Family life

Most young people eventually get married, buy or rent a house or flat of their own and start a family. However, a great many changes are taking place in this pattern of behaviour. As in many other Western European countries, more and mote men and women are living together without being married. In the mid 1980s more than a quarter of new brides had lived with their husbands before marriage, compared with 8 per cent in 1970. People are also getting married later than they used to.

However marriage is still popular even among those whose first marriage has failed. In fact, in 36 per cent of all marriages one or both partners have already been married and divorced. Britain now has the highest divorce rate in Europe and about 10 per cent of children live with only one parent.

Another trend is towards smaller households. Very few children now grow up in large families and more and more adults are living alone (25 per cent in 1987). Many of the people who live alone are elderly; it is unusual to find three generations living in one house as they used to do in the past. It is quite common for close relatives to live in different parts of the country and many people hardly ever meet their uncles, aunts and cousins. One reason for this is that British people move house every five years on average. They do this in order to change jobs or to buy a bigger or better house.

In Britain, marriage is a relationship where a man and woman make a legal agreement to live together.

The agreement can be religious (such as in church) or in a civil ceremony. According to a 1995 survey only 50% of people get married in church. Young people under sixteen can't get married. When you are sixteen and seventeen your parents must agree. The number of teenage weddings is dropping. Only 28% of brides and 11% of bridegrooms are under 21. 32% of brides and 33% of grooms are aged 21 - 24.

In 1995 the average age for men to get married was 25.5. The average age for women was 23.

One in ten British couples gets divorced in the first six years. The younger the couple, the more likely is the divorce.

About married man and woman

Almost every English married woman wears at least a wedding band, and typically both wedding and engagement ring with stone, on the ring finger of the left hand. Many unmarried English women wear wedding rings occasionally to discourage various kinds of solicitation. Perhaps a majority of English married men wear a usually gold wedding band on the left ring finger.

In contrast, Russian men and women wear wedding rings on the ring finger of the right hand and sometimes do not change names at marriage, as English women still do typically.

The external marks of a Russian marriage seem to be similar to English, brides in elaborate white and grooms in dark suits and ties. After that, it is quite common to encounter Russian married couples without realizing that they are married or even know one another unless they undertake to tell you, while English marrieds are almost always identifiable by their shared family name.

Russian and English marriages are similar in requiring a secular registration but allowing an additional church wedding. Russians seem to feel the registered marriage is less binding than a church wedding while English tend to consider both open to possible divorce, except for Roman Catholics, who seem to share Russian Orthodox ideas of the performance of church weddings. The English church wedding can be enormously elaborate and expensive but centres on formal exchange of rings and formidable vows, sometimes accompanied by a communion service or mass. The Russian church wedding involves the linked crowning of bride and groom, the ritual circling of the icon altar, and kissing the icons as well as exchange of rings and vows.

(Leger Brosnahan. Russian and English Nonverbal Communication.- Moscow: bilingual, 1998. - P. 99-100)

Task19

Do some library or internet research and give a five-minute talk about wedlock in different cultures.