Part A: Reading Comprehension
Directions: Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)
Text 4
It’s no surprise that Jennifer Senior’s insightful, provocative magazine cover story, “I Love My Children, I Hate My Life,” is arousing much chatter—nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that “the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight.”
The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive—and newly single—mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual “Jennifer Aniston is pregnant” news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands.
In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation, is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing? It doesn’t seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the childless. Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn’t have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.
Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like Us Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents are the least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is to raise a kid without a partner to lean on; yet to hear Sandra and Britney tell it, raising a kid on their “own” (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake.
It’s hard to imagine that many people are dumb enough to want children just because Reese and Angelina make it look so glamorous: most adults understand that a baby is not a haircut. But it’s interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing parenthood aren’t in some small, subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way that a small part of us hoped getting “the Rachel” might make us look just a little bit like Jennifer Aniston.
36. Jennifer Senior suggests in her article that raising a child can bring
37. We learn from Paragraph 2 that
38. It is suggested in Paragraph 3 that childless folks
39. According to Paragraph 4, the message conveyed by celebrity magazines is
40. Which of the following can be inferred from the last paragraph?
Answers & Explanations (答案与深度解析)
试题精解
36. [C] happiness in retrospect.
【解析】细节题。文章第一段指出，Senior 建议重新定义幸福：不应将其视为即时的快乐，而应视为一种 past-tense condition（过去式状态）。文末引用她的话说，当下的不快日后会成为“强烈满足感和喜悦的源泉”。retrospect 意为“回顾”，与 past-tense condition 对应。
37. [D] having children is highly valued by the public.
【解析】推理题。第二段提到报摊上到处是名人妈妈或准妈妈微笑的形象；第三段首句点明，社会 persistently celebrates procreation（持续赞美生育）。这些都表明公众高度重视（highly valued）养育子女。A、C 选项虽有一定道理，但并非本段的核心主旨。
38. [A] are constantly exposed to criticism.
【解析】推理题。第三段提到，承认后悔生孩子等同于承认支持“杀掉小猫”；而不快乐的无子女者则被灌输“孩子是世上唯一重要的事”，暗示他们的痛苦源于生活中的“婴儿缺憾”。这说明无子女者经常面临外界的指责和舆论压力（criticism）。
39. [D] misleading.
【解析】细节题。第四段首句明确指出：celebrity magazines ... present is hugely unrealistic（名人杂志呈现的形象极其不现实）。作者随后讽刺桑德拉和布兰妮把带孩子说成是“小菜一碟（piece of cake）”，实际上她们有全天候的帮手。这种不真实的描述显然是具有误导性的（misleading）。
40. [B] Celebrity moms have influenced our attitude towards child rearing.
【解析】推理题。最后一段提到，虽然成人知道孩子不是剪头发（意味着养育是严肃的），但每周看到的那些无压力、幸福感爆棚的名人养母形象，正以一种潜意识的方式（subconscious way）导致我们对自己实际养育经历的不满。这说明名人母亲的形象已经影响了我们对养育子女的态度。故选 B。
考研核心句型与长难句
【长难句剖析】
1. 否定对比结构：anything less than
"...nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience."
【解析】anything less than 意为“绝非/绝不是”。整句意为：没有什么比暗示“抚养孩子绝非完全令人满足、充实生活的经历”更能引起人们的议论了。这使用了双重否定强调人们普遍认为养孩子是幸福的。
"...nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience."
【解析】anything less than 意为“绝非/绝不是”。整句意为：没有什么比暗示“抚养孩子绝非完全令人满足、充实生活的经历”更能引起人们的议论了。这使用了双重否定强调人们普遍认为养孩子是幸福的。
2. 比喻与对比：
"...admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing?"
【解析】这里使用极端的比喻（杀小猫）来衬托社会对“后悔生育”态度的极端不宽容，生动形象。
"...admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing?"
【解析】这里使用极端的比喻（杀小猫）来衬托社会对“后悔生育”态度的极端不宽容，生动形象。
3. 插入语与讽刺：
"...raising a kid on their 'own' (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake."
【解析】括注中的 read 意为“实际上是/理解为”，揭露了名人所谓“独自带娃”的真相，充满讽刺意味。
"...raising a kid on their 'own' (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake."
【解析】括注中的 read 意为“实际上是/理解为”，揭露了名人所谓“独自带娃”的真相，充满讽刺意味。