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  3. What has happened to the American family--the fraying effect of harassed working parents, the stranglehold of the media, the pre

What has happened to the American family--the fraying effect of harassed working parents, the stranglehold of the media, the pre

admin2010-06-30  60
问题      What has happened to the American family--the fraying effect of harassed working parents, the stranglehold of the media, the pressures of peer culture--is a theme much ranted a bout. Yet one aspect of what has happened has been overlooked: kids like those we see in "Kids"--they come from all over the social spectrum--never seem to sit down to a proper meal at home anymore. 【61】 This is not another pious harangue on "spiritual starvation"; this is about the fact that we may be witnessing the first generation in history that has not been required to participate in that primal rite of socialization, the family meal.
     【62】 The family meal is not only the core curriculum in the school of civilized discourse; it is also a set of protocols that curb our natural savagery and our animal greed and cultivate a capacity for sharing and thoughtfulness.
     Dinner rituals have nothing to do with class, or working women’s busy lives, or any particular family structure. I’ve had dinners of boiled potatoes with families in Siberia, suppers of delicious cold cuts with single welfare mothers in Chicago, bowls of watery gruel in the Sahara--【63】 all made memorable by the grace with which they were offered and by the sight of youngsters learning through experience the art of human companionship. The teenagers on display in" Kids" are not only physically starved by the junk food they consume as they slouch in front of the TV or lope toward their next bacchanal. Far worse, they are deprived of the main course of civilized life--the practice of sitting down at the dinner table and observing the attendant conventions. Like the Passover seder or the practice of sitting down at the dinner table and observing the attendant conventions. Like the Passover seder or the Communion bread, the ritual of nutrition helps to imbue families, and societies at large, with greater empathy and fellowship. 【64】 However, all rituals involve, to some degree, a sacrifice and the home meal re quires genuine sacrifices of time and energy, large expenditures of those very traits it nurtures patience, compassion and self discipline. Many of the teenagers in "Kids"--the more affluent one--are the offspring of the" me generation," members of what Christopher Lasch called" the culture of narcissism." And those parents may be the most at fault. Might it be that they have stinted on the socializing of their children by focusing on their own rituals of self improvement--enjoying their workout highs at health clubs or their learning highs in evening classes. 【65】 How much more fun it is, how much less tiring, for us to enjoy a fine, quiet dinner by ourselves, or with our buddies, without the litany of questions and corrections that youngsters company entails. But the family meal should continue to be a ceremonial, sacred time. If we don’t hold on to it, we risk rearing yet more kids who wake up asking "What happened"?
【64】
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答案然而，一切礼仪在某种程度上都包括某种牺牲；而家庭聚餐要求真正的时间上和精力上的牺牲，大量消耗家庭聚餐所培养起来的那些美德，如耐心，同情和自律。
解析 这是由and连接的两个并列句，前一个是简单句；后一个是复合句，其中it nurtures是定语从句，修饰前面的those very traits。翻译的难点是后一个分句。其中it指“the home meal”；而patience，compassion和self discipline是指those very traits的具体内容，可以认为是它的同位语。and前后两部分单独来翻译，因为定语从句很短，翻译成前置定语。
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