VII. Choose the word or phrase - a, b, c or d - that best fits the blank space in the following passage.

A very good friend of mine who is a British Asian, once summed this subject up very well for me. The difference between Asian and Western Culture he said, could be described in one word - FAMILY.

To the Asian culture, family is the most important thing. They tend to have more children than their Western (36) _________, they tend to live together or close together in what we Westerners would call a more old-fashioned (37) _________ family, and if you look around, there are very few Asian old people in Homes or Care Centres, because their families will always (38) _________ them in their old age.

If you look around your own circle of friends in the Western world (39) _________ you will almost certainly find that things are quite different. People usually move (40) _________ home to study, and quite possibly then make their own lives in their new, adopted city, - buying homes and having children some good way from their parents and childhood (41) _________. As the pressures of raising their own children and fulfilling their own careers grows bigger, they visit Mum and Dad less and less each year, until it is not (42) _________ for a man to visit his elderly parents only once a year. To an Asian family this is monstrous and disgusting. A work colleague of mine, (43) _________ is first generation British Asian, just cannot understand why her elderly, British neighbours receive maybe only two visits a year from their two children. The (44) _________ of keeping the family together, and of respecting your elders is generally (45) _________ stronger in Asian cultures.

My mother reminded me to remember to water her house plants.