American Youth Issues For years now, we’ve heard the

游客2023-12-26  10

问题                         American Youth Issues
   For years now, we’ve heard the gripes by and about millennials. Their plight seems so very 21st century: the unstable careers, the confusion of technologies, the delayed romance, parenthood and maturity.
   Many of the same concerns and challenges faced the children of the industrial revolution, as the booms and busts of America’s wild 19th century tore apart the accepted order. These Americans were born into an earthquake. During the 1800s America’s population exploded from 5 million to 75 million. The nation went from a rural backwater to an industrial behemoth — producing more than Britain, Germany and France combined — but every decade the economy crashed.
   For rootless 20-somethings, each national shock felt intimate, rattling their love lives and careers. Many young adults could not accept that their personal struggles were just ripples of a large-scale social dislocation. So each New Year’s, they blamed themselves.
   Romance worried them above all. Today some fret about the changing institution of marriage, but we are used to such adjustments; 19th-century Americans were blind-sided when the average age of marriage rose precipitously to 26 — a level America didn’t return to until 1990. In a world where life expectancy hovered below age 50, delaying marriage until 26 was revolutionary.
   While some looked for love, others looked for jobs. Before the modern era, young people found work within family networks, laboring at home or on a farm. The industrial economy changed that.
   The good news was that there were more jobs; the bad news was that they were isolating and temporary. Work now meant small factories or lumber camps or railroad crews of strangers. For young people this meant chronic instability. A young man might brag about his new job one week and find himself begging for money from his father the next.
   While 19th-century young adults faced many of the anxieties that trouble 23-year-olds today, they found novel solutions. The first was to move. Young men and women were notoriously transient, heading out on "wander years" when life at home seemed stalled.    Another solution was to find like-minded young adults to share their baffling discouragements and buoyant hopes. Nineteenth-century young people were compulsive joiners. Political movements, literary societies, religious organizations, dancing clubs and even gangs proliferated. The men and women who joined cared about the stated cause, but also craved the community these groups created. They realized that while instability was inevitable, isolation was voluntary.
   Today’s young adults are constantly rebuked for not following the life cycle popular in 1960. But a quick look at earlier eras shows just how unusual mid-20th-century young people were. A society in which people married out of high school and held the same job for 50 years is the historical outlier.
   Americans considered young adulthood the most dangerous part of life, and struggled to find a path to maturity. Those who did best tended to accept change, not to berate themselves for breaking with tradition. Young adults might do the same today. Stop worrying about how they appear from the skewed perspective of the mid-20 th century and find a new home, a new stability and a new community in the new year. [br] Which of the following is NOT true about marriages in America?

选项 A、Today Americans are generally tolerant of the changing institution of marriage.
B、In the 19th century, Americans were ignorant of the changing institution of marriage.
C、In the 19th century, the average age of marriage for Americans rose to a record high of 26.
D、In 1970s, the average age of marriage for Americans was below 26.

答案 B

解析 是非排除题型,答案是B。本题考查美国人对于婚姻问题的态度。需全面把握第四段信息。从“Today some fret about the changing institution of marriage,but we are used to such adjustments”可知,A选项陈述正确。从“the average age of marriage rose precipitously,to 26和delaying marriage until 26 was revolutionary”可知,C选项陈述正确。从“a level America didn’t return to until 1990”可推知,D选项陈述正确。B选项将原文blind-sided(遭受意外打击,懵了)一词置换为ignorant(一无所知),出现了理解偏差,故陈述错误。本题核心:注意正确匹配原文和选择项中的时间点表述,并借助上下文等手段把握特定词汇及句子的准确含义。
转载请注明原文地址:https://www.tihaiku.com/zcyy/3307580.html
最新回复(0)