A great many people are anxious about having chidren. I hear about this frequently from young men and women passing through Hrvard-more than ever before in many three and a half decades here. And I hear about it in conversations with my peers, frustratsd by the slow accumulation of grandchildren.
Though population in south America and africa and the Indian subcontinent continue to grow at an alarming rate, the dia direat their attention increasingly to labor shortages in industrial societies and to shrinking school populations in affluent American suburbs. Thinking people have heard, and are talking about the "birth dearth" as Ben Wattenberg named it in the title of a recent book. Day-care and parental benefits, which will presumably increa the birth-rate, earn approving mention in the platforms of both political parties and in glossy annual repots of large companies.
The concern about fertility also bubbles to the surface in artistic renderings of contemporary and future life - in light movies like Baby Boom and Three Men and a Baby,for example, about young women trying to reconcile careers and parenthood, and in rious novels,like Margaret Atwood's Tale, with its fantasy of a not-too-distant future in which the dwindling number of fertile women are made slaves to reproduction.
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Low fertility，of cour，is hardly a new worry.Some of its history，especially that in Europe since the middle of the nineteenth century，is well and compactly told by Michael Teitelbaum and Jay Winter in their book The Fear of Population Decline.Some French writers attributed the defeat of their nation in
France-Prussian War in 1871 to the slow French rate of reproduction，as compare with that of fecund Germany.Fertility became a central issue in early-twentieth-century French politics.Besides being blamed for France’s inability to field an army large enough to defeat the Germans and also have a functioning economy at home,low fertility was en by various contemporary French commentators as the cau of “national degeneracy”,a dia of the French spirit.
Fiction echoed reality, as it does everwhere.In Emile Zola’s novel Fecondite,happiness and personal triumph came to a working-class couple with fifteen children and scores of grandchildren,rather than to various unappealing bourgeois,with their lfish but mirable lives,andtheir small families.Zola was one of the founding members of the National Alliance for the Growth of the French Population.光棍节英文>kicked
16:According to the author, political parties and large compenies in the U.S._____.
A. have given favorable consideration to day-care and parental benefits
B. pay little atttion to labor shortages in industrial societies
C. are concerned about the alarming effect of a population explosion
D. are worried about the steady fall in the rich population
教学相长翻译
17. In Handmaid's tale, Margaret Atwood showed her concern about_____.圆体英文
职称英语答案A. the incredible rate of population growth
英语四级词汇B. the mirable fate of fertile women货到付款什么意思
C. the low fertility in the mear future
D. the big drop in the slave population
18. Some French writers believed that defeat of france in France-Prussian War was due to ______.
A. France's failing economy at home during the wartime
B. France's inability to provide its army with enough soldiers
流水线英文C. France's incompetence to national dia
D. France's fear of population decline as compared with Germany
19. Judging from the context, the word "fecund"(Line 5,Para.4) means_____.
A. well-wquipped
B. lf-confident
C. reproductive
D. advanced
20. Which of the following is fal according to the passage ?
A. Zola was an advocate of the growth of the Frence population.jei
B. population in South America and Africa are still on the ri.
C. Low fertility caught people's attention as early as the mid-19th century.
D. The author's generation shows little concern about the falling birthrate.
