Unit4.docx

1、Unit4Unit Four: The No-child Family: Going Against 100,000 Years of BiologyRita KramerIntroduction: With the development of a commercialized society, some people have decided to remain single, and more and more married couples have decided not to have any children. The reasons seem to be many-sided.

2、 One of reasons seemingly lies in the pressures of modern work and life. Conventionalists argue that generation faces serious questions about the continuity of life and as well as its quality, so it is selfish to stay childless after marriage, and that“ the no-child family fly in the face of biology

3、 and society.” We have also noticed that in a commercial society, many men drift into the parenthood. Do they have to make a virtue out of necessity to rear a child even when dont want to? 1) Cathy and Wayne N. are in their late 20s have been married five years, and are childless. The last time a me

4、mber of Cathys family asked, “when are you going to start a family?” Her answer was We are a family!2)Cathy and Wayne belong to a growing number of young married couples who are deciding not to have children. A recent survey showed that in the last five years the percentage of wives aged 25 to 29 wh

5、o did not want children had almost doubled and among those 18 to 24 it had almost tripled. What lies behind this decision which seems to fly in the face of biology and society?3) Perhaps the most public outspoken childless couple are Ellen Peck, author of The Baby Trap, and her husband, William, an

6、advertising executive who is president of the National Organization for Non-parents. The Pecks insist neither they nor the organization is against parenthood, just against the social pressures that push people into parenthood whether it is what they really want and need or not.4) Its a life-style ch

7、oice, Ellen says. “We chose freedom and spontaneity, privacy and leisure. Its also a question of where you want to give your efforts within your own family or in the larger community. This generation faces serious questions about the continuity of life and as well as its quality. Our grandchildren m

8、ay have to buy tickets to see the last redwoods or line up to get their oxygen ration. There are men who complain about being caught in a traffic jam for hours on their home to their five kids but cant make the association between the children and the traffic jam. In a world seriously threatened by

9、the consequences of overpopulation were concerned with making life without children acceptance and respectable. Too many children are born as a result of cultural coercion. And the results show up in the statistics on divorce and child-abuse. ”5) Her husband adds, “Every friend, relative and busines

10、s associate is pressuring you to have kids and find what youre missing. Too many people discover too late that what they were missing was something they were totally unsuited for.”6) And Ellen again: “From the first doll to soap operas to cocktail parties, the pressure or always there to be parents.

11、 But lets take a look at the rate of parental failure. Perhaps parenthood should be regarded as a specialized occupation like being a doctor. Some people are good at it and they should have children; other arent, and they should feel they have other alternatives.”7) Professional observers agree that

12、 many people have children for the wrong reason, something for no reason at all. Men often drift into fatherhood without ever making a deliberate choice. For many women pregnancy can be a way to escape from unresolved conflicts, to achieve instant identity or strengthen a poor self-image, to gratify

13、 a need for the attention and affection they feel they never had as children.8) I talked with a number of specialists in the field of human behavior about why many young married couples decide not to have children. Their reactions varied widely. A family therapist described the decision not to have

14、children as “a basic instinctual response to the world situation today,” implying that something like the herd instinct in animals was operating as a response to the dangers of over-population, crowding, pollution and nuclear war, causing women to feel a reluctance to reproduce and leading them to s

15、eek new ways of realizing themselves outside of family life.9) More than one psychiatrist suggested that those who want to remain childless are narcissistic making a virtue out of necessity by rationalizing their inner conflict about giving care vs. being taken care of. “There are people who cant to

16、lerate the idea of caring for children, who have no margin of love to spare them,” said one, adding, “Youre going against something with 100,000 years of biology behind it.” A colleague of his chimed in, “well, we all rationalize our deficits, and these people probably shouldnt have children whateve

17、r their real motives are, for the same reason there ought to be liberal abortion law. There should only be enthusiastic parents in this world.”10) Psychologist Donald M. Kaplan believes that while some people have always opted not to have children, the increased frequency we are seeing is in those c

18、hildren of the nineteen-forties and fifties who were raised by parents whose character style had shifted from what sociologist David Risesman called “inner-directed” to “other-directed,” and that these other-directed parents had two relevant effects on their children. One was to give them a greater

19、feeling of narcissistic entitlement from life-. The other was the loss of a sense of certainty. They are more open to self-doubt, he says, more preoccupied with their bodies, their life-styles, less able to maintain stable attachment to others. The decision to have a baby, he thinks, is the kind of

20、decision such people might be most likely to postpone. It cant be modified, cant be undone.11) “Many of these young adults are ambivalent about relinquishing the role of the one who is cared for and taking on that of the one who does the caring,” says Dr. Kaplan.12) Dr. E. James Anthony is professor

21、 of child psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine and co-author of “Parenthood, its Psychology and Psychopathology.” In a recent conversation Dr. Anthony said, “Many people Ive talked to are very concerned about their own future and the future of children in this rather troubled world

22、. In the past there was always a feeling implicit in the culture that parenthood was something very significant, attractive, enriching, creative. Now it seems to be going by the board. There seem to be so many other opportunities for women to express themselves creatively and family life requires th

23、em to give up so many things that the emphasis on family of the world, doesnt really ring a bell with many young people.” 13) “I think that part of whats happening is that the ambivalence of parents today is being passed on unconsciously to their children. Children are a great deal of trouble, and p

24、erhaps more so today than ever before. They can be a pain in the neck. Their precocious development, adolescent acting-out, drug-taking, all loom as problems. The young people feel, if they dont really want us, why should we want to have children? then they rationalize this feeling in terms of the e

25、xternal questions like what the world has to offer. They ask questions like, why add to the population explosion? Why create people who will have to face all the problems that are approaching in the next century?” 14) “Despite their stated motives for not having children, the question arises whether

26、 young people really in fact lead richer lives today. I find that many college students today feel strangely empty. They live in a world full of stimuli of all sorts but lack a sense of inner satisfaction that many relate to these basic biologic things.”15) Whatever else they disagree on, the expert

27、s all seem to be saying that its not whether you have children or dont that really matters, what matters is that you are comfortable about what you do. If you dont have children and you have much inner conflict about it, youll be miserable in your childlessness; if you have children and regret it, y

28、oull be miserable and your children will be miserable too. The point seems to be to know yourself, to accept your deeper feelings and not make such an important life decision because its the thing to do or to satisfy unrealistic fantasies, or to give your parents what they want or to escape from oth

29、er responsibilities.16) Some people are afraid to admit their own feelings of the kind many of the childless couples interviewed could accept about themselves-what they called being selfish. They are ashamed to admit they would rather travel than bring up children. But what if that is what changed a

30、nd if you do not recognize what yours really are, you will not make the choices that are right for you.17) For many, of not most people, the joys of parenthood as well as its problems are what life is all about. To see ones children grow and develop into individuals, and to see oneself continue on i

31、n them, can be the richest experience between ones own birth and death. But there are also people for whom living in a time in which attitudes seem to be freeing up in a way which enables increasing numbers of men and women to question the way “everybody” lives if that is not the way is right for th

32、em. The more people continue to ask themselves such questions as whether or not they really want to raise a family before they begin to do so, the fewer unhappy parents and troubled children there will be.A. Translate the following English into Chinese.ASome observers suggest that perhaps what we are seeing is not a real change at all, that, like the sexual revolution, it is not really a revolution in behavior but in expression. | It may be,