A、Both parents working and raising two or three children. B、A working father, a housewife mother and a couple of children. C、Mar

The traditional American family used to have a working father, a housewife mother, and two or three children. But in the last twenty or twenty-five years, this picture has changed. Now we have many different kinds of families and living situations besides this traditional one. For example, there are many single mothers and single fathers who are raising children by themselves. There are married couples who decide that they don’t want any children. Sometimes adult children who have been living alone for a long time come back and live with their parents again. You can also find groups of older people sharing a house in order to save money. And there are many other examples of new types of families in this country.
    Why has the traditional family changed so much? Well, the reasons are both social and economic. First, as you know, the divorce rate is high in our culture; as a result, we have many single-parent families. Second, there is unemployment among young adults. If they cannot find a job, many times they return home and live with their parents again. But of course the most important reason for the changes in the American family is that most American women now work outside the home. In fact, 54.5% of all American women are now working or looking for work. This means that more than half of all American homes do not have a full-time homemaker anymore.
    With so many women working, our society has some difficult, new problems. For example, who will take care of children and old people? Who will do the housework? Who will do volunteer work?
    Some people might say that these are "women’s problems", so women should be the ones to solve them. But more and more people understand that everybody in our society is responsible for trying to find answers to these problems. In fact, many companies are trying to help modern working parents, both the mother and the father, by creating flexible new policies. Here are a few examples.
    One example is that many companies now allow a woman to leave her job temporarily in order to have a baby. This is called maternity leave. The woman may receive part of her salary while she is not working. And of course her job will be waiting for her when she is ready to return to work.
    Second, you know that big companies like IBM or Mitsubishi often transfer their employees to other cities... right? If a company transfers the husband, for example, this might create a problem for the wife because she has to find a new job, too. Well, now there are some companies that will help the husband or wife or a transferred worker to find a new job.
    Another new policy is that many companies now have something called "flextime". Flextime means that instead of working from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, as most people do in this country, a worker can work from, say, 6:00 am to 3:00 pm, or from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm, etc. As you can imagine, flextime is very useful for people with children. Many of the big companies in this country now have it.
    Fourth, some companies allow their employees to work at home instead of coming into the office every day. Working at home is easy for people in professions like computer programming and telephone sales.
    Fifth, a few large companies now have day-care centers for the children of their employees.
I’ve given you five examples of new company policies that are supposed to make life a little easier for working mothers and fathers. Let me repeat them for you briefly: maternity leave, helping the wife or the husband of a transferred worker to find a new job in another city, flextime, allowing employees to work at home, and day-care centers. However, it’s important for you to understand that there are only a few large companies that can afford to help their employees with these kinds of programs. For most people, trying to work and take care of a family is still very, very difficult.
16. What is the traditional American family like?
17. What is the most important reason for the changes in the American family?
18. What percentage of American women are working outside the home or looking for work?
19. How does a company help a transferred employee?
20. Which of the following statements is true about the policies mentioned in the passage?