VOA慢速听力(023)

Great changes have taken place in family life because of science and industry. In the past, when more Americans lived on farms, the typical family had many children. In a farm family, parents and their children often lived with grandparents. Often too, uncles and aunts lived nearby. But when industry became more important than agriculture in American life, families became smaller because industry requires workers were ready and able to move off the land and to move again whenever necessary. And large families cannot be moved from place to place as smaller families can. So at present people tend to have smaller families. In the future, because of industrialization, a typical family will be required to move even more often than now. So families will be even smaller. The typical family may remain childless and consists of only a man and a woman. A small number of families may take child raising as their chief work. They raise other people's children, leaving those families free to move from job to job.