American family traditions.

2. A. Family traditions and rituals, typically passed down through generations,
play an important role in family life.
B. Traditions and rituals help to define family values, such as importance of
family.
C. For instance, a family who has the tradition of always gathering for dinner
on the holidays demonstrates the value of togetherness.
D. Through helping to shape a family's values, traditions and rituals work to
give families identities which family members can feel a sense of belonging
to.
E. For the American family, many traditions and rituals can be linked to the
history of America

3. A family tradition that originates from colonial times
includes the window candle ritual.
The window candle ritual involves lighting a candle in the
evening.
The flame of the candle represents the love and warmth of
family.
Family traditions that honor freedom and opportunity
include parents sharing American success stories with their
children and going on family picnics to celebrate the country's
birthday on the 4th of July.
The family is a haven in a
heartless world.
~Attributed to
Christopher Lasch

4. Family
Fun
comfortable
loyal
Love
Support
caring

5. This is the one place on earth
where forgiveness and
understanding must be
abundant. This does not mean
that a family should aid
criminal or unethical behavior of
one of its members. It does mean
the family stands with that
family member as he or she
takes responsibility for his or her
actions. Love, support, tolerance
and caring must be the basis for
the relationship. These things
must always be there and never
held back or withdrawn. They
must be unconditional. Family
life today is more challenging
than ever but "Love will see us
through".

6. The family. We were a strange
little band of characters trudging
through life sharing diseases and
toothpaste, coveting one another's
desserts, hiding shampoo,
borrowing money, locking each
other out of our rooms, inflicting
pain and kissing to heal it in the
same instant, loving, laughing,
defending, and trying to figure out
the common thread that bound us
all together.
~Erma Bombeck
Native Americans had a variety of family organizations,
including the nuclear family (two adults and their children),
extended households with near relatives, clans, and other
forms of kinship. Family organizations might be
matrilineal, where ancestry is traced through the mother’s
line, or matrilineal, where ancestry is traced through the
father’s line. In general, Native Americans had a great deal of
freedom in sexuality, in choosing marriage partners, and in
remaining married. After conversion to Christianity, some of
the variety in family forms decreased. In the early 20th
century, the United States government broke up many
Native American families and sent the children to boarding
schools to become Americanized, a policy that was disastrous
for those involved and was largely abandoned by the middle
of the 20th century.

7. Women in the USA constitute 51,4% of the country’s population. Many of
them are earning money outside their homes today. Among women who are
eighteen to sixty-four years old, sixty-two per cent have jobs. A significant
number of married women have entered the labor force not only for
economic reasons but because they want to have other interests in addition
to their homes.
Today more women are holding jobs of greater diversity than ever before.
More and more women earn their own livelihood; a lot of them take on the
role of chief wage earner in their families. But the women are fighting for
equal rights with men in business and professional matters. They are
against discrimination of women in receiving managers and supervisors
positions and not regularly receiving the same pay for the same work that
men do. Thus women have formed “liberation” groups that are militantly
campaigned for the removal of differences in pay and job opportunities for
women, a campaign that resulted in 1972 in the proposal of an Equal
Rights Amendment to the Constitution.