2. 外语
  3. You know her—that nice teenager across the street? Chloe. There she is, sitting in one of the two captain’s seats in the midsect

You know her—that nice teenager across the street? Chloe. There she is, sitting in one of the two captain’s seats in the midsect

admin2011-02-11  61
问题   You know her—that nice teenager across the street? Chloe. There she is, sitting in one of the two captain’s seats in the midsection of her mom’s Toyota Sienna, bopping along to the music on her iPod. Now and then she pulls out one of the ear buds so that she can tell her mom some forgotten bit of news or gossip; Chloe’s mom is up to speed on the dramas that are always unfolding in her daughter’s circle of friends, just as she can tell you the date of her next French test, the topic of her coming history paper and the location and scope of her next community service project. They have a great night planned out: they’re going to pick up Chloe’s best friend and then drive back home for a night of DVDs and popcorn in the family room. Her mom will putter around close by, and her dad will probably sit down and watch one of the movies with the girls.
  When I was in high school in the 1970s,we had a name for teenagers like Chloe: losers. If an otherwise normal girl thought that the best way to spend a Saturday night was home with her parents—not just co-existing with them, but actually hanging out with them—we would have been looking for a bucket of pig’s blood.
  In my day, we did whatever was necessary to get out on a Saturday night: we climbed out of windows; we jumped on the hack of motorcycles; God help us, we hitchhiked. We needed, on the most basic and physical level, to be out in the dangerous night, with one another, away from our parents and the safety of home. It was no way to live, and some of us didn’t. But it was a drive so elemental and essential that there seemed no way to deny it.
  That a profound change has taken place in the relationship between American teenagers and their parents is made clear by statistics from the Federal Highway Administration showing a steady decline in the number of licensed teenage drivers. In the last decade, the proportion of 16-year-olds nationwide who hold driver’s licenses has dropped from nearly half to less than one-third.
  The reasons have a great deal to do with the cost of car insurance and driver’s education programs. But among middle-and upper-middle-class young adults, the peer power that created the teenage car culture, the compelling energy that once served to blast an adolescent away from his or her parents has begun to drain away. Teenagers report that they don’t need to drive: their parents are willing to take them where they want to go, and they are content to ride shotgun with Mom, texting and yakking all the way to the mall.
  I had not taught high school long before I attended my first funeral: an 18-year-old,loud in the halls one day, dead on the side of the road the next. If you want to improve your daughter’s chances of surviving her teens, don’t give her the car keys. If our generation of parents has done one thing right, it has been to manipulate our children into giving up driving.
  How have we managed it? Through the very aspect of family life we complain about the most: the extracurricular activities that we pay for and arrange and attend; the risibly involved homework assignments that we are so enmeshed with; the whole annoying side industry of being a "servant" and a "private driver".
  These things harass us no end. But they have bound our children to us in complex and powerful ways, and this has been, to some extent, the point of the entire exercise. It means that we can prolong the period of our children’s dependency, to extend the sweet phase of cocooning and protecting well into their adolescence.
  An American teenager is part premature and part invalid, able to excel in obscure sports but needing his mother to rush the field with a jacket and thermos of soup when he’s finished. They have been hobbled by our endless meddling; they lack resourcefulness and resilience. They’re like little children, soft and easily wounded.
  But for all their fussiness and neediness, they love us; they want to be close to us. They have every reason to believe that we will take care of them, even when they would be better off if we lei them struggle a bit.
  Learn to drive? Why would they want to do that?  
The seventh and eighth paragraphs claim all the following EXCEPT
选项 A、parents are bothered by the daily trifles of their children.
B、parents want their children to be more independent.
C、children cannot grow up quickly if taken care of by their parents.
D、parents are content with the lengthened growing process of their children.
答案B
解析 细节题。从第七段可以看出，父母要为子女的生活学习操心，比如课外活动、家庭作业、照顾孩子起居、开车送孩子上下学等等。从第七段"the very aspect of family life we complain about the most”和第八段“These things harass us no end”这两句话可以看出，父母们对照顾孩子们的琐事还是倍受困扰的，故排除A。但是作者话锋一转，又指出这些父母照顾孩子的事情，正是“bound our children to us”的好方法，可以让孩子慢些长大，让孩子再依赖我们多一些，“prolong the period of our children’s dependency”，从而让孩子们更安全，而不是更独立，故答案为B。C是“prolong the period of our children’s dependency”的另外一种说法，故排除。因为可以使孩子更多得跟父母待在安全的家里，孩子的成长速度放慢了，父母们也是心甘情愿的，故排除D
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