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  3. Back to the Nest It’s often hard to see your mistakes as you’re making them. "Yikes! The kids are moving back in!" Thus goes

Back to the Nest It’s often hard to see your mistakes as you’re making them. "Yikes! The kids are moving back in!" Thus goes

admin2013-07-11  41
问题                             Back to the Nest
    It’s often hard to see your mistakes as you’re making them. "Yikes! The kids are moving back in!" Thus goes the moan of the baby boom generation, circa 2007. But letting the kids move back in is not the societal error we’re talking about. Instead, the big mistake is the loudly voiced displeasure of the boomers. Most mistakenly denounce the notion of the boomerang generation. For example, the authors of a recent book on the topic, Mom , Can I Move Back In With You? Report, The parents of the 39 million twenty-somethings in the United States face the unprecedented challenge of their children’s prolonged adolescence. The subtitle of the book is even more revealing:"A survival guide for parents of twenty-somethings."
    In order to fully appreciate the depth of the error being made here, we all need to step back a bit and look at the bigger picture. This epidemic of kids moving back home is first, not "unprecedented," and second, it’s not a bad thing. The precedent for this trend can be found among the other 6.2 billion non-Americans on the planet, many of whom happily live with their adult children, often in three-generation households. Finally, the agricultural history of this country before World War II allowed kids to live and work around the farm well into adulthood.
    Adult kids moving back home is merely the most noticeable symptom of a larger, fundamental transformation of American society. We are nationally beginning to recognize the costs of the independence the so-called greatest generation imposed on us. Kids in their generation went off to World War II and grew up on the bloody beaches of distant lands. After the war, the survivors had factories to build and the wealth to buy their white-picket-fence dream out West. They designed a social and fiscal system that has served their retirement years very well. But their historically unique retirement system mistakenly celebrated independence and ignored the natural state of human beings—that is, interdependence. Moreover, their system breaks down with the attack of their kids’ retirement.
    Regarding boomerang kids, most demographers focus on the immediate explanations for the changes, such as the growing immigrant population, housing shortages and high prices, and out-of-wedlock childbearing. Many psychologists have noted that baby-boomer parents enjoy closer relationships with their fewer children that allow extended cohabitation. However, all these explanations are simply symptoms of the larger, more fundamental reuniting of Americans into households.
    The rate at which our American culture is adapting will accelerate as baby boomers begin retiring. Creative housing arrangements are necessitating and allowing three generations to live together again. But such multigenerational households don’t make sense for everyone. The culture itself frequently gets in the way, reinforcing the perception of a stigma attaching to lack of independence. Despite these problems, once you begin talking with your friends about three-generation households, you will begin hearing stories about how such obstacles are being overcome.
What can be inferred about America from the text?
选项 A、Most parents are happier once the kids move out.
B、There are precedents for adult children coming back home in history.
C、The boomer generation set up the pension system.
D、The pension system begins to disintegrate under the weight of baby boomers.
答案D
解析 本题考查推理引申。第一段虽然提到婴儿潮一代对子女回巢的抱怨，但并不能由此推出大部分家长的态度；况且第四段谈到美国人回归大家庭的趋势，排除[A]。第二段第二句提到子女回巢现象有先例，但第三句指出它是在世界上其他国家出现的。该段末虽然提到“农业经济模式下，成年子女在家帮助父母劳作”的事实，但这并不能等同于现在出现的“成年子女回巢”现象，因此不能算是“回巢”的先例，排除[B]。第三段最后两句提到，“最伟大的一代”建立的退休制度随着他们子女(即，婴儿潮一代)的退休而瓦解，由此可知[D]正确，同时排除[C]。
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