2. 职称英语
  3. In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their

In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their

游客2025-04-15  16
问题     In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their two-year-old was told that since the child bad made no real economic contribution to the family, there was no liability for damages. In contrast, less than a century later, in 1979, the parents of a three-year-old sued in New York for accidental-death damages and won an award of $ 750, 000.
    The transformation in social values implicit in juxtaposing these two incidents is the subject of Viviana Zelizer’s excellent book, Pricing the Priceless Child. During the nineteenth century, she argues, the concept of the "useful" child who contributed to the family economy gave way gradually to the present-day notion of the " useless" child who, though producing no income for, and indeed extremely costly to, its parents, is yet considered emotionally " priceless". Well established among segments of the middle and upper classes by the mid-1800’s. This new view of childhood spread throughout society in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as reformers introduced child-labor regulations and compulsory education laws predicated in part on the assumption that a child’s emotional value made child labor taboo.
    For Zelizer the origins of this transformation were many and complex. The gradual erosion of children’s productive value in a maturing industrial economy, the decline in birth and death rates, especially in child mortality, and the development of the companionate family(a family in which members were united by explicit bonds of love rather than duty)were all factors critical in changing the assessment of children’s worth. Yet "expulsion of children from the ’ cash nexus’ , ... although clearly shaped by profound changes in the economic, occupational, and family structures," Zelizer maintains, "was also part of a cultural process ’ of sacralization’ of children’s lives. " Protecting children from the crass business world became enormously important for late-nineteenth-century middle-class Americans, she suggests; this sacralization was a way of resisting what they perceived as the relentless corruption of human values by the marketplace.
    In stressing the cultural determinants of a child’s worth, Zelizer takes issue with practitioners of the new " sociological economics" , who have analyzed such traditionally sociological topics as crime, marriage, education, and health solely in terms of their economic determinants. Allowing only a small role for cultural forces in the form of individual "preferences" , these sociologists tend to view all human behavior as directed primarily by the principle of maximizing economic gain. Zelizer is highly critical of this approach, and emphasizes instead the opposite phenomenon: the power of social values to transform price. As children became more valuable in emotional terms, she argues, their "exchange" or "surrender" value on the market, that is, the conversion of their intangible worth into cash terms, became much greater. [br] Which of the following alternative explanations of the change in the cash value of children would be most likely to be put forward by sociological economists as they are described in the passage?
选项 A、The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because parents began to increase their emotional investment in the upbringing of their children.
B、The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because their expected earnings over the course of a lifetime increased greatly.
C、The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because the spread of humanitarian ideals resulted in a wholesale reappraisal of the worth of an individual.
D、The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because compulsory education laws reduced the supply, and thus raised the costs, of available child labor.
答案 B
解析 原因推理题。根据题干中的关键词sociological economists(社会经济学家)与原文尾段首句中的sociological economics对应，定位答案。仔细阅读发现社会经济学家的观点在尾段第二句，题干中的be most likely to与原文中的tend to意思相近，be put forward与原文中的view对应，题干中的sociological economists与原文的主语these sociologists对应，所以view后的内容为社会经济学家的观点，其中maximizing economic gain与选项B中的earnings对应，之所以对儿童投资更多，是因为回报会更多，故答案为B。选项A中的emotional investment为Zelizer的观点；选项C中的humanitarian ideals原文未提及；选项D因果倒置，义务教育法是儿童价值转变的结果。本题要求考生抓住社会经济学家观点的本质特征。
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