Most European countries offer a variety of programs for assisting work

Most European countries offer a variety of programs for assisting working parents, which include paid maternity and paternity leaves, financial allowances for families with children, and they subsidize public nurseries and kindergartens.

A: for assisting working parents, ((which)) include paid maternity and paternity leaves, financial allowances for families with children, and they subsidize
- which modifies parents. Hence, incorrect meaning is conveyed. Thus, incorrect.

B: for the assistance of working parents, ((to include)) paid maternity and paternity leaves, also financial allowances for families with children, and subsidizing
- the meaning gets distorted again. This means that a variety of programs are offered to include paid maternity and paternity leaves...... !! So, is that the intention of including a variety of programs ?? NO. Eliminate.

C: in order to assist working parents, ((to include)) paid maternity and paternity leaves, financial allowances for families with children, and to subsidize - same as B.

D: to assist working parents, ((which)) includes paid maternity and paternity leaves, financial allowances for families with children, and they also subsidize
- Same as A.

E: ((to assist working parents)), including paid maternity and paternity leaves, financial allowances for families with children, and subsidized - bracketed portion is just a clause, defining the intention of the inclusion of a variety of programs. So, there can be slight modifiers in between. Nothing wrong. Including clearly modifies programs. Hence, E is correct.

IMO E.

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A : WHICH AND THEY STRECH THE SENTENCE
B : TO INCLUDE WRONGLY USED
C : TO INCLUDE WRONGLY USED
D : THEY ALSO REFER TO NO BODY

E : CORRECT ANSWER COINCISE

please explain every single option.

Can someone please explain why "subsidized" is okay? The tense is different from the present tense as in "offer" at the start of the sentence. I just cannot get over this bit. Thanks.

chriszeng8

Here subsidized is acting as an adjective for nurseries and kindergartens

Offer in the beginning is the verb of the sentence. After including is the list of the offerings. The list items must be parallel ('and' is the parallelism marker). The list items are nouns (paid (adjective) maternity leaves, financial allowances, subsidized (adjective) nurseries)

Is 'for assisting' in option A wrong or simply unidiomatic?

In C or few other options that use "to subsidize" in parallel

The programs cannot subsidize the nurseries, There is a logic meaning issue

It is the european countries that subsidize.

SO IMO E

GMATNinja help!
Here I feel that the -ing modifier doesn’t make sense with the subject of the main clause (most european countries).
Why does it make sense?

matiasvale

Two issues here:

1) "Including" often doesn't work like other modifiers. It really just introduces a list of things that are included in the aforementioned part. When we see a noun (or noun phrase, such as "programs to assist working parents") followed by ", including," we can expect to see elements that are included in that noun.
2) If we did read "including" as a modifier for the main clause, then it would actually work fairly well. The European countries are offering programs, and in the process, they are including the elements that are listed.

Bunuel, this is a Gmatprep question, please tag. Thanks!

__________________________
Added the tag. Thank you!

Most European countries offer a variety of programs for assisting working parents, which include paid maternity and paternity leaves, financial allowances for families with children, and they subsidize public nurseries and kindergartens.

(A) for assisting working parents, which include paid maternity and paternity leaves, financial allowances for families with children, and they subsidize

programs for assisting working parents - Incorrect as per me.
which modifier placement is incorrect
Includes - variety of programs
they refers to countries or programs?

(B) for the assistance of working parents, to include paid maternity and paternity leaves, also financial allowances for families with children, and subsidizing

programs for the assistance - not sure (may be an expert can call if this makes sense?)
variety of programs to include - incorrect
so many un-parallel items in the list


(C) in order to assist working parents, to include paid maternity and paternity leaves, financial allowances for families with children, and to subsidize
again to include is incorrect
although it still wont make any sense, there is no parallelism in the list

(D) to assist working parents, which includes paid maternity and paternity leaves, financial allowances for families with children, and they also subsidize
Similar as (A)


(E) to assist working parents, including paid maternity and paternity leaves, financial allowances for families with children, and subsidized[/quote]
Including ... is a modifier correctly modifying the variety of programs and the parallel list is maintained

A, B, and C you can omit directly. we need to assist ( matter of intention) Ok b/w E and D, E is perfect.
D has 2 major problems. 1 S-V agreement includes is not in agreement with plural noun. scond lack of ||sm. 'they' breaks the ||sm

I would say it is wrong. Whenever we want to signify a purpose we use 'to + verb' form. In this case, Most European countries offer a variety of programs ' to assist'. The purpose of the programs is what needs to be signified.

I am not able to follow the structure of the option E. including is clearly an Verb-ing modifier modifying the previous action " to assist". how are the items in the list parallel?

paid maternity and paternity leaves,
Financial allowances for families with children
subsidized public nursiries and kindergarten

pkhetan1

What's wrong with making those items parallel? They are all nouns (leaves, allowances, and nurseries/kindergartens), and while they might not all be the same kinds of nouns (financial abstractions vs. actual schools), they are all listed as examples of the programs offered to assist working parents.

That's the word "including". You need to memorize that this word is exceptional: comma + "INCLUDING" is ••NOT•• a comma + _ING modifier.

"including xxxxxxxxx stuff" is actually a prepositional phrase. It's not the right kind of _ING form to make a comma + _ING modifier, because it's NOT derived directly from the VERB "include".
(That verb has a different meaning altogether, in which a person—who is the subject of the verb—makes a conscious decision to "include" somebody or something in an activity/project/collection/etc. This preposition "including", by contrast, does NOT have a subject/agent, because it does not describe "inclusion" as a person's conscious choice.)


The information above is mostly just for completeness. When you evaluate an instance of comma + "including" in a real sentence, you definitely shouldn't think through any of the stuff above (other than "this is NOT a comma+_ING modifier!").

Just verify the following requirements:

The modifier "comma + INCLUDING xxxxxxxx" is correctly used if...

• the "xxxxxxxx" thing(s) or person(s) belong to a certain group or category, and are presented as EXAMPLES of that group/category;

• "xxxxxxxxx" is NOT a complete list of everything/everybody in the whole group/category;

• the group/category is named by a NOUN (or noun+modifiers, if necessary) that is written before the comma.
This NOUN is what's modified by "including xxxxxxxx".

The second condition is essential. "Including" is very specifically meant to introduce EXAMPLES. It is INCORRECTLY used if it introduces an exhaustive listing of everything/everybody in the group.
(If you're going to list everything, you should use "comprising", "consisting of", or some other equivalent word.)

Please confirm that the instance of comma + "including...." in choice E satisfies these conditions.