners, says the presence
of parents of both sexes is not crucial
to the welfare of a child. “The general assumption
that children will necessarily do better being raised in the traditional family
lacks empirical support. We can say that children are likely to do well in such
a family environment that is characterized by an absence of conflict, where
there is a high level of cooperation, where there is trust and a lot of warmth
and care and so on.”
D Jarmila Kowolowská is bringing up two girls with her female partner.
She believes that the argument a male role model is necessary to ensure the
positive development of a child is not a strong one. “To me, this is actually
the weakest argument against the adoption of kids in same sex couples. You have
so many other people in your environment; it’s not just your father who
represents a certain role. There are friends, other members of the family,
teachers, people you meet when you exercise a certain hobby. There are so many
people around us that I can’t see how our children would lack a male role
model.”
E While the current proposal would not make it possible for homosexuals
to jointly adopt a child, which they can legally do in EU countries such as Belgium, Spain
and the Netherlands,
it would at least provide a basis for gays and lesbians to live in a registered
partnership and individually adopt children.
assumption – předpoklad
crucial – klíčový
oppose – být proti
1) Read the article and match each of the headings to a paragraph.
1 Psychologists’ opinions
2 Lucie Otáhalová’s opinion
3 Registered partners could
individually adopt children
4 Kowolowská’s opinion
5 Registered partners might
be able to adopt children according to The Green Party
2) Read the article and answer the questions.
1 What is the article about?
2 Who is Lucie Otáhalová? What
are her opinions?
3 What are psychologists’ opinions?
Do you agree with them? Why?
4 What do you know about
Jarmila Kowolowská?
3) Explain the following words.
1 registered partnership
2 adopt children
3 adoption law
4 bring up
5 jointly
4) Answer the following questions.
Who can adopt a child? What
are conditions for an adoption? What is a registered partnership? What rights
does it secure to the partners?
Adjusted to:
Children torn between two people, two homelands, two cultures Text 3
Children torn between two people, two homelands, two cultures
A Six year old Sara Barao is home from Portugal. At four Sara’s childhood
turned into a nightmare as her
Portuguese father and Czech mother broke up and fought a stormy battle over
custody rights. When her mother lost the court case two years ago - she and
Sara went into hiding. But, at the end of 2006 the authorities caught up with
them and Sara underwent the traumatic experience of having her parents
physically fight over her in the street. She was taken to Portugal and it
seemed that the case was closed. But then the news came that Sara had stopped
eating and communicating. Her mother was quickly summoned and then her parents reached an agreement and she returned
to the Czech Republic with her mother.
B Sara is just one of many children who are caught in the middle of an
ugly international custody battle. But more than anyone else her plight has evoked sympathy and opened
up questions about the work of Czech institutions in protecting children’s
rights. The director of the Children at Risk Fund Marie Vodičková says that
Czech courts abide strictly by the
law in returning a child to the country where it permanently resided without
bothering to investigate what kind of environment it will live in, whether it
may face abuse and often without any regard to its own wishes.
C “The problem is a poor interpretation of the Hague Convention on
Children’s Rights. Both our courts and the Office for the International Legal
Protection of Children which issues
recommendations in this respect share the view that children should be returned
to their country of residence and courts there should decide about them. They
do so without any regard to what conditions the child is being returned to,”
Vodičková thinks.
D The Supreme Court has recommended that in future all cases relating to
the wellbeing of children should
automatically be given precedence
and judges should seriously consider child’s wishes. This should ensure that
children like six-year-old Sara will not have to go on hunger strike to make their voice heard. But child psychologist
Daniel Hughes says that it is still the parents who have the biggest share of
responsibility for their children’s future.
E “Ideally, the parents would agree that this child can safely be exposed
to both cultures and the parents will trust each other and do what is best for
the child. The parents will not hate each other and try to prevent contact with
the other parent, that the child will be raised safely in both communities, if
the child lives in one it can visit the other. And it may take a great deal of
compromise on the part of both parents if their culture and religions are
greatly different. This could be very difficult so the parents have to be
committed to work very hard to make it happen.”
abide – dodržovat
hunger strike – hladovka
issue – uveřejnění
nightmare – noční můra
plight – nepříjemná situace
precedence – přednost
summon – přivolat
wellbeing – pohoda, blahobyt
1) Read the article and match each of the headings to a paragraph.
1 Czech courts do not
regard child’s wishes
2 Judges should consider
child’s wishes
3 Agreement between the
parents
4 Children should be
returned to their country
5 Sara was taken to
Portuguese and came back again
2) Read the article and answer the questions.
1 What is the article about?
2 Who is Sara Barao? What
happened to her?
3 Who is Marie Vodičková? What
are her opinions?
4 What was the situation of
children after the international divorce like? Has it changed? How?
3) Explain the following words.
1 to break up
2 children’s rights
3 abuse
4 heterosexual
5 experimentation
4) Answer the following questions.
What are reasons for a
divorce? What is a single parent family? Who are its members? What are problems
of a single parent?
Adjusted to:
Fathers gain greater rights in child custody battles - Text 2
Fathers gain greater rights in child custody battles
A The Czech
Republic has a high
divorce rate. Even though property nearly always becomes an issue, the biggest
problem is often the custody of children. In most cases in the Czech Republic
mothers are given full custody, only in 7 or 8 percent it is the father. But
now it seems that a decision of the Czech
Constitutional Court could bring a crucial change. Mr. Slavíček complained
about a decision by a lower court which had limited his contact with his
children only to every second weekend, but the Constitutional Court ruled that courts
should be less reluctant when
deciding about shared custody between divorced parents.
B Many Czech fathers feel discriminated by court decisions, and many of
them have appealed to higher instances, even to European Court of Justice in Strasbourg. But Luboš
Patera from the Justice for Children Association says it is not the legislation
but deeply rooted stereotypes that determine the courts’ decisions. “The
legislation is good. Regarding the care of children laws do not discriminate
either of the two parents. Unfortunately the problem is in the wrong
application of the law, and in the attitude of judges. Most judges in these
cases are women.”
C The most common practice is that mothers get full custody of their
children, and the fathers have the right to see them once every two weeks. But
many fathers are unsatisfied with this situation. They would like shared
custody to be applied more often. One father, who wished to remain anonymous,
achieved this goal, but it took him six long years. “Initially it was very wild
separation. My son was abducted by
my wife and I was looking for him for a couple of months. I was advised by my
lawyer not only to find my son, but also to abduct him to get some attention
from the court. That’s what I did, but after two months my wife had my son back
again. That’s the first period of a very tenuous and terrible legal battle that
went on for six years, in which eventually shared custody was achieved.”
D Michaela Marksová Tominová from the Social Affairs Ministry says that
the current situation is rooted in the widely held prejudice that a mother will
always take better care of a child than a father. “I discussed this matter with
some social workers and judges, and I was told that if the judge is not able to
decide, they somehow feel that the mother is always responsible. The truth is
that it’s just a stereotype.”
E Although in many areas of social life it is women who are
discriminated, when it comes to custody of children in divorced families, it is
men who are complaining about unequal treatment. Attitudes towards the role of
the genders are changing rapidly in the Czech Republic,
and with them, long-held stereotypes are also gradually being undermined.
abducted – unesený
crucial change – klíčová
změna
reluctant – neochotný
1) Read the article and match each of the headings to a paragraph.
1 Problem is in the wrong
application of the law
2 Stereotypical decisions
of judges
3 The situation is slowly
changing
4 Mr. Slavíček succeed by
the Czech Constitutional Court
5 Patera’s son was abducted
2) Read the article and answer the questions.
1 What is the article about?
2 What was Mr. Slavíček’s
success?
3 What is Luboš Patera’s
problem?
4 What does Michaela
Marksová Tominová think?
5 How does the situation
change?
3) Explain the following words.
1 high divorce rate
2 property
3 custody
4 separation
5 stereotype
4) Answer the following questions.
What is a marriage? What is
a divorce? What are types of child custody? What do they mean?
Adjusted to:
A Boy, His Two Mothers, and Psychosexual Development - Text 1
A Boy, His Two Mothers, and Psychosexual Development
A A California
clinical psychologist is urging mental health professionals to begin developing
new therapies to aid children who are brought up in gay households. Toni Vaughn
Heineman, DMH, put forth her
theories in Psychoanalytic Psychology (2004, Vol. 21, No. 1, 99-115). She
stressed that children of gay parents should not be compared to those of
heterosexual parents in a way that implies that heterosexuality is the norm.
B According to Heineman, “Children of gay and lesbian parents must be
offered theories of healthy development that include them.” She observes that Freudian theories of sexual development
were based upon the heterosexual family as the norm, and that “homophobia” has
been institutionalized within psychoanalysis.
C In addition, she believes that the internalized,
anti-homosexual attitudes of the gay parents themselves have “contributed to
our lack of theoretical attention to the psychosexual development of children
living and growing up in these families.” The author says research comparing
different family structures is counterproductive. “Research on the children of
gay and lesbian parents that focuses on comparisons with the children of
heterosexual parents, including comparisons with children of single
heterosexual mothers, runs the danger of perpetuating
the hetero-centric assumptions of
our current developmental theories.”
D For Some Children, Having Three Parents is Normal
In discussing children
growing up in gay households, she targets the developmental challenges of boys
who are reared in lesbian homes. She suggests that a boy in a lesbian household
must move from viewing his parents as a dyadic
relationship to a triadic
relationship. In this new relationship, the boy not only has two mothers, but
must cope with the reality of an absent father.
E Will children in homosexual households become homosexuals themselves?
She writes: “Although most children of homosexual parents identify themselves
as heterosexual, it is not surprising that they report more homosexual
experimentation than the children of heterosexual parents. Lesbian parents may
offer their children a range of identificatory possibilities, at least in the
area of sexual object choice – perhaps wishing for their children to be
different from them, while being open to their being like them, in this
regard.”
assumption – předpoklad
dyadic – dvojí
Freudian – Freudovský
internalize – osvojit,
přijmout za své
perpetuate – zachovat,
zvěčnit
put forth – přednést,
projevit
triadic – trojí
1) Read the article and match each of the headings to a paragraph.
1 A boy in a lesbian household
2 Introduction
3 Will children in
homosexual households become homosexuals?
4 Freudian theories
5 Research comparing
different family structures
2) Read the article and answer the questions.
1 What is the article about?
2 Who is Toni Vaughn Heineman?
3 What are her opinions?
4 Do you agree with her? Why?
3) Explain the following words.
1 gay household
2 homophobia
3 absent father
4 heterosexual
5 experimentation
4) Answer the following questions.
What family types do you
know? Who are members of a family? What are the specifics of a family of a same
sex couple?
Adjusted to:
Family issues 2 - Vocabulary
Explain the following words.
- absent father
- abuse
- adopt children
- adoption law
- adultery
- affinity
- ageing population
- arranged marriage
- average number of children
- bring up
- child care
- child custody
- children’s rights
- conjugal family
- consanguineal family
- co-residence
- custodial parent
- desertion
- divorce
- engagement
- experimentation
- extended family
- family unit
- fertility
- gay household
- guardianship
- half-brother
- heterosexual
- high divorce rate
- homophobia
- incestuous marriage
- infant
- in-laws
- jointly
- jointly
- low income
- marriage
- matrilocal
- matrimony
- nuclear family
- property
- rear
- registered partnership
- rent
- separated woman
- separation
- single parent family
- stepbrother
- stepfamily
- stereotype
- to break up
- wellbeing
- widow
Family issues 1 - Questions
Answer the following questions.
What family
types do you know?
Who are members
of a family?
What are the specifics
of a family of a same sex couple?
What is a
marriage?
What is a
divorce?
What are types
of child custody? What do they mean?
What are reasons
for a divorce?
What is a single
parent family? Who are its members?
What are
problems of a single parent?
Who can adopt a
child?
What are
conditions for an adoption?
What is a
registered partnership? What rights does it secure to the partners?
What is custody?
What are its types?
Why do parents
get separated?
Who are members
of an extended family?
Family issues – Study material
Family issues – Study material
In human context, a family is a group
of people
affiliated by consanguinity, affinity,
or co-residence. In most societies
it is the principal institution for the
socialization of children.
As a unit of socialisation and a basic institution key to the structure of society, the family is
the object of analysis for sociologists of the family. In science,
the term "family" has come to be used as a means to classify groups of objects as being closely and exclusively related.
In the study of animals it has been found that many species form groups that
have similarities to human "family" – often called "packs".
From the perspective of children, the family is a family of
orientation: the family serves to locate
children socially and plays a major role in their enculturation
and socialization. From the point of view of the parent(s), the family is a family
of procreation, the goal of
which is to produce and enculturate and
socialize children.
Family types:
- A conjugal family includes only the husband, the wife, and unmarried children who are not of age. The most common form of this family is regularly referred to in sociology as a nuclear family.
- A consanguineal family consists of a parent and his or her children, and other people. The synonym is "extended family".
- A matrilocal family consists of a mother and her children. Generally, these children are her biological offspring, although adoption of children is a practice in nearly every society. This kind of family is common where women have the resources to rear their children by themselves, or where men are more mobile than women.
Family members:
- Mother: a female parent
- Father: a male parent
- Son: a male child of the parent(s)
- Daughter: a female child of the parent(s)
- Brother: a male child of the same parent(s)
- Sister: a female child of the same parent(s)
- Grandfather: father of a father or mother
- Grandmother: mother of a mother or father
- Cousins: two people that share the same Grandparent(s)
Such systems generally
assume that the mother's husband has also served as the biological father. In
some families, a woman may have children with more than one man or a man may
have children with more than one woman. The system refers to a child who shares
only one parent with another child as a "half-brother" or "half-sister."
For children who do not share biological or adoptive parents in common,
English-speakers use the term "stepbrother"
or "stepsister" to refer
to their new relationship with each other when one of their biological parents
marries one of the other child's biological parents. Any person (other than the
biological parent of a child) who marries the parent of that child becomes the
"stepparent" of the child,
either the "stepmother" or
"stepfather." The same
terms generally apply to children
adopted into a family as to children born into the family.
In the western society the single parent family has been growing
more accepted and has begun to truly make an impact on culture. The majority of
single parent families are more commonly single
mother families than single father. These families face many difficult issues besides the fact that
they have to rear their children on
their own, but also have to deal with issues related to low income. Many single parents
struggle with low incomes and must cope with other issues, including rent, child care, and other necessities required in maintaining a healthy and safe home.
Members of extended family:
- An infant, his mother, his maternal grandmother, and his great-grandmother.
- Grandparent
- Grandfather: a parent's father
- Grandmother: a parent's mother
- Grandson: a child's son
- Granddaughter: a child's daughter
- For collateral relatives, more classificatory terms come into play, terms that do not build on the terms used within the nuclear family:
- Uncle: father's brother, mother's brother, father's/mother's sister's husband
- Aunt: father's sister, mother's sister, father's/mother's brother's wife
- Nephew: sister's son, brother's son, wife's brother's son, wife's sister's son, husband's brother's son, husband's sister's son
- Niece: sister's daughter, brother's daughter, wife's brother's daughter, wife's sister's daughter, husband's brother's daughter, husband's sister's daughter
- Great grandparents
- Cousin: the most classificatory term; the children of aunts or uncles.
- Grandchild
- Great-grandchild
- Great-great-grandparent
- English-speakers mark relationships by marriage (except for wife/husband) with the tag "-in-law". The mother and father of one's spouse become one's mother-in-law and father-in-law.
- The female spouse of one's child becomes one's daughter-in-law and the male spouse of one's child becomes one's son-in-law. The term "sister-in-law" refers to three essentially different relationships, either the wife of one's sibling, or the sister of one's spouse, or, in some uses, the wife of one's spouse's sibling. "Brother-in-law" expresses a similar ambiguity. No special terms exist for the rest of one's spouse's family.
- The terms "half-brother" and "half-sister" indicate siblings who share only one biological or adoptive parent.
Examples of specific issues looked at include:
- Changing roles of family members. Each member is restricted by the sex roles of the traditional family, these roles such as the father as the worker and the mother as the homemaker are declining, the mother is becoming the supplementary provider and she retains the responsibilities of child rearing. The gender roles are increasingly interwoven.
- Increase in sole occupancy dwellings and smaller family sizes.
- Average age of marriage being older.
- Average number of children decreasing and first birth at later age.
- The historical pattern of fertility. From baby boom to baby bust (instability)
- The ageing population. The trend towards greater life expectancy.
- Rising divorce rates and people who will never marry.
- How the choices of the parents affect their children.
- Same Sex Couples and Marriages.
- Children of same sex couples.
Marriage is a social
union or legal contract between people that creates kinship.
It is an institution
in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are
acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture
or subculture in which it is found. Such a union, often formalized via a wedding
ceremony, may also be called matrimony.
People marry for many reasons, including one or more of the
following: legal, social, emotional, economical, spiritual, and religious. These might include arranged
marriages, family obligations, the legal establishment of a nuclear family
unit, the legal protection of children and public declaration of commitment.
Marriage
practices are very diverse across cultures, yet almost every known society has
had some form of marriage between a man and a woman. In some societies an
individual is limited to being in one such couple at a time (monogamy),
while other cultures allow a male to have more than one wife (polygyny) or, less
commonly, a female to have more than one husband
(polyandry).
Some societies also allow marriage between two males or two females. Societies
frequently have other restrictions on marriage based on the ages of the
participants, pre-existing kinship, and membership in religious or other social
groups.
The act of marriage usually creates normative
or legal obligations between the individuals involved. In some societies these
obligations also extend to certain family members of the married persons.
Almost all cultures that recognize marriage also recognize adultery as a violation of the terms of marriage, and forbid incestuous marriages. In cultures that
allow the dissolution of a marriage this is known as divorce.
Marriage is usually recognized by the state,
a religious authority, or both. It
is often viewed as a contract.
Civil marriage is the legal concept of marriage as a governmental institution
irrespective of religious affiliation, in accordance with marriage laws
of the jurisdiction. If recognized by the state, by the religion(s) to which
the parties belong or by society in general, the act of marriage changes the
personal and social status of the individuals who enter into it.
Child
custody and guardianship are legal
terms which are sometimes used to describe the legal and practical relationship between a parent and his
or her child, such as the right of the parent to make decisions for the child, and the parent's duty to care for the child.
While many parents
cooperate when it comes to sharing their children and resort to mediation to
settle a dispute, not all do. Court filings quickly fill with mutual
accusations by one parent against the other, including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, brain-washing, parental
alienation syndrome, sabotage,
and manipulation.
Physical
custody involves the day-to-day care
of a child and establishes where a child
will live. A parent with physical custody has the right to have his/her
child live with him/her.
- If a child lives with both parents, each parent shares “joint physical custody” and each parent is said to be a “custodial parent”. In joint physical custody, actual lodging and care of the child is shared.
- If a child lives with one parent, that parent has “sole physical custody” and is said to be the “custodial parent” whereas the other parent is said to be the “non-custodial parent”, but may have visitation rights or “visitation” with his/her child.
Adjusted to:
Thursday, 2 October 2014
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Family issues - Foster Care
Watch the video and write down 8 sentences about what you've just heard.
1. Describe the difference between fostering and adoption.2. Describe the difference between nuclear and extended family.
3. Explain the term gender roles.
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