Passage Three
Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage:
Mobility of individual members and family groups tends to split up family relationships.
Occasionally the movement of a family away from a situation which has been the source of friction results in greater family organization, but on the whole mobility is disorganizing.
Individuals and families are involved in three types of mobility: movement in space,
movement up or down in social status, and the movement of ideas. These are termed respectively spatial, vertical, and ideational mobility.
A great increase in spatial mobility has gone along with improvements in rail and water
transportation, the invention and use of the automobile, and the availability of airplane passenger
service. Spatial mobility results in a decline in the importance of the traditional home with its
emphasis on family continuity and stability. It also means that when individual family members
or the family as a whole move away from a community, the person or the family is removed
from the pressures of relatives, friends, and community institutions for conventionality and stability. Even more important is the fact that spatial mobility permits some members of a family
to come in contact with and possibly adopt attitudes, values, and ways of thinking different from
those held by other family members. The presence of different attitudes, values, and ways of
thinking with in a family may, and often does, result in conflict and family disorganization. Potential disorganization is present in those families in which the husband, wife, and children are
spatially separated over a long period, or are living together but see each other only briefly be-
cause of different work schedules.
One index of the increase in vertical mobility is the great increase in the proportion of
sons, and to some extent daughters, who engage in occupations other than those of the parents.
Another index of vertical mobility is the degree of intermarrigae between racial classes. This occurs almost exclusively between classes which are adjacent to each other. Engaging in a different occupation, or intermarriage, like spatial mobility, allows one to come in contact with ways of
behavior different from those of the parental home, and tends to separate parents and their
children.
31. What the passage tells us can be summarized by the statement:
A) social development results in a decline in the impotance of traditional families
B) potential disorganization is present in the American family
C) family disorganization is more or less the result of mobility
D) the movement of a family is one of the factors in raising its social status
32. According to the passage, those who live in a traditional family
A) are less likely to quarrel with others because of conventionality and stability
B) have to depend on their relatives and friends if they do not move away from it
C) can get more help from their family members if they are in trouble
D) will have more freedom of action and thought if they move away from it.
33. Potential disorganization exists in those families in which
A) the husband, wife, and children work too hard
B) the husband, wife, and children seldom get together
C) both parents have to work full time
D) the family members are subject to social pressures
34. Intermarriage and different occupations play an important role in family disorganization be-
cause
A) they enable the children to travel around without their parents' permission
B) they allow one to find a good job and improve one's social status
C) they enable the children to better understand the ways of behavior of their parents
D) they permit one to come into contact with different ways of behavior and thinking
35. This passage suggests that a well - organized family is a family whose members
A) are not psychologically withdrawn from one another
B) never quarrel with each other even when they disagree
C) often help each other with true love and affection
D) are exposed to the same new ideas introduced by books, radios, and TV sets
