MinSoo Lee / Assignment 5/ Tues 3,4

As nations around the world develop and change from traditional to modern lifestyles, more and more people live alone or with much smaller families. What are the causes of these trends and what kind of effects will they have on society?

 

In a century, the world has gone through countless changes and became better place to live. Now we can hardly find a place which is maintaining its original shape and as everything changed, people are living a different life compared to the past. One change in a lifestyle we went through is that we no more live in an extended family. Today, people prefer to live alone or in a nuclear family which is a family group only consisting of parents and their child. This lifestyle has become pervasive around the world and it is fitting well in most societies. There are few causes to this trend but recent technology development and job diversity had great effect on raising this trend.

To start with, the world had enormous technological development in a past few decades. We can't deny the fact that technological development had one of the greatest impacts on a phenomenon which made people to live in a nuclear family. In the past, the jobs were passed down to the children so it was easy to see an extended family taking their parts in a job. As jobs were passed down, people lived with their parents and formed an extended family. People helped their parents from early age because most jobs required more people compared to the modern world as there were no technology. For example, farming in the past required more people because everything was done by hand. But now we have technologies which help our job to be done much faster and easier. Due to these technologies, people no more needed take part in their parent's job and seek for independence

 In addition, job diversity also had a significant impact on modern nuclear family lifestyle. There was only little diversity of jobs in the past and as jobs were passed down, people had no choice but to follow the job of their parents. Today the trends have changed and people are no more taking the jobs of their parents but find jobs that they want. Also people in the rural areas go to developed cities to search for more profitable jobs. Generally, agricultural jobs are harder but less profitable than jobs in the cities. So for this kind of reason, young people leave their home and settle in the cities forming a nuclear family or live alone.

The new trend of nuclear family had both good and bad impact on the society. On the positive side, the status of female has raised and the family has become democratic. In the extend family, female had lower status compared to male so female did all the housework and male had all of authorities to make decisions. However, female is considered same as male and decisions are made democratically in the nuclear family. On the other hand, there are also negative sides of the nuclear family on our society. As there are no one to mediate a dispute between husband and wife, the divorce rate has increased. Also, the alienation of the old people is becoming to be a serious problem in our new trend society.

To sum up, the rapid change of our society produced the new trend of nuclear family. Although there are some positive sides to this new trend, we should not forget about the negative sides of this trend. Change is always required for the development of our society but I think maintaining our tradition is also important.

Young-jun Yoo / Timed Writing / Tue 3,4

Modern Lifestyle

 

 More and more Korean people live alone as Korea changes into "modern lifestyles". Korean people used to live in large families just decades ago, because it was good to have as many family members as possible in the agricultural society. However, as the country developed and more people started to pursue other jobs than farmers, more people came up to Seoul, which changed families into smaller forms. Consequently, it causes several problems on our society.

 

 First, smaller family form is causing shortage of houses in Korea, especially in Seoul. As you well know, Seoul is not very large city and has very high population density. Families are getting smaller and there are increasing number of people who live alone, while the number of houses is not enough for them. It makes house prices go up and encourages more construction of an apartment in the city. As a result, people have to spend a lot of money to buy their own houses, and the climate pollution will be more serious.

 

 Second, it causes a waste of energy. The average number of people per household is getting lower, that is to say same number of people live in more number of houses. It means that households that spend energy, such as electricity, gas, water, etc. are getting increased. More unnecessary energy is being spent, because, for instance, same amount of electricity would be needed to lighten up a room regardless of whether there were one person or more than two people in there. This continuous waste of energy also causes more pollutions.

 

Finally, living alone or in a small family can make people more selfish. These days, many people live alone because either it is more comfortable to live alone or they have to do so for work. If they get used to ways of living alone too much, they are more likely to have hard time living marriage life. And, many families are very small so there are many children who don't have even one sibling. It can make them more selfish, for they don't have anyone to learn how to care about other people from.

 

 In conclusion, smaller family forms have many negative effects, such as shortage of houses, waste of energy, and causing more selfishness. We are human beings and we are supposed to live together. It doesn't necessarily your family member, but you should live with someone both for your sake and for all people's sake.

Soyun Jeong/Timed writing/Tue 34

It is true thatfamilies became a lot smaller in a modern society. My mother grew up with 4siblings, so there were seven members in a family. Moreover, they kept veryclose contact with their grandparents, uncles and cosines On the other hand,there are only four members in my family. Families became smaller because ofthe increased mobility, and it results in decreased care and comfort betweenthe family members.

Because of thedevelopment of transportation such as cars, trains and airplanes, it is easierfor people to move from places to places. Therefore a lot of young people fromthe rural area were able to leave their parents and move to the urban area,seeking new opportunities. Because of that a lot of families are living apartnowadays. People do not tend to have manybabies these days, and that also resulted in the increase of small families.There are a lot of reasons but one is the increased mobility. People movefrequently from places to places and even between nations. If the family islarge, it is more difficult for them to move around, so families tend to keepthemselves small.

Due to thesmaller families, people receive less care and comfort from the family members.People who live alone, moved apart from the rest of the family tend to feel alot of loneliness and depression because the love and comfort from the familyis too far away. Older people living in the rural area also cannot receive enoughcare and help because they live in a faraway city.

Increasedmobility of modern society resulted in the increase of small families andindividuals who live alone. Because there are a lot of small families, manypeople do not receive enough care and love that a family should provide.Therefore we need to find ways to give enough comfort and welfare to theindividuals who are lonely neglected due to the small family.

Seungmi Park/ Assignment 5

Q. As nations around the world develop and change from traditional to modern life styles more and more people live alone or with much smaller families. What are the causes of these trends and what kind of effects will they have on society?

 

     Throughout the history, the size of families only got smaller. Regardless of their countries of origin, people have chosen to have small families. For example, let alone the Orient, the French are inclined to move out from their parents' house after high school graduation. It is the opposite phenomenon to the past when they significantly valued their families living together. This phenomenon is caused because people have chosen to change their life styles. However, exactly what aspects of modern life style have brought it about? And what could be the effects on society?

     Most notably, people in modern days tend to live alone because their recognition in values has tremendously changed. It used to be the family people value the most. However, in modern society, everyone's busy and have too many things in their hands to deal with. Therefore, they get stressed out, and naturally they have learned to want more time all by themselves since with other people, namely family members, they would be under more stress. It is true since any type of interaction with other people has the possibilities to trigger anger as well as happiness. This could result in devastating effect on people's social skills.

      Secondly, people's desire to gain accessibility leads to small family size. Regardless of how big or developed a country is, its majority of the population would be congregated in big cities because those are where everything goes, such as money and technology. This results in people wanting to move out from their families and move to big cities to benefit from what modern cities could offer them. As a result, big cities will only get bigger and bigger, and other small and medium sized cities will get less populated in the future.

      Last but not least, people don't have as many babies as they used to do. The more people get higher education, the fewer babies they would have because they would have more tasks to accomplish in accordance with their educational status. People don't want more babies because it takes significant effort to take care of babies. To be specific, it's too expensive and time consuming to have babies that people just can't afford them. Therefore, many couples choose not to have children or even if they have children, it doesn't get more than two. Consequently, in the far future, couples with no children would have a hard time supporting themselves on their own since they have no children to support them.

      To conclude, Today's small families are the result of dominance of individualism, desire to gain access to benefits, and low birth rate. Those aspects of modern life style could lead to people's poor social skills, overpopulated cities, and old couples with no supporting children. It's not merely about small families but also about overall elements on our society. Why don't we stop to think about what it's really about?   

 

 

 

 

Park Sae-whan / Assignment5/ Tues34

 

In the 21st century where no society is immune from individualism, more and more people prefer living with smaller families or even alone to living with big families in traditional ways. It is not surprising to see that most families nowadays consist of parents and one or two offspring, and the number of newborn babies keeps decreasing each year in Korea. There are some causes of this trend from large families to nuclear families, which displays positive and negative effects on modern world.

First of all, people these days choose to form smaller families due to insensitivity from their traditional obligation to support their old parents. Koreans used to think – and many of them still believe – that supporting their parents, especially husbands’, was part of their duty after they became extremely old and powerless. And old parents also had expectation to be supported by their sons or daughters like they did in the past. However, things have changed in modern lifestyles where old parents choose not to give extra burdens to their grownups and pursue happiness without supports. As a result, sense of extreme individualism can be rooted in our society, because people no longer bear any responsibility for their old parents who raised them since they were born and even their children cannot learn how to respect the old.

Secondly, skyrocketing living and educating costs can be another cause of smaller families. People seek ways to reduce living costs amid escalating economic downfall, and some of them even get abundant and lead a difficult life. In this situation, supporting their old parents under the one roof might come to them as luxury. Furthermore, they are obsessed with their children’s education, so parents put much of their income in expensive private institutions and extracurricular activities for their children. At this difficult time, raising smaller families seems like an effective way for them to save money.

Finally, old parents are not willing to live with their own sons or daughters because they choose to live more comfortably on their own. Old parents used to take it for granted living in the same house with their sons or daughters. However, they now think that living together becomes very uncomfortable even if their sons or daughters want to do so. So they rather choose to live freely while receiving a small amount of living expenses from their grown-up children. Consequentially, travel agencies in Korea release more and more travel products for silver users, not to mention the fact that music concerts, movie theaters and other leisure activities are targeting old people.

In conclusion, the changing trend from large families to small families is inevitable in modern lifestyles, for the traditional obligation to support old parents abates among people, rising living and education expenses give young parents too much burden to make big families, and finally, old parents themselves don’t want to live in the same house with their sons or daughters. Smaller families might sometimes bear some negative effects, so it is upmost importance for us to guide this trend in better ways.  

Jung, Yong Tae/ assignment 5/ Tue 3 4

Modern lifestyle is significantly different than traditional lifestyle. Many families have become smaller and the number of many people who live alone has increased. The family who just lives two generation for its member is called "nuclear family". This phenomenon is caused by three reasons.

 

 First of all, the advent of telephone makes people keep in touch each other more easily. However, it caused people don't have to live near to be bond. Also, in these days, many old people don't want to live in the city, because it is noisy and crowded. In contrast, young people are more likely to live in the city, due to convenience and fun. As a result, many young people who live in rural area come to city and dwell by themselves.

 

 Secondly, people who have their old parents and children are likely to work in the city, not country. Also, there are more opportunities or facilities to educate their descendants. As mentioned before, older people, over 60, prefer a rural area to a city. Consequently, people in middle age have no choice but to form a nuclear family.

 

 Finally, all technologies have some effect on this phenomenon such as transportation, computer, and so on, but the internet has the most influence on people's life. Internet makes world closer but estrange people who live in the same neighbor. Because there are a lot of chances to meet people from internet communities and people want to meet a person who can share the same interest, not a person who just lives near. Moreover, people can just communicate by internet without going outside or meeting people.

 

 To sum up, people are prone to live alone or form a nuclear family, because of the technologies and their own convenience. That kind of lifestyle has some advantages but also has some disadvantage. That's why we cannot say that changes are good or bad. However, it is very crucial to keep in touch with our parents or neighbors, because humans want to be bond with each other.

201200093Kanghayoung/cause and effect test/Tue3&4

Across the nations, the way that people are living has changed a lot. People live alone or live with much smaller families. Small families and single families spread more rapidly these days. As this trend is pervasive in the world, new form of lifestyle appear in most cultures. And new trend of families have great impact on overall society. For the factors of this trend, development of technology and society mostly affected changed family members. Increased economic activities for women also affected that.

 Firstly, development of technology and progress of society influenced to separate big families. In the orient, people traditionally formed big families to work together in the past. Before technology developed greatly, people lived based on agriculture. They needed much labors to farm. Therefore, the more families they had, the more crops they could have. Moreover, every family member took a role in the house and that made house work more organized. As time passed and technology developed greatly, people had no need to do farm work. They had many other options to earn money and live their lives. For that reason, labors of family are no longer needed for the most people. In addition to this, what family members did in the past could be replaced with advanced technology and facilities.

 Secondly, lots of women are participating in economic activities today and it made families much smaller. In most countries, equal rights of both sexes have been advocated from many people. As societies accepted that suggestion, many changes have taken place. Of many changes, women's increased economic activities are the most noticeable. Women any longer stayed at their house and did the house works. They could do their own businesses and any other activities such as learning dance. For this kind of aspect, women didn't want to be interfered with by other family members. Moreover, they didn't have time to take care many family members because they do their works. Some unmarried women didn't want to marry since they loved their works and they lived alone. The most famous example of this is 'Gold Miss'. Therefore, many single families and small families emerged at recent times.

 As a result of small-sized families, many changes had impact which was bad or good on societies. For the good impact, authoritarianism which came from big families weakened recently. In the big family, someone who controlled the whole members was needed. Mostly father took that role. However, family members became smaller in recent times and father didn't have to control family members. There are not many members in family so confusion between the members decreased greatly. This meant that one-focused power which controlled the all confusions was no use. Accordingly, every member had almost same status in the family. For the bad impact, family crimes occurred a lot in these days. In small-sized family, seniors who give wise advices are absent. When family members have troubles each other, they have to solve that problem by their own thoughts. They also can't be intervened by others because they are just small family. In fact, ethical standard is more likely to collapse in the small group so it is more difficult to keep ethical 'Maginot line'. As a result, many crimes in the family happened today. Child abuses and family violence are one aspect of this change.

 It is easy to find small family around the world in these days. As technology greatly improved and societies changed, many household started to reduce the family members and many small-sized families emerged. This new trend of family members was fueled by increasing women's economic activities. As a result of this change, authoritarianism became weak, but family crimes occurred in more frequency. Pain always followed with changes. People should take effort consciously to set clear standard in the family and lessen the family crimes, maintaining their household in happiness.

Se-Kyu Oh / Timed writing / Tue 11:00

201102045 EIT

Se-Kyu Oh (오세규)

 

Small Families, Less Happiness

 

   Time was that the number of family members was equal to its labor force. When agriculture was the main source of food supply for human beings, more people meant more labor, therefore more outcomes. However, as people moved on to the secondary industry and even further generation of industry, the number of family members no longer assured how much they can produce. Therefore, people no longer felt needs to have babies or even needs to get married. As a result of this trend, we're having aging society, depopulation is expected, and we're even losing our own culture and traditions.

   First, as people have fewer kids, the number of children and young adults is significantly going down. At the same time, with an improved health care and medical system, adults are living longer than before. As a result, our society is aging very fast. The distribution of population to age has changed. Once it was a pyramid where majority of young people support the small number of old people. However, now it turned to a rectangular where the rates of young generation and old generation are almost same. Due to this problem, the government's spending for welfare is drastically increasing and the burden is on young people.

   Second, as people have fewer kids, the number of population is expected to be on decrease. With a simple calculation, it is expected that we're facing looming depopulation. Two people get married and if the entire population is to be maintained, each couple should have two babies. However, considering those who don't get married or who can't have babies, or someone who dies earlier than his or her life expectancy, each couple should have 2.1 babies during their entire life. Because couples in Korea have about 1.19 babies, depopulation is expected with no doubt.

   Finally, we would even lose our culture and traditions. Our descendant would learn our own traditions and culture and pass it to their kids. It's how our properties, whether it is material, intellectual, or spiritual, have continued to exist for the past decades and centuries. However, because more people are living alone or have no kids, there are fewer people to learn current generation's culture.

   The development in industries made our life more convenient, easy, and even joyful. However, it led us to small families with fewer or no kids, thus threatening our daily life. Society is getting old, population would be decreasing, and our culture would also disappear. If we don't do something to solve this problem, I'm afraid that human beings will someday disappear on this planet. Love someone, get married, and have babies.   

Hyejeong Yu / Timed Writing / Tue 3&4

There is a famous saying; no man is an island. Is this phrase still true in the 21^st century? There has been a lot of change since the industrialization, and so has the life style. These days, there are a number of people who live alone or with much smaller family, so the phrase might has become an old saying. The shift from agricultural to industrial society and movement to urban cities caused the trend and it affects our society in somewhat negative way.  

 

Industrialization is one of the causes of the trend. Before industrialization, when it was agricultural society, people needed a lot of workforce. The more number the family had, the effective the work was. However, as the society changed, there is no need for bunch of work people. The jobs in industrialized society are oriented to individualism. For example, typing a report to manager or organizing account book is not a job that needs big workforce but the individual's ability to do it. These shift made the traditional styled family which is made up of large number to break up as the industrialization begun.

 

Movement to urban cities is another reason for the trend. Again, for the industrialization, people gather up to cities where they can find modern job. The young generations were not into agriculture in rural area and left their family behind. There were no more jobs that fit to industrialized society in rural area. Factories and companies are all centralized to the city, making more people to leave where they belong to come to city. And the more people move into city, the more population grow as there is more demand for services in the city. This movement created two family types; one is old parents living in the rural area and the other is a young man living alone in the city.

 

This trend, but, left some problems. One problem is the old parents left behind in rural areas. As they do not have a specific income or ability to work, they began to suffer from living. As the number of old people only houses get larger, it became a social problem. The other problem is that as a lot of people moved into city, the city began to crowd with people which made the living condition bad. The cars caused the traffic jam, air pollution and noise in the city. In addition as there were so many people, big houses like the one in the rural area were not available. Most people lived in a small apartment giving a high fee

 

In conclusion, the industrialization and centralization to city is the reason why modern people now live in a smaller group. However, the trend left us some problems like seniors in rural area and the low quality of life in city. As this system is fixed in modern society, it is likely that more people are going to be an island.

 

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Minyoung Kang/60-minute essay/TUE 11

As nations around the world develop and change from traditional to modern lifestyles, more and more people live alone or with much smaller families. What are the causes of those trends and what kinds of effects will they have on the society?

 

The Nuclears Around the World

 

                A family consisting of only parents and their sons and daughters is called a nuclear family. This type of families is the opposite of traditional families which usually includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings. In developed societies, the trend is already leaning toward nuclear families with less family members, or single families. The rapidly changing trend can be the result of following three reasons: the shift of the era, the higher status of women in the society, and more self-centered atmosphere.

                To begin with, the era has changed from agricultural society to more information based society. This means that the family does not require a lot of members who could help out with the tough work at farms or plantations. In the past, many families had a family farm where they produced crop to support themselves financially, or to be self-sufficient. No other family members worked outside the farm. Rather, they shared the work at the farm, and also shared the profits and produces that they gathered from farming. However, the society began to change as many breakthroughs were made, and the era shifted from agricultural to industrial, then to informational. This led many people all around the world to pursuing more intelligence based occupations rather than harsh farming. In addition, due to this change, the need for having large number of family members greatly decreased, as they have no reason to keep all these family members in one place. Thus, the families around the world are choosing to be in a smaller group in a society where they can indulge in diverse work.

                Secondly, the status of woman markedly increased compared to the past. This may not seem very relevant to the trend of going toward smaller families, but it actually has a strong connection. In the past when traditional type of families was prevailing, women handled all the work in the house. They cooked, did laundry, cared for children and elderly, as well as doing field work. They were usually not educated enough to look for a different job other than being a housewife. Their workloads at home did not even allow them to choose another life. However, as time passed, women became more educated and they came to have a say in the house. It is not a duty for them to do all the housework anymore. As the active constituents of the society, they began to build a life centered around themselves, not their family. This idea encouraged many women to be in a smaller family, or to stay single to pursue their dream.

                Lastly, the members of the society are becoming more self-centered. Most parents now want only their children to be better off than others, not every other family member. It is similar to single families who choose to stay single because they want what's best for themselves only. This selfishness came to thrive in the society as traditional cultures slowly disappeared. Traditional cultures emphasized the relationship between others. People in the neighborhood shared what they had with each other, and they tried to help others in times of difficulties. On the other hand, the neighborhood in modern society is much colder and lifeless with not so many people greeting their neighbors when they encounter. In the same sense, even family members become less connected to one another, disconnecting the before-keen relationships between families to only focus on the closest members of the family, or only themselves.

                In brief, many factors led to the end of traditional families. Currently, it is hard to find traditional large-sized families around us due to the reasons previously supported. Even though it was the change of the society that led to this consequence of nuclear families being prevalent all around the world, it is still regrettable to see all the families losing contact with each other, and the family-centered atmosphere fade away. Why not calling your grandparents or your aunts and uncles to ask how their lives have been tonight?

Hyein Jin / Assignment 5_Cause and Effect Essay(In-class time essay) / Tuesday 11 a.m. / 16 April 2013

                     How did modern family born in Korea

200903450 French/EIT

Hyein Jin

 

In the traditional Korean society, family meant everything – a family was used to be a moral law, a school, a workplace, and even an absolute criterion to view the world. However, the average size of family is rapidly being smaller, and young people are never reluctant to say that they don't want to marry. Surely, it is not hard to imagine that our ancestors would be mad on us if they saw modern Koreans. What changes have been made in our society? How did Korean change their mind in such a short period? Why is family size being smaller? There would be a wide range of reasons, but most fundamentally, we may point out three causes: The decline of marriage / the rise of divorce rate, the change on family concept, and the decline of birth rate.

 

First, the decline of marriage and rise of divorce rate have fundamentally influenced to the size of modern family. In the statistics, Korea's marriage highly decreased since 1970, and hit a new low in 2009. It shows only 6.2 marriages per 1000 people, compared to 10.6 in 1980. Marriage had been considered as a social duty for Koreans due to the impact of Confucianism used to be the basis of Korean attitude. However, marriage is no longer being forced since people's way of thinking. At the same time, the divorce rate of Koreans notably climbed from 12.4% in 1998 to 23.1% by 2011. The rise of divorce rate refers to social change that divorce is gradually regarded acceptable. As a result of higher divorce rate, single family parents are increased, and it affects to the average family size of Korea.

 

Second, since the previous concept of family has been changed in people's mind, some people started to live without marriage and the size of family became smaller. Under the collapse of traditional beliefs and spread of individualism, personal desires have been diversified. Thus, people start to seek a new kind of partnership – the cohabitation. In recent research, over than 50% of Korean people in their twenties replied that they are not biased toward living together without marriage. This is a very striking fact comparing with the data of early 1990s, because cohabitation was totally tabooed in Korea for a long time. Therefore, some people think official marriage is not essential for their happiness. Furthermore, we should mention that same sex couples are also increasing. Thus, numerous people try to be free from the bondage of social convention, and they start to live as they personally desire.

 

Lastly, the decline of birth rate directly effected to the family size. Statistically, there are now only 1.23 children in one Korean family in average, which was 1.72 per a family in 2000. Decreasing fertility rate is relevant to the improvement of the status of women. Because women start to pursue their own life and career, giving birth to a child is not an urgent issue to a family anymore. In addition, a number of married women even avoid having a baby since the childrearing is still strongly considered as a 'woman affaire' in Korea. Young couples give up having a child recently. Consequently, the size of family is gradually becoming smaller in Korea.

 

The change of the family came from the decline of marriage and rise of divorce, and the change of the concept of partnership, and the decline of the birth rate. Certainly this is the era of 'the marriage as an option' and nation has no right to force marriage to people. However, some causes of smaller family, a low birth rate for example, are fretting Korean government. Above all, the real concern that we should carefully think about is that family is being undervalued among a lot of people. The culture and custom we enjoy until nowadays are driven from our family-based tradition, and there should be certain value that we are only able to learn inside of a family. In the middle of rapid growth of western individualism, it would worth thinking what family really means to us to keep the balance of our values.

 

Jisu Song 201001709/Assignment5: Timed Writing/Tue 11a.m.

201001709 Jisu Song

           The Causes and Effects of New Living Trend on Society

           As time has passed and values have changed, people around the world are more likely to live alone or have much smaller families. The Korean society can be a good example since it went through rapid development and transition for some of the last decades. Especially, individualism, technological advancement, and extension of women's rights effected Koreans to change the way they live.

           First, rise of individualism among young Koreans led them to change their lifestyles. In the past, Confucian ideas which emphasize community dominated the Korean society. However, these thoughts are fading away nowadays. Modern Koreans care more about themselves than the society. As a result, people are choosing to live by themselves or with small families to enjoy more of their free time.

           Second, technological development made people communicate easily with each other. Thanks to the Internet, e-mails, smartphones, and free messengers like Kakao Talk, people can contact each other almost whenever and wherever they want. Before this kind of advance, communication cost a lot of money and time. So, most people were reluctant to live by themselves far away from their families. But the advanced technology helped people to change from traditional lifestyles.

           Lastly, expansion of women's rights that led to higher education among females influenced the society. Before, women often didn't get much education and lived their entire lives as housewives. In contrast, these days, women's rights have improved and their educational achievements are far better than from the past. So these women become professionals and some of them decide not to get married for the sake of their careers. Consequently, they remain single and birthrate goes down which could have an impact on the society in many ways such as increase of people living alone.

           The trend of people living alone or with smaller family is because of three reasons: individualism, technological development, and improved women's rights. Nothing is wrong with this new tendency, but we have to be more conscious about the effects. Because too much of this lifestyle could lead human beings, the social animal, isolated from others.

Youmi An/60-minute essay/Tue 11am

Korea had been traditionally influenced by the Confucian culture. In Confucian culture, filial duty is one of the most important virtues that people are supposed to pursuit. The great emphasis on filial duty played a significant role in making an extended family as a primary family form. Korea has gone through a drastic change in recent decades and that also brought a drastic change in family form in Korea. As a result of the rapid modernization in Korea, a nuclear family became the most common family form which blurred the family and relative community.

 

The rapid modernization of Korea brought many changes that triggered the family size to get smaller. Every modernization accompanies a lot of changes in a society. One of the significant changes is job diversity. A modernized country creates more diverse job for workers than an agricultural country. Job diversity means an individual have more chance to look at oneself as an independent agent that can what s/he wants to do out there in the world. People are more likely to focus on themselves as one individual not a member of a big family or relative community where every member in work-force usually shares the common job and wants to succeed the family occupation. As a result of this strengthened individualism, people slowly started taking it for grant that someone will move from his or her own home and live an independent life after having grown up. This separation process naturally leads to the nuclear family's prevalence.

 

The concept of relative community will change and fade out in near future. I lived with my grandparents when I was a baby. Although I cannot remember everything happened at that time I think the concept I have about my grandparents, aunts and uncles will have a big difference from the concept of who has never been lived with relatives if any. Taking account of the fact that the average number of offspring is extremely decreased, our future generation will surely build a more abstract concept of relative community. They will learn how they call mother's sisters and brothers only in a text book, not in the real world. Naturally, relative community will be a more psychological and abstract concept than an actual and physical concept.

 

Because of the huge change in human's life style, a nuclear family is becoming the most prevalent family form not only in Korea but all over the world. It changed the concept of relative community and our future generation will have different idea about community of relatives. No one can judge this is good or bad. People just always try to adapt to their changing environments and this time, a small sized family form is the best answer.

Hannah Bae/Assignment5:Timed Writing/Tue 11a.m.

           Families are getting smaller and smaller. Fewer kids are born every year and most adults live apart from their parents nowadays. Moreover, some people just live alone. For centuries, the way of family life has been changed rapidly because of the industrialization and now it has some bad consequences.

 

The modern life was highly influenced by the industrialization. First, the young people left their hometowns to work and study in big cities. Also, because the workforces in agriculture are not that needed anymore in the industrialized societies, parents gave birth to babies less than before. In addition, thanks to medical development, the death rate of newborns heavily decreased which related to the lower birth rates also.

 

Then, what are the consequences of these modern lives? There are some positive effects, of course. For example, parents can devote to children better than before because they have just one or two kids generally. However, we may find negative points more often and easily. First, the elder people were left out. They stuck in their town and just wait for their children to come. They feel lonely and have nothing to do and this is considered as a big problem these days.

 

In other point of view, when we look at the influence on kids, the problem even gets worse. Without those grandparents, kids cannot know the hierarchy of families like before. This environment affects them to face with interpersonal problems later. Just few decades ago, children knew how to obey and help the older people and they thought it was mandatory. However, we can often hear the news of the young people who treated the elders in a bad and insulting way now.

 

Maybe it would be too soon to tell whether the change of lifestyle is negative or positive. However, there certainly rise many problems because of this trend and now we need to face each of them. We should recognize the cause, industrialization and effects, the problem of elder people and young people as they are. Thus, we may find the answer for keeping this trend in a good and healthy way.  

Jang Eun hye assignment 5

201104213 Jang Eun hye       Have you ever seen families which consist of more than four generations nowadays? Though families used to be big families even a few decades ago, nuclear families and families who have different shapes than typical families because of some reasons have became a more familiar concept. Then what causes the situation changed?       First, the society has changed from agriculture to industry. In the past without farm machine, many family members had to live together because farming required much manpower. Nowadays, there are a much smaller number of farmers than past. Plus, because most young generation don't like the interference of their parents without reason to live together, they don't trouble themselves to live with their parents. As a result, families which used to consist of at least three generations now are comprised of two generations at best.      Second, due to the high education fever, family are dividing into two part; one is father who has to make money, and the other is a mother and children. In the past, when a father had to move to another place because of work, the other members moved together with their father. However, these days, due to the reason that changing a school or living environment can have bad impact on kids, usually only a father becomes detached from the family. Even the other members leave for other countries regardless of their father's transfer for better education. So one family is turned into smaller two families.       Third, women's higher social positions take roles in a society consisting of smaller families. As women have been exposed to higher education, social participations of women are increasing. It means the lack of time women taking care of housework. Especially, in terms of children, women have to spend their most of their time rearing children. Therefore, many women are choosing to have only one child and even no baby. Naturally, family is becoming smaller and smaller.       Due to many reasons, it is natural that the meaning and concept should be changed. In addition, the speed of change would be faster than now. Society has to be prepared to embrace these changes and needs supporting plans to manage the changes so as to be sustainable society without conflicts.

Chae-Min Lim / assignment 5/ 11 a.m

  200902928 임채민(EIT)

 

  It may not be surprise that the number of people who live alone or with much smaller families is steadily increasing today. I think the style of living like that has been already fixed in this era compared to the past. If so, there should be certain reasons why those things happen. Above all, urbanization, industrialization and the higher age of marriage will be the key factors of that phenomenon.

 

  Firstly, urbanization across countries has changed the style of living. As it has progressed, people who lived with their family members in the countryside started to come to a big city for finding jobs and it made them separate from their family. Meanwhile, some people came to a city to find new educational opportunities. After people got a job, they needed to settle down and therefore made a new his family. The family was comprised of small members and like this way, the modern lifestyle began to change.

 

  Secondly, those trends are ascribed to rapid industrialization. Before industrialization, typical family consisted of a lot of members and lived with their relatives near each other in the countryside. They had to feed themselves and so needed much labor. In other words, they had a self-sustaining system. However, society became industrialized new job opportunities aroused in many cities and therefore people moved to the cities to grab those opportunities. Like urbanization, industrialization gave people more freedoms and ensured a rich life.

 

  Thirdly, more and more young people tend to delay marriage for many reasons. That can be the main cause of increasing number of single-households. In addition, many young people are having trouble in finding jobs and the expansion of economic instability also is adding that tendency. The growing number can make another problem, which are a housing shortage and a spread of individualism. Therefore,

 

  In conclusion, urbanization, industrialization and the higher age of marriage can be the main cause of the modern lifestyle, which is represented by single-households and nuclear families. Today, I think, the trends may not be avoidable and if so, preparing measures to solve the problems they will bring is important.