The Social Psychology of Potential Problems in Family Vacation Travel
We think vacation travel can cause problems, but subjects did report experiencing less anger, arguing and tension on the vacation than when they are not. It may mean that American vacation habits help to produce self-fulfilling prophecies: one expects to experience less difficulty and so one does, opposite to another kind of self-fulfilling prophecies a small number of travelers encounter when trips prove disappointing after they see too many movies featuring travel frustrations. But it may also mean that vacations are actually relatively stress free. Moreover, for some of the very reasons that we theorize that vacations should create problems for many families, vacations may allow families to experiment creatively with their pattern of living, which may free families from well laid out territories and role routines to explore new and rewarding ways of relating.
Although the supply of family therapists at national parks and resort hotels are now being advocated, we believe that vacations can be diagnostic of inherent relationship problems. It is difficult to sort out the tensions due to normal vacation frustrations from tensions representing underlying serious problems, but some families with serious problems by using work, school, and recreation patterns and by using privacy and territoriality patterns to keep themselves apart, according to Goffman in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, when on vacation, may come face to face with the problems they have avoided. These people might be well advised to avoid joint vacations.
If we are right about vacation travel, we have some advice for people planning family vacation trips. One is to expect interpersonal difficulties and not to be horrified by them. Another is to be aware of problems which may arise from traveling with people outside of the immediate nuclear family. Routinized vacations (for example, always taking a fishing-at-a-resort vacation) have their advantages too, as do vacations that put people in relatively house-like-settings (for example, a homestay where “the family cook” can continue to cook). Good vacations, like good family relationships, may require a considerable investment in tolerance, negotiation, and planning, though not always achieved, even by good people with the best of intentions.
【小题1】This passage is most probably from________.| A．a book review | B．an advertisement |
| C．a travel blog | D．a research paper |
| A．We stopped for a few days at the Browns’, having promised to do so if we could. |
| B．Never does Jason have confidence in fulfilling his dreams of becoming a singer because of his sense of inferiority. |
| C．Yanqi accidentally wrote his answer in the mismatched blank again, after he bet his desk mate￥5 that he would repeat the same mistake made last month. |
| D．Selina, the veteran detective, cast doubt on Adam’s identity, and it turned out that he was indeed the real killer! |
| A．Travel frustrations on road keep family members apart. |
| B．Different family members are engaged in individual recreational activities. |
| C．Each person has a specific place to sit in the living room. |
| D．No disturbance happens when the child studies in his own room. |
| A．Don’t worry about prospective vacation conflicts, and mutual understanding as well as timely dialogue may be helpful. |
| B．Good vacations happen when customs and cultures of your destination are similar to the settings of your hometown. |
| C．Trip with families is always beneficial, because immediate families are people with good intentions. |
| D．Travel offers a golden opportunity for family therapy, so specialists should be equipped in tourist attractions. |
