Usage of "being"

Question

I am Korean English learner :)

To begin with, I would like to thank you to all of you who answer my questions! It is really helpful for me to learn English :) But I'm not familiar with how to use this site properly (like put yellow box? behind the question sentences, use bold font, and vote system...). Please understand my poorness of using this site.

This is my question.

This sentence is from TOEFL

Taking time for family is more imperative than ever before due to family time being more pleasurable, and children being in need of more parental direction.

Here, I am confused usage of being.

I know that there are two functions (or meanings) of "-ing": one is progressive form of verb and the other is participial adjective.

I thought I should put "is" after the both words "family time" and "children", as "Taking time for family" is more imperative than ever before due to family time is being more pleasurable, and children is being in need of more parental direction."

Am I in mistake of understanding the usage of -ing? or difference between progressive verb and participial adjective? or is it just ellipsis of copular 'be-verb'?

Now I don't know what I am exactly confused of.

Answer 1

I have simplified your sentence a little to explain how it works. Start of with this simple statement:

Family time is pleasurable.

If you want to use this as a reason for doing something, you can treat it as a clause, and connect it to another clause using the conjunction because:

Taking time for family is important because family time is pleasurable

due to is not a conjunction: it requires a noun or noun phrase. We can make a the original sentence into a noun phrase by using a participle in place of the verb is:

Taking time for family is important due to family time being pleasurable

You can regard the noun phrase as two parts: the compound noun "family time" and the participial phrase "being pleasurable", which describes the compound noun.

Answer 2

It's incorrect to use a clause (a unit of grammatical organization next below the sentence in rank and in traditional grammar said to consist of a subject and predicate) after "due to". In other words, we shall use a noun or a noun phrase after "due to", and in your sentence this rule is observed:

• Taking time for family is more imperative than ever before due to family time ("family time" is a noun phrase)

Then they describe this family time with being more pleasurable. In this case being is participle 1 (acting as an adjective). Being in need of more parental direction is a participial phrase too, and it modifies the noun "children".

Here are more examples of sentences with "due to" and participial phrases:

1. A lot of her unhappiness is due to boredom (what kind of boredom?) ruining her life and naughtiness (what kind of naughtiness?) stemming from her difficult childhood.
2. The bus was delayed due to heavy snow causing traffic jams.