3. Insert a preposition or a particle where necessary.

1. In many families husbands turn … their paychecks to their wives.

2. Teenage children often contribute … the family budget.

3. When a family wants to buy really expensive things they decide … it together.

4. In some countries there is a stigma … being simply a housewife.

5. In some families it is the wife who takes responsibility … managing the household.

6. She never complains … the problems her family faces.

Speech activities

5. Agree or disagree. Give arguments to sustain your ground.

1. Ordinary Russian women take it for granted that they are the binding force in the family.

2. Russian women prefer the exhaustion of too many burdens to the “spiritual death”.

3. Having to be breadwinner can transform work from a means of self-fulfillment and independence into drudgery.

4. The Russian women are rebelling inwardly against having to be breadwinners.

2. Interview several working and staying-at-home mothers about their attitude to the problems raised in the text. Present the findings of your questionnaires in class and analyse the results together.

3. Read the supplementary text “Can’t We All Just Get Along?” and sum up the advantages and disadvantages of stay-at-home and working mothers’ situations. Discuss the problems raised in the text.

3. Express your attitude to the following statements:

• Juggling career and family is the most difficult internal struggle that women face.

• Working women struggle with guilt at work regarding family and battle guilt at home regarding job performance.

• Parenting and ambition barely overlap.

• You can have it all, but your definition of “ALL” might have to change.

• The only true enemy to female ambition is love for their children.

5. Role-play. Discuss the problem.

The Problem.

Mrs Webb is married with two children who are both now of school age. For the last ten years she has been a housewife, but would now like to rejoin the work force. She is a qualified nurse. Her husband, however, is very resistant to the idea.

The Characters.

The frustrated housewife: Ann Webb

She was a nurse before she got married. She has been a housewife for the last ten years and feels bored. Her children are both of school age, so she wants to go back to work. One of her dreams is to be able to afford an overseas trip to visit her parents. She hasn’t seen them for 11 years.

Husband: Bob Webb.

He is a sales representative earning only an average wage. He has no qualifications and has been working in the same job without promotion, for the last ten years. He has a very traditional view of the role of the wife and mother within the family. He is resistant to the idea of his wife going back to work.

Grandparent: Mr or Mrs Webb senior(either mother or father of Bob and Alice).

He/she is elderly with health problems, lives with Bob and Ann but doesn’t get on with Alice because he/she dislikes the fact that Alice puts her child in a child-minding centre during the day. He/she has very traditional views of the role of the wife and mother within the family and, although liking Ann, doesn’t want her to go back to work.

Bob’s sister: Alice Jones.

She is a social worker/marriage counselor and enjoys her job. She has just booked a world cruise which she is able to afford because she works. She went back to work as soon as her child was born. She has one child who is 18 months old. The child is looked after in a child-minding centre. Alice thinks Ann should go back to work for many reasons.

Alice’s husband: Richard Jones.

He is a teacher. He is very liberal in his views about his wife’s role. At first he was unhappy about the child being put into a child-minding centre, but says now that it is working out very well.

The Discussion

Assemble into your discussion groups and, by discussing the problem, try to work out a way to solve it. Afterwards each group is going to be asked to give an account of the outcome of the discussion. While discussing the problem use the appropriate language exponents from the Speech Functions Bank.

www.globeandmail.com

Work with the video programme “Women and Work”

1. Study the following words and word combinations from the video report and use them while discussing it:

• high-earning women;

• to settle into gender roles;

• a single earner/two earner family;

• to shift the roles;

• participation in the labour/workforce;

• to deserve a 50/50 split;

• the stay-at-home mom;

• disproportion capacity;

• to make up for the loss of man’s pride.

2. Answer the questions:

1. How has the distribution of roles in American families changed recently?

2. What is meant by “a second shift of work”?

3. What were the expectations of sociologists in the 80s?

4. Why, surprisingly, do high-earning women do more housework?

5. What are American women’s hopes concerning “the revolution in the household”?