Boys and girls used to grow up and set aside their childish pursuits. Not anymore. These days, men and women hold on to their inner kid. They live with their parents far longer than previous generations. They"re getting married later. Even when they have kids, moms and dads download pop songs for their cell phone ringtones, play video games, watch cartoons, and indulge in foodsfrom their childhood. Christopher Noxon explores this Peter Pan culture in his new book, Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grownup. For rejuveniles today, all roads lead back to Peter Pan and the turn of the twentieth century. The natural capacities of children, which for centuries had been viewed as weak and obstinate were over the course of these few years discovered as a primary source of inspiration and profit. It would be another century before the rejuvenile rebellion we know today, but resistance to what historian Woody Register calls "the weakening prudence, restraint and solemnity of growing up" began here, with the first flight of Pan and the dawn of the twentieth century. The temptation today is to think of adulthood as a historic and natural fact. In a 2004 essay on "The Perpetual Adolescent," Joseph Epstein wrote that adulthood was treated as the "lengthiest and most earnest part of life, where everything serious happened." To stray outside the defined boundaries of adulthood, he wrote, was "to go against what was natural and thereby to appear inappropriate, to put one"s world somehow out of joint." Before the Industrial Revolution, no one thought much about adulthood, and even less about childhood. In sixteenth-century Europe, for instance, "children shared the same games with adults, the same toys, and the same fairy stories. They lived their lives together, never apart," notes historian J.H. Plumb. This shouldn"t suggest that people in the past didn"t distinguish between kids and grown-ups. of course they did. The distinction forms the basis of rites of passage that are as old as human history. Amazonian initiation rites, Jewish Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Christian confirmations—all serve the same basic function: to formally announce the end of childhood and the assumption of new duties and freedoms. It"s a mistake, though, to confuse maturity with adulthood. The maturity celebrated in traditional rites of passage is not the same thing as the idea of adulthood hatched a century ago by a group of Victorian clergymen and society ladies. Maturity is old. "Adulthood" is new.

单选题 According to the passage, Peter Pan culture is probably a phenomenon that

单选题 The natural capacities of children turn out to be

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】解析：推理判断题。根据ilatural capacities of children定位至第二段。第三句提到小孩子的天生特质在短短几年的时间里被发掘出来，成了灵感和利益的主要源泉，题干中的turn out是对原文中were discovered as的同义改写，B项改变了原文中inspiration and profit的词性，属于另一种意义的同义替换。“启发灵感和有利可图的”，符合题意，为正确选项。A项的weak是长期以来人们的看法，unpredictable文中并无提及，故排除；C项是历史学家乌迪·罗杰斯特

单选题 To which of the following statements will Joseph Epstein most probably agree?

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】解析：推理判断题。根据Joseph Epstein定位至第三段。其中他提到，游离于“成人”边界之外，就是“违反自然，因此就会表现异常，会让一个人的世界从某种程度上来说处于混乱状态”，可见他不赞同成年人“扮嫩”，因此C项正确。adulthood as historic and natural属于The temptation today，并不是Epstein的观点，据此排除A、D两项；B项是强干扰项，most important的说法无原文依据。

单选题 Historian J. H. Plumb"s remarks are cited to show that

单选题 Such rites of passage as Christian confirmations are performed to celebrate

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】解析：事实细节题。根据Christian confirmation定位至最后一段。本段第六句提到，传统成年礼所庆祝的“生理成熟”完全不同于“成年期”，因此可知传统成人仪式庆祝的是生理成熟，C项maturity正确。A项“童年时期”、B项“青春期”均可排除，而文中说The maturity……is not the same thing as the idea ofadulthood(生理成熟跟成年期的概念不同)，可知D项“成年期”为干扰项，应当排除。