My Family and Myself

Yuan-tsung, meaning “First Pearl,” was born to a middle-class family in Shanghai, the Paris of the East, not rich, but well connected, and since childhood her ambitious mother had groomed her to climb the social ladder. Her father, though loving, was somewhat ineffectual. He lost his job in a scandal, and the family began to come down in the world. Because she was the eldest of three siblings, she felt obligated to reverse the family fortune. Her maiden performance as a social climber, when she met and attracted the attention of a powerful socialite, Phyllis Wu, during a grand party at the Fairy Glen Hotel, made her mother think she had great potential.

“A Mirror” of the Alternation of Ethics --- The Ethical Selection of The Maples in Updike’s Separating

Separating, by John Updike, tells a story that happened in a middle-class family, where the protagonists the Maples decide to separate from each other, and they announce their decision to four children, thus resulting in a family conflict. This essay intends to analyze the choice made by the Maples and the reasons behind them, hence revealing the changes in American marriage thoughts and the contradictions that exist in American marriage life in the 1960s.

The Role of Housing in Facilitating Middle-Class Family Practices in China: A Case Study of Tianjin

This paper, drawn from a wider doctoral study that investigates how middle-class Chinese families manage and balance their resources to negotiate family duties across generations, focuses on the role of home ownership and property. The research considers intergenerational equity, which is a key part of social sustainability, and uses this to explore the shifting care expectations between generations and the inherent tensions between socioeconomic opportunities that have changed the shape of families and the belief in the importance of the family unit as a vehicle to deliver care. The research draws on the narratives of whole families in a ten-family study undertaken in the Chinese city of Tianjin. The findings reveal the critical role of housing resources in presenting alternative solutions to the performance of care. Firstly, the opportunity to make new choices in the face of shifting priorities across the life course is facilitated by property ownership. Secondly, it facilitates the possibility of living close by, but not together, maintaining the privacy of the nuclear family, but fulfilling care roles. Thirdly, housing resources promote variations on the traditional co-residence pattern for supporting frail elders and, finally, new forms of co-residences where care flows to the young family and their children.

Thematic Voyage, Images and Symbols; Household Disagreement and Post-Colonial Situation in Upamanayu Chatterjee’s The Last Burden

Upamanayu Chatterjee is born in 1959 at Patna, Bihar. He is one of the original brilliant Indian writers of the modern generation. He is a commanding emergent voice in Indian postcolonial creative writing. He has written a handful of short stories and fictions. His English, August: An Indian story was first published in 1988 and reprinted in 2006. This is one of the significant urban Indian coming-of-age novel. His other novels include The Last Burden (1994), The Mammaries of the Welfare State (2000)- a sequel to The English August, Weight Loss (2006) , and Way to Go (2010)-a sequel to The Last Burden. Keywords: Burden, middle class family, portrays, patriarchy, emotions

Absurd Sensationalism, Receded Morality in an Urban Family in the Vultures (1971)

A family is an organized system that connects all members together to exalt happiness and share grief to each other; they do not only help and hold shoulders with shoulders to strengthens family bonds and teach each other morality of life, respect and honour but also parents scold their sons and daughters for committing any mistakes to recuperate themselves in their career. Therefore, the sacred dignity of the family has been shattered nowadays in order to grab wealth and money. As Father has certain respect and honour at home similarly brothers and sisters have assured place in their parents ‟ heart. The play The Vulture has exposed a middle class family in the urban set up that comprises many family members who can fulfil their house with happiness and pleasure but their thirst for wealth and money shattered their tranquil life. Pappa has accumulated property after so much works though he has grabbed his brother Sakharam’s part who visits his home frequently to ask his part but his all efforts turned into dust and he is insulted by his nephews Ramakant and Umakant. They all are frustrated with the established system and they all started fighting for inheritance. They batter their own father for getting his hidden money though they all know that their demands and threat are transient, they will see the same satiation as they place their father at the moment. Their pursuit has no eternity as they show themselves that they have no goal; purposelessness, meaninglessness, disillusionment prevailed in their life. They sensationalize their arguments to quench their thirst and throw out their moral duty in respect of their father and family. For gaining absurd pursuit, they replicate the vulture like behaviour to kill their own father yet they are addicted to drinking and smoking and drugs, and keeping illicit relationship and outing at night for entertainment.

Reworking Japan

This book examines how the past several decades of neoliberal economic restructuring and reforms in Japan have reshaped the nation's corporate ideologies, gender ideologies, and subjectivities of individual employees. With Japan's remarkable economic growth since the 1950s, the lifestyles and life courses of “salarymen” came to embody the “New Middle Class” family ideal. As this book demonstrates, however, the nearly three decades of economic stagnation since the bursting of the economic bubble in the early 1990s has tarnished this positive image of salarymen. In a sweeping appraisal of recent history, the book shows how economic restructuring has reshaped Japanese corporations, workers, and ideals, as well as how Japanese companies and employees have responded to such changes. The book explores Japan's fraught and problematic transition from the postwar ideology of “companyism” to the emergent ideology of neoliberalism and the subsequent large-scale economic restructuring. By juxtaposing Japan's economic history with case studies and life stories, the book goes beyond the abstract to explore the human dimension of the neoliberal reforms that have impacted the nation's corporate governance, socioeconomic class, workers' ideals, and gender relations. Reworking Japan, with its first-hand analysis of how the supposedly hegemonic neoliberal regime does not completely transform existing cultural frames and social relations, will shake up preconceived ideas about Japanese men in general and salarymen in particular.

CORRELATION OF ENLARGED ADENOIDS WITH CONDUCTIVE HEARING IMPAIRMENT IN CHILDREN UNDER TWELVE AT ENT DEPARTMENT OF SKMCH, MUZAFFARPUR, BIHAR

Objective: To find out the relation of conductive hearing loss in children with enlarged adenoids. Methods: Study was conducted in outpatients department and Indoor wards of the Department of ENT, Sri Krishna Medical College & Hospital, Muzaffarpur, Bihar from May 2020 to September 2020. 60 patients with enlarged amides were included in this study. The assessment of the patients were established on the basic of history clinical, and audiological examination was done. Data were collected and analyzed using statistical package of Microsoft Excel. Results: In this study 60 patients (from 3 years to 12 years age) diagnosed as having ‘enlarged adenoids’ in the ENT Department of SKMCH, Muzaffarpur outpatient and in patients Departments of SKMCH are included in this series. Most of the patients presented with multiple symptoms, the commonest was the hearing impairment (58.33%). Other common symptoms were mouth breathing (50.00%), Nasal obstruction (50.00%), snoring (46.67%). Majority of them were male (62.85%) and 53.33% were in the 5-10 years age group. Middle class family occupy the lion share (58.33%). 60.00% patients live in a overcrowded condition. 50.00% patients were found with gross enlargement of adenoids. Hearing impairment was found in 58.33% ears of-patients of adenoids. Reduced middle ear pressure and compliance were found in 64.00% ears. Among the patients of enlarged adenoids otitis media with effusion was found in 58.33% (35) of patients. Among the patients of OME majority was male (62.85%). There was 77.14% (27) bilateral and 22.85% (8) unilateral cases. On otoscopy of OME patients, all patients had retraction of tympanic membrane, cone of lights were distorted in 50.00%, fluid levels in 68.57% and bubbles were in 28.57% of ears. 71.43% OME patients had hearing loss in the range of 26-40 dB. Middle ear pressure and compliance were found reduced in 88.57% (62) ears of OME patients. There were 58.33% incidence of OME among enlarged adenoids cases. All the patients of OME with enlarged adenoids had a hearing loss between 26-55dB. Out of the 22 OME cases with gross adenoids, 16 had a middle ear pressure between -201 to-300 mm of H20 and 19 had a middle ear pressure between -101 to -200 mm of H20. On myringotomy fluid came out from all 62 (100%) ears. From majority (38) ears serous type of fluid came out. Conclusion: This is an endeavor to find out a correlation of enlarged adenoids with conductive hearing impairment in children. Otitis media with effusion is suspected in all children suffering from enlarged adenoids. All together 60 patients with enlarged adenoids were included in the study. Result of this study may not be the actual picture of overall situation due to many limitations is this study. Still it can be concluded that enlarged adenoids has a definite role in causing OME and conductive hearing impairment. So early diagnosis and treatment of enlarged adenoids can be encouraged to decrease the actual incidence, morbidity and complications of otitis media with effusion and thus conductive hearing impairment in childhood.

To be an Englishman and a Jew: Basil Henriques and the Bernhard Baron Oxford and St George’s Settlement House

Inspired by Oxford University’s Christian social reform clubs in the early 20 th century, Basil Henriques a young Jewish gentleman from a distinguished, upper middle-class family in London determined to establish a Jewish boys’ club in London’s East End. Influenced first by his mother’s devotion to Judaism and then by the progressive views of Jewish scholar, Claude Montefiore and his Oxford history professor, Kenneth Leys, Henriques established the Oxford and St.George’s Jewish Boys’ Club in 1914. An anti-Zionist, Henriques believed strongly in establishing a club that would socialize Jewish youth to become both proud Jews and proud citizens of Great Britain. The club soon served both boys and girls and, by 1919, it had acquired larger premises and become a settlement. Changing demographics in London’s Whitechapel and the rise of the welfare state eventually led to the settlements’ relocation in 1973 and then to its eventual demise.

Germany and Scandinavia

The peoples of Scandinavia and Germany created an impressive array of Christmas observances. This chapter explores their history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when today’s holiday took shape. Even as nineteenth-century ethnographers were conducting studies of the holiday’s roots in pre-Christian pagan traditions, celebrants were drawing on existing religious, aristocratic, and peasant traditions to reinvent a holiday that celebrated middle-class family values; new observances centred on the Christmas tree, the jultomten (Christmas gnome), and Father Christmas. After 1900, Christmas was deeply influenced by the consolidation of consumer culture, exemplified in the history of the Christmas market and the department store, and the evolving mass media, including family Christmas literature. Along the way, Christmas was also politicized and nationalized, especially in Germany, where Marxist Social Democrats, National Socialists, and Cold War Communists and liberals all tried to shape a Christmas that advanced their political agendas. This history suggests that Christmas observances in northern Europe crossed boundaries normally kept separate: between the sacred and the secular, the public and the private, the personal and the political, the commercial and the authentic. While critics repeatedly complained that waning piety, excessive commercialization, or drunken frivolity threatened the ‘true meaning’ of Christmas, this chapter argues that such changes were both inventive and productive. Christmas in Germany and Scandinavia (and elsewhere) was never static, but instead opened space for the contestation and reproduction of changing ideals of faith, family, and community belonging.