题目内容
Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it.Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify theparagraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraphmore than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer each question bymarking the corresponding letter.Having It All Without Having Children[A] One evening when she was 14 years old, Laura Scott was washing dishes in the kitchenwith her mother when she decided she didn't want to have a child. “You might changeyour mind," said her mother. At 26, Scott got married and waited for her mind to change.“I thought 1 would be struck by a biological lightning bolt," she recalls. “It neverhappened. And I realized I was going to be fine." As she says from her Tampa office,where she works as a professional coach, “My main motive not to have kids was that Iloved my life the way it was."B] The birthrate in 2012 in the U.S. is the lowest in recorded American history, whichincludes the Great Depression time (大萧条时期). From 2007 to 2011, the most recentyears for which there is data, the fertility birthrate (人口出生率) declined 9%. A 2010Pew Research report showed that childlessness has risen across all racial and ethnic groups ,adding up to about 1 in 5 American women. Even before the recession hit, in 2008, theproportion of women aged 40 to 44 who had never given birth had grown by 80%,from10%10 18%,since 1976. These statistics may not be that shocking compared to someEuropean countries like Italy,where nearly one quarter of women never give birth-----but the rise is both dramatic and, in the scope of our history, quite sudden.[C] In a December column in the New York Times headlined More Babies. Please, RosDoutat argued that the "retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of latemodem exhaustion”,revealing “a sprit that privileges the present over the future” . TheWeeky Standard's Jonathan V. Last has made the case in his controversial book What toExpect When No One's Expecting that the selfishness of the childless American isresponsible for no less than the possible destruction of our economic future by reducing thenumber of consumers and taxpayers.[D] With fertility treatment widely available, not to mention adoption, nowadays women havemore options than ever to become mothers, which increases the possibility that any womanwho doesn't will be judged for her choice. “ There's more pressure on women to bemothers, to fulfill that obligation, than I've ever seen," says Amy Richards, author ofOpting In: Having a Child Without Losing Yourself. “In the past we assumed it was out ofa woman's control" whether or not she had a child.“Now we think it's her choice, so wecan blame her."[E] While the blame is on those childless women, we rarely ask, “Why do you have kids?"Instead it's "Why don't you?" One response I've heard repeated in dozens of interview is“1 keep waiting for the biological clock to tick". Another common answer is a girlhoodlack of interest in dolls or playing family pretend games with fiends. Some can't stand thenoise of kids. But many of these women have chosen to work with kids as teachers orfriends- mothering the world, so to speak ----or have close relationships with friends andsiblings' children, sometimes housing them for vacations or starting up their college funds.“I love children. 1 just don't need to own one" is a common explanation.[F] The designation for women who feel at a young age that they aren't mother material andthen stand by that self -knowledge is early adopters. If there is a biological explanation for this impulse, or lack of one, it has yet to be discovered. Some studies of maternal (母性的) instinct have shown that it clicks in once a woman gives birth, but whether our nature leads us to conceive is another matter entirely. One researcher has controversially suggested that childless women are just smarter. At the London School of Economics, Kanazawa has begun to present scholarship claiming that the more intelligent women are, the less likely they are to become mothers. Many peers in the field have embraced his findings: Kanazawa analyzed the UK's National Child Development Study, which followed a set of people for 50 years, and found that high intelligence correlated with early and lifelong-- adoption of childlessness. He found that among girls in the study, an increase of 15 IQ points decreased the chances of their becoming a mother by 25%.[G] Of course, higher IQ often leads to higher education and good jobs. It is women in that club who are most often the ones who refuse parenthood and who prefer to call themselves child free."Childlessness is for someone who wants a child but doesn't have one. It is a lack. I'm not lacking anything," says Laura Carroll, author of The Baby Matrix. Laura Kipnis, a cultural critic at Northwestern University,likewise rejects defining women without kids as “less”---as if, she says,she says, “your life isn't going to be fulfilled without it, like there is a natural absence---once you fill it with a child, the world makes sense.”([H] For those who don't hold the job, there are advantages, too"1get to do all sorts of things: buy an unnecessary beautiful object, plan trips with our aging parents, sleep in, spend day without speaking to a single person, send care packages to nieces and nephews, enroll in language classes, go out for drinks with a friend whenever I want to," says a happy woman named Jenna Johnson. a Virginian who lives in New York. “I know all of this would be possible with kids, but it would certainly be more complicated. My plans--- professionally, daily, long term, even just for vacation---are free from all the troubles that come with children.”([I] For 15 years at four different universities, Stephanie Bohon has asked students if theyintend to have children.“They all raise their hands," she says, “and then I ask whyand no one has an answer for me. That's what social convention does." Eleanore Wells, amarket researcher in New York City, says that even in her mid-50s, she finds judgment atevery turn.“So many women take my choice personally," she says. Recendly, she toldme, a woman on the subway inquired if she had children and then asked, " Who is goingto take care of you when you're old?" Instead of answering the question, she just smiled,went home and packed her bags for an annual trip to Venice with friends. “When 1 wasyounger I found it more exhausting," she says.“Now I don't care what anyone thinks. Itgets easier.1. There is still no proper explanation why certain women feel that they are unfit to becomemothers.2. Someone claims that, with children around, it becomes difficult to design plans for yourself.3. In certain European countries, nearly 25% of women have never given birth in their life.4. Someone believes that the reason why certain individuals prefer not to bear a child is that,comparatively speaking, they value the present more than the future.5. While some women choose not to have children, it doesn't mean that they don't lovechildren.6. A university staff notices that most students claim they want to have children in the future,yet they don't give much thought about the reason why.7. Some pope pointed out that certain Americans are too self-centered to have a child,whichwould cause great damage to the nation's economy.8. In the old times, it is often not up to the women to decide whether they will have a child or not.9. Instead of being described as“childless”,certain women would like to label themselves as“child free”.10. A study suggests that women with higher IQ are less likely to bear children.
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