填空题 Demographic indicators show that Americans in the postwar period were more
eager than ever to establish families. They quickly brought down the age at marriage
for both men and women and brought the birth rate to a twentieth century height 1
after mote than a hundred years of a steady decline, producing the "baby boom." 2
These young adults established a Rend of early marriage and relatively large
families that went for more than two decades and caused a major but temporary 3
reversal of longterm demographic patterns. From the 1940s through the early
1960s, Americans married at a high rate and at a younger age than their 4
Europen counterparts. 5
Less noted but equally more significant, the men and women who formed 6
families between 1940 and 1960 nevertheless reduced the divorce rate after a 7
postwar peak; their marriages remained intact to a greater extent than did that of 8
couples who married in earlier as well as later decades. Since the United States 9
maintained its dubious distinction of having the highest divorce rate in the world,
the temporary decline in divorce did not occur in the same extent in Europe. 10
Contrary to fears of the experts, the role of breadwinner and homemaker was not abandoned.