The Alzheimer’s Association and the National Alliance for Caregiving estimate that men make up nearly 40 percent of family care

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问题     The Alzheimer’s Association and the National Alliance for Caregiving estimate that men make up nearly 40 percent of family care providers now, up from 19 percent in a 1996 study by the Alzheimer’s Association. About 17 million men are caring for an adult. Women still provide the bulk of family care, especially intimate tasks like bathing and dressing. Many complain that their brothers are treated like heroes just for showing up. But with smaller families and more women working full-time, many men have no choice but to take on roles that would have been alien to their fathers.
    Often they are overshadowed by their female counterparts and faced with employers, friends, support organizations and sometimes even parents who view caregiving as an essentially female role. Male caregivers are more likely to say they feel unprepared for the role and become socially isolated, and less likely to ask for help. "Isolation affects women as well, but men tend to have fewer lifelines. They are less likely to have friends going through similar experiences, and depend more on their jobs for daily human contact," said Dr. Donna Wagner, the director of gerontology(老年学)at Towson University and one of the few researchers who has studied sons as caregivers.
    In past generations, men might have pointed to their accomplishments as breadwinners or fathers. Now, some men say they worry about the conflict between caring for their parents and these other roles. In a 2003 study at three Fortune 500 companies, Dr. Donna Wagner found that men were less likely to use employee-assistance programs for caregivers because they feared it would be held against them. " Even though the company has endorsed the program, your supervisors may have a different opinion," Dr. Wagner said. Matt Kassin, 51, worked for a large company with very generous benefits, and his employer had been understanding. But he was reluctant to talk about his caregiving because he thought "when they hire a male, they expect him to be 100 percent focused." And he didn’t want to appear to be someone who had distractions that detracted(破坏)from performance.
    For many men, the new role means giving up their self-image as experts, said Louis Colbert, director of the office of services for the aging in Delaware County, Pa. , who has shared care of his 84-year-old mother with his siblings since her Alzheimer’s made it necessary. Once a year, Mr. Colbert organizes a get-together for male caregivers. The concerns they raise, he said, are different from those of women in support groups. "Very clearly, they said they wanted their role as caregivers validated, because in our society, as a whole, men as caregivers have been invisible," he said.
What can we know about men according to the Alzheimer’s Association and the National Alliance for Caregiving?

选项 A、More men play the leading role in caring for elderly parents than before.
B、Men count on their wives to take care of their parents.
C、Men undertake all domestic chores including washing and cooking.
D、Men tend to be viewed as heroes for caring for their parents.

答案A

解析 细节推断题。由定位句可知,男性护理人员从1996年的19%增加到了现在的40%。由此可以推断,现在更多的男性参与到家庭护理的行列之中,因此答案为A)。B)“男性靠自己的妻子照顾父母”,文中没有提及男性对女性照顾父母的期望和依赖,故排除;C)“男性承担了包括洗衣和做饭在内的所有家务”,原文未提及,故排除;D)“男性因照顾父母往往被视为英雄”,原文中说男性只要露露面就会被当成英雄,该项与原文意思不符,故排除。
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