单选题 Last week, The Washington Post ran a front-page story that said most stay-at-home morns aren't S. U. V. — driving, daily yoga-doing, latte-drinking.upper-middle-class women who choose to leave their high-powered careers to answer the call to motherhood. Instead, they are disproportionately low-income, non-college educated, young and Hispanic or foreign-born: in other words, they are women whose horizons are greatly limited and for whom the cost of child care. very often, makes work not a workable choice at all.
These findings, drawn from a new report by the Census Bureau, really ought to lead us to reframe our public conversations about who mothers are and why they do what they do. It should lead us away from all the moralistic bombast about mothers' "choices" and "priorities". It should get us thinking less about choice, in fact, and make us focus more on contingencies-the objective conditions that drive women's lives. And they should propel us to think about the choices that we as a society must make to guarantee that the best possible opportunities are available for all families.
The basic finding of this latest report-that the more choices mothers have, the more likely they are to work-has been known, to anyone who's taken the time to seriously look into the issue. Ever since 2003, when Lisa Belkin's article in The Times magazine about highly privileged and ultra-high-achieving morns — "The Opt-Out Revolution" — was generalized by the news media to claim that mothers overall were choosing to leave the work force in droves, researchers have been revisiting the state of mothers' employment and reaching very similar conclusions.
In 2007. the sociologists David Cotter, Paula England and Joan Hermsen looked carefully at four decades of employment data and found that women with choices-those with college educations-were overwhelmingly choosing to stay in the work force. The only women "opting out'in any significant numbers were the very richest-those with husbands earning more than $125, 000 a year-and the very poorest-those with husbands earning less than $ 23, 400 a year. You might say that the movement of the richest women out of the workforce proves that women will, in the best of all possible worlds, go home. But these women often have husbands who, in order to earn those top salaries, work 70 or 80 hours a week and travel extensively; someone has to be home. Many left high-powered careers that made similar demands on their time.
The alternative narrative-of constricted horizons, not choice-that might have emerged from recent research has never really made it into the mainstream. It just can't, it seems, find a foothold.
"The reason we keep getting this narrative is that there is this deep cultural ambivalence about mothers' employment." England told me this week. "On the one hand, people believe women should have equal opportunities, but on the other hand, we don't envision men taking on more child care and housework and, unlike Europe, we don't seem to be able to envision family-friendly work policies. "
Why this matters — and why opening this topic up for discussion is important — is very clear: because our public policy continues to rest upon a fictitious idea, eternally recycled in the media, of mothers' free choices, and not upon the constraints that truly drive their behavior. "If journalism repeatedly frames the wrong problem, then the folks who make public policy may very well deliver the wrong solution. " is how E.J. Graff, the associate director and senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism once put it in the Columbia Journalism Review. "If women are happily choosing to stay home with their babies, that's a private decision. But it's a public policy issue if schools, jobs and other American institutions arc structured in ways that make it frustratingly difficult, and sometimes impossible, for parents to manage both their jobs and family responsibilities. /

单选题 What is the deep meaning of the report run by the Census Bureau?
[A] It changes the images of what mothers are.
[B] The society should notice the importance of mothers' choices.
[C] We need to talk more about what mothers should do rather than the choices they have.
[D] More attention should be paid to more opportunities offered to change women's current lives.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】推断题。明确题干的关键词(the report run by the Census Bureau)之后，本题可以定位在文章的第二段。本段重点讲述了人口调查局报告中所发现的现象(也就是文章第一段所陈述的内容)所引发的感想，我们不应该过多地关注母亲的选择问题一选择工作还是全职在家，而是应该关注改变女性生活的客观情况，社会应该保证给他们提供尽可能多的机会(make us focus more Oil contingencies-the objective conditions that drive women's lives. And they should propel us to think about the choices that we as a society must make to guarantee that the best possible opportunities are available for all families)，所以[D]选项“应该给予女性更 多关注，为她们提供更多机会来改变她们目前的生活状况”正确。
[避错] [A]选项说“这一报告结果改变了母亲的形象”，这一信息与原文不符，因此错误；[B]选项“社会应该关注为人母的女性选择的重要性”与原文内容相反，原文提到(It should get us thinking less about choice, …)我们不应该过多地考虑她们的选择，同样也不是要关注其重要性；[C]选项“我们应该更多地探讨母亲应该做什么而不是他们有什么样的选择”与原文不符，因此是错误的。
单选题 The phrase "in droves" in Paragraph 3 means
[A] under stimulation. [B] in groups.
[C] driving by the objective conditions. [D] none of the above.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】语义题。本题可以进行快速定位，因为题干给出了所考查单词的具体位置。通过前后文，不难发现作者通过引用个案研究实例，揭示了在工作岗位上颇有成就的女性，成为母亲后放弃工作，由于规模之大被人们称为The Opt-Out Revolution(自愿离职革命)，所以可以推断，in droves的意思是“大量地，大规模地”，因此[B]“成群地”正确。
[避错] [A]选项和[C]选项均为干扰项，考生容易误认为drove是动词drive的过去式，表示“由于某种因素的促使”之意，因此误选[A](在……的促使之下)和[C](有客观条件的促使)；[B]选项正确，[D]项表达“以上都不是”自然排除。
单选题 The fourth paragraph claims that
[A] the very richest prefer to opt out for the wealth they own.
[B] demands on time are the only reason for the poorest staying at home.
[C] financial affluence leads to the women's "opting out".
[D] family responsibility forces women to stay at home.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】细节题。本题考查考生对文章所展示细节的综合概括能力。第四段给出了2007年的一项调查，重点指出易成为全职太太的女性的共同点，通过阅读可以发现，受过大学教育的女性大部分会选掸继续留在工岗位上，容易离职的主要有两类人，一是非常富有的人，因为他们的丈夫为了赚得高薪不得不四处奔波，工作时间相对过长，所以照顾家庭的任务就只能由女性来承担(But these women often have husbands who, in order to earn those top salaries, work 70 or 80 hours a week and travel extensively; someone has to be home.)，另外一类就是极其贫苦的家庭，他们的薪水较少，负担不起儿童看护的费用，因此这一类家庭的女性也只能选择不工作，因此[D]选项“家庭责任迫使女性留在家里”正确。
[避错] [A]选项认为“非常富有的人选择不工作是由于他们拥有的财富”，并非文章原意，因此错误；[B]选项提到“贫困女性全职在家的原因是由于她们对时间的需求”，与原文不符．原文只提到了富有的女性全职照顾家庭是由于时间的原因，因此错误；[C]选项也是说“经济上的富足导致了女性的自愿离职”，也是片面的。
单选题 According to the passage, ______ is the root cause of women staying at home.
[A] the media [B] their own choice
[C] the public policy [D] school structure
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】推断题。本题考查女性全职照顾家庭的根本原因，通过阅读可以将本题定位在文章最后一段。文章指出人们总是把着眼点放在女性的选择上一是工作还是照顾家庭，事实上这是一个错误的观点，我们更应该关注的是如何改变这一现状，如果她们自愿选择成为全职太太，这是个人决定的问题(If women are happily choosing to stay home with their babies, that's a private decision.)；但是很多人是出于无奈，为了承担家庭责任，照顾孩子，才成为全职太太，针对这一现象，政府有责任改变学校、工作以及其他机构的结构，从而使父母都有机会承担起工作和家庭的双重责任，所以[C]“大众方针”正确。
[避错] [A]选项“媒体”，[B]“他们自己的选择”以及[D]“学校结构”均不正确。
单选题 What is the best title for the passage?
[A] The Choice of Non-working Women
[B] The Choice of Highly-educated Women
[C] The Choice of Non-college Educated Women
[D] The Objective Conditions of Women
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】主旨题。本题考查文章主要内容，需要通过确定主题段大意或通读全文后才可得出答案。通过文章第一段可以看出，本文的中心内容是说什么样的女性容易成为全职太太，之后作者又列举了一系列的个案，分析了女性之所以选择成为全职太太的原因，因此可以推断出[A]选项“没工作女性的选择”正确。
[避错] [B]选项的意思是“受过高等教育的女性的选择”，不符合文章大意，文章中提到了受过高等教育的女性多数选择工作，只是为了说明哪类人更易于成为全职太太，因此此提法是片面的。不符合题意；[C]选项“未受过高等教育的女性的选择”与[B]选项一样，都是文章描写的一个侧面，也不符合题意；[D]选项意思是“女性的客观现状”，与原文大意不符，范围过大，本文只讨论了部分女性选择成为全职太太的原因和共同点，因此错误。