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  3. Fifty is the gateway to the most liberating passage in a woman’s life. Children are making test flights out of the nest. Parents

Fifty is the gateway to the most liberating passage in a woman’s life. Children are making test flights out of the nest. Parents

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问题     Fifty is the gateway to the most liberating passage in a woman’s life. Children are making test flights out of the nest. Parents are expected to be roaming in their recreational vehicles or sending postcards of themselves riding camels. Free at last! Women can graduate from the precarious balancing act between parenting and pursuit of a career. That has been the message of my books since I wrote New Passages 15 years ago. What I didn’t see coming was the boomerang.
    With parents living routinely into their 90s, a second round of caregiving has become a predictable crisis for women in midlife. Nearly 50 million Americans are taking care of an adult who used to be independent. Yes, men represent about one third of family caregivers, but their participation is often at a distance and administrative. Women do most of the hands-on care.
    It starts with the call. It’s a call about a fall. Your mom has had a stroke. Or it’s a call about your dad—he’s run a red light and hit someone, again, but how are you ever going to persuade him to stop driving? Or your hushand’s doctor calls with news that your partner is reluctant to tell you: it’s cancer.
    When that call came to me, I froze. The shock plunges you into a whirlpool of fear, denial, and feverish action. You search out doctors. They don’t agree on the diagnosis. You scavenge the Internet. The side effects make you worry. You call your brother or sister, hoping for help. Old rivalries flare up.
    We’d like to think that siblings would be natural allies when parents falter. But the facts are quite different. Brothers bury their heads in the sand. The farther away a sister lives, the more certain she will call the primary caregiver and tell her she doesn’t know what she’s doing. A 1996 study by Cornell and Louisiana State universities concluded that siblings are not just inherent rivals, but the greatest source of stress between human beings.
    There are many rewards in giving back to a loved one. And the short-term stress of mobilizing against the initial crisis jump-starts the body’s positive responses. But this role is not a short race. It usually turns into a marathon, averaging almost five years. But most solitary caregivers will wait until the third or fourth year before sending out the desperate cry "I can’t do this anymore!"
According to the author, siblings tend to ______ .
选项 A、live in different places after they form their own families
B、stand on the same side when arguing with their parents
C、compete with each other for being the primary caregiver
D、shift onto each other the responsibilities for their parents
答案D
解析 根据文中第五段的“We’d like to think that siblings would be natural allieswhen parents falter．But the facts are quite different．Brothers bury their heads in thesand．The farther away a sister lives，the more certain she will call the primarly caregiverand tell her she doesn’t know what she’s doing．”可知，当父母步履蹒跚时，我们希望兄弟姐妹会成为天生的盟友，但事实却大相径庭。兄弟们都逃避现实；姐妹住得越远，就越会给父母身边的护理人打电话，说不知道她在做什么。据此可知，兄弟姐妹往往将照顾父母的责任推卸给对方。D项正确。
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