Back to the Nest It’s often hard to see your mistakes as you’re making them. "Yikes! The kids are moving back in!" Thus goes

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问题                             Back to the Nest
    It’s often hard to see your mistakes as you’re making them. "Yikes! The kids are moving back in!" Thus goes the moan of the baby boom generation, circa 2007. But letting the kids move back in is not the societal error we’re talking about. Instead, the big mistake is the loudly voiced displeasure of the boomers. Most mistakenly denounce the notion of the boomerang generation. For example, the authors of a recent book on the topic, Mom , Can I Move Back In With You? Report, The parents of the 39 million twenty-somethings in the United States face the unprecedented challenge of their children’s prolonged adolescence. The subtitle of the book is even more revealing:"A survival guide for parents of twenty-somethings."
    In order to fully appreciate the depth of the error being made here, we all need to step back a bit and look at the bigger picture. This epidemic of kids moving back home is first, not "unprecedented," and second, it’s not a bad thing. The precedent for this trend can be found among the other 6.2 billion non-Americans on the planet, many of whom happily live with their adult children, often in three-generation households. Finally, the agricultural history of this country before World War II allowed kids to live and work around the farm well into adulthood.
    Adult kids moving back home is merely the most noticeable symptom of a larger, fundamental transformation of American society. We are nationally beginning to recognize the costs of the independence the so-called greatest generation imposed on us. Kids in their generation went off to World War II and grew up on the bloody beaches of distant lands. After the war, the survivors had factories to build and the wealth to buy their white-picket-fence dream out West. They designed a social and fiscal system that has served their retirement years very well. But their historically unique retirement system mistakenly celebrated independence and ignored the natural state of human beings—that is, interdependence. Moreover, their system breaks down with the attack of their kids’ retirement.
    Regarding boomerang kids, most demographers focus on the immediate explanations for the changes, such as the growing immigrant population, housing shortages and high prices, and out-of-wedlock childbearing. Many psychologists have noted that baby-boomer parents enjoy closer relationships with their fewer children that allow extended cohabitation. However, all these explanations are simply symptoms of the larger, more fundamental reuniting of Americans into households.
    The rate at which our American culture is adapting will accelerate as baby boomers begin retiring. Creative housing arrangements are necessitating and allowing three generations to live together again. But such multigenerational households don’t make sense for everyone. The culture itself frequently gets in the way, reinforcing the perception of a stigma attaching to lack of independence. Despite these problems, once you begin talking with your friends about three-generation households, you will begin hearing stories about how such obstacles are being overcome.
What might be the underlying reason for the revival of extended families in America?

选项 A、The necessity of sharing the financial burden.
B、The tradition of family agriculture.
C、The transformation of culture.
D、Changes in family concepts.

答案C

解析 本题考查因果细节。第四段末句提到,以上解释只是美国人回归大家庭(reuniting of Americans into households)的表面原因。紧接着第五段指出,美国文化正在加快调整速度以适应婴儿潮一代退休的社会现实。而下文又讲述了文化对几代同堂的家庭的影响。可见,[C]才是深层原因。经济因素已经在第四段被归为表面原因,因此排除[A]。[B]在第二段末句被提到,但整个这一段都是分析子女回巢不是坏事情的原因,作者用美国历史上曾经出现的成年子女在家帮助父母劳作的事实说明现在出现的子女回巢现象没有什么大不了。但[B]与回巢现象本身并无直接因果关系,应排除。[D]在文中没有提及。
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