Close-up considerations
1. Children can’t adapt their behaviour to the changing circumstances.
2. Parents don’t give much freedom to their teenage children, thus providing resentfulness and hostility in their character.
3. Adolescents are likely to make more mistakes when choosing a career.
4. Children are too much dependent on their parents.
5. Parents make the most of decisions for their children.
6. We can’t live according to our own views of right and wrong.
7. It takes ages for the children to get mature.
Children start to lead ‘double’ life when there parents are too dictatorial or authoritative.
Unit Two:
Open-up ideas
1. One should have an ability to get on with roommates.
2. Finding a good partner to share your flat with is very easy when you are a student.
3. We should establish from the start a set of simple “House Rules”.
4. We can avoid any arguments about money by agreeing to what each of us should buy in advance.
5. We can define our duties easily.
6. If you share a room, you always try not to produce too much unnecessary noise.
7. One can be as tolerant and reasonable as his flatmate.
Text for discussion
Judging from the ‘Flats to Let and Wanted’ columns of the local evening paper, there is an endless search going on for partners to share flats which must surely compare with the search for suitable marriage partners, Indeed, the fact that the advertisements so often specify the type and the personality of the potential flat-mate suggests that compatibility - the simple ability to get on well together - is as important in flat-sharing as it is in marriage.
I’m particularly intrigued by the offers and requests for references. I suspect that they are quite useless in providing anything more than trivial information, such as conforming that Mr.Smith is an honest fellow and really does work in a bank. The things I would want to know about him are unlikely to be revealed in even the most scrupulously-written testimonial. Does he make a noise when he eats? Does he pick his nose? Does he leave the bathroom as he finds it (or, in my case, better than he finds it)? Does he snore? If finding one suitable person to share your flat with is a risky business, heaven only knows what it must be like to have to find four, and girls at that.
I am not suggesting that it is pointless to try to get an idea beforehand of the person whose face is going to dominate your breakfast table for an unforeseeable length of time. But I suspect that - as in the case of marriage - you will not really get to know them until you have taken them on, so to speak. What I would do - or perhaps I ought to say ‘will do’, because my present flat is bankrupting me - is to assume the worst and take steps in advance to avoid the frictions which result from trying to share your life with someone else. I do not think it matters if we have different tastes in food or music, for example. I do not care if he doesn’t like my Gainsborough reproductions or my friends, and I am quite sure that I will be horrified by his passion for birdwatching and healthy foods. No, what matters is that we should establish from the start a set of House Rules, whose purpose is quite unmistakable; to reduce to minimum the need for us to have anything to do with each other at all.
First, as far as possible, everything will be reduced to a routine; a notepad for shopping lists, a rota for doing the cleaning, the cooking and the housework, a system of budgets to avoid any arguments about money, and so on. Next, like the rest of the animal kingdom, we will have clearly defined territories, in which with as little noise as possible, we will be able to pursue our peculiar hobbies and indulge our eccentricities. I would be willing, for example, to move my Gainsborough into my bedroom, if he in turn would promise to keep his ridiculous pictures of displaying turtledoves out of sight. Thirdly, I will have a serious talk with him about the weekends, when we are most likely to get on each other’s nerves. Perhaps he can be persuaded to go and visit his aunt in Birmingham, or simply to lie in bed for forty-eight hours. I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that all my planning is in vain. I will stick an ad in the paper like everyone else, and be glad to accept this first ‘quiet, respectable businessman’ who replies to it. I only hope that he is as tolerant and as reasonable as I am.