Discuss whether the vagueness of the following passage is appropriate to the context that is stated or implied. Pay particular attention to the underlined expressions.One demographer thinks that more than 20 percent of the women born in the mid-1950s are childless, a rate that is almost triple that of the previous generation.You will hear this ascribed to a breakdown of traditional values or to rampant selfishness. But this glib explanation misses the deeper truth, which is more subtle and less personal. People haven't suddenly become more selfish. Changing economic and social realities have simply made children less economically essential and, therefore, more a matter of choice. When people urge a return to traditional values, they're talking about the impossible: reversing

Question

centuries of economic and technological change that have altered women's roles. Women's liberation is less an idea than the result of changes that, by reducing pressures for childbearing, inevitably led to more educational and job opportunities.-Adapted from a newsmagazine essay

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The first occurrence of "traditional values" is quite vague. Does a simple interest in having children count as such a value, or do the values referred to produce the interest in having children? "Rampant selfishness" presumably includes not wanting to share one's time, treasure, or energy with children; beyond that, it isn't clear what is intended. "Changing economic and social realities" and the succeeding underlined expressions are quite vague, but we can easily guess at what the author has in mind for them. The same goes for the last of the underlined expressions.
The main point of this paragraph-that having children is no longer an economic necessity-is somewhat more difficult to find than it might have been had there not been so many very general (and vague) ideas present in the passage.