19. Lifestyles, social issues

19. Lifestyles, social issues

lifestyles in general

main differences between lifestyle in the past and at present

family life

eating habits

fashion

A lifestyle is the way how a person or a group of people lives and works. Our life is different from lives of our ancestors in many different areas: family life, education, medical care, fashion, hobbies, environment, science and technology, communication, travelling and many others.

Now I would like to tell you something about the main differences between life of our ancestors and our life. I think that the biggest difference is that everything is faster and simplified. People try to save their time as much as possible. Good example is moving from villages to towns and cities – people can get goods and find a job easier in cities.

Another big difference is that everything is more comfortable now than it was in the past. People used to work in the fields and in the open air, now they sit in warm and comfortable offices and do a metal work instead of working by hands. And that’s maybe why in the past people were more resistant to cold and did not suffer so much from different allergies and they also had more physical activity. Now they suffer from allergies and civilization diseases like stress or obesity. These things become more and more common. People in the past also lived in harmony with nature and they had closer relationship toward animal and plants. Now people very often ignore the rules of nature, they pollute nature and most of them don´t care about environmental problems.

Now something about family life: The rules and customs of family life changed diametrically. In the past, when people wanted to live together, they got married. To have children or live in a pair and not to be married was considered something like a „family catastrophe”. Now unmarried couples live together and often have children, society doesn´t judge them. In the past it wasn´t very common to get divorced but now a lot of marriages ends in divorces. That’s why there are so many single-parent families. In past a single-parent family was usually the result of the death of a spouse. And marriage wasn´t often a matter of free choice of or love, but parents tried to find a wife or husband who was good enough for their child (according to them), but now it is normal that people choose their partners on they own. As for homosexuality, in the past single-sex marriages were illegal, but now single-sex couples can get married easily, and they can even adopt a child in many countries. It is mainly because the society becomes more and more tolerant.

In past, families spent more time together. They had no computers and TVs, so they spent evenings chatting with members of their family. Also the role of a mother changed a lot. A wife in the past was expected to stay at home and to be a housekeeper – she had to prepare meal, look after children and clean the house while husband worked to get money. Now a day, almost every woman goes to work and has a profession which she could never have in the past, they become for example a doctor, a lawyer, a business woman and so on. They have children later then in the past, because they want to build their career at work. Some women can even get more money than their husbands! That’s why women became more independent on their husbands; they can more rely on themselves.