单选题 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 morn 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 husband'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!/

单选题 As a writer, the author has for years focused on women's liberation from ______.
A. looking after their children B. taking care of their parents
C. earning a living for their families D. doing housework all day long

单选题 The word "boomerang" (boldfaced in Paragraph 1) refers to ______.
A. husbands and wives giving different care to their weak parents
B. women in their fifties taking all responsibilities for their families
C. the elderly becoming dependent on their middle-aged children
D. family caregiving having been shifted onto women's shoulders

单选题 To many women, the calls as described would most likely be very ______.
A. invigorating B. distressing C. refreshing D. confusing

单选题 Your brother or sister would be angry with your request for helping to ______.
A. stop the quarrel between your parents
B. find your husband a better doctor
C. deal with your family problems
D. take care of your mom or dad

单选题 According to the author, siblings tend to ______.
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

单选题 The author stresses that the process of giving back to a loved one is very ______.
A. hopeless B. rewarding C. demanding D. fruitless