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!"
As a writer, the author has for years focused on women’s liberation from______.

选项 A、looking after their children
B、taking care of their parents
C、earning a living for their families
D、doing housework all day long

答案A

解析 根据文中第一段的内容可知,在女性的生活中,50岁是通向最自由之路的关口。孩子们离巢试飞,父母按说应该开着他们的休闲车漫游或邮寄自己骑着骆驼的明信片。终于自由了!女性可以从兼顾养育子女和追求事业的不稳定状态中解脱出来了。自从15年前我写了《新中年主张》这本书后,这就成为我作品的主题。我没有预料到随后发生的事却事与愿违。据此可知,作者多年来不断关注女性从照料子女的生活中解脱出来的问题。A项正确。
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