Fifty is the gateway to the most liberating passage in a woman’s life. Children are making test flights out of the nest. Parents are expected to be roaming in their recreational vehicles or sending postcards of themselves riding camels. Free at last! Women can graduate from the precarious balancing act between parenting and pursuit of a career. That has been the message of my books since I wrote New Passages 15 years ago. What I didn’t see coming was the boomerang.
With parents living routinely into their 90s, a second round of caregiving has become a predictable crisis for women in midlife. Nearly 50 million Americans are taking care of an adult who used to be independent. Yes, men represent about one third of family caregivers, but their participation is often at a distance and administrative. Women do most of the hands-on care.
It starts with the call. It’s a call about a fall. Your morn has had a stroke. Or it’s a call about your dad&md
A. looking after their children
B. taking care of their parents
C. earning a living for their families
D. doing housework all day long
Researchers produced evidence to support what most of us already knew--that a cup of tea is the answer to any crisis.
Dr. Malcolm Cross, a psychologist at City University London, tested the anxiety levels of a group of people following a (41) situation and revealed that even a single cup of tea has a (42) calming effect. His team gave 42 volunteers a mental arithmetic exam and (43) offered half of them a cup of tea and the other half a glass of water. The water group’s anxiety levels soared (44) 25 percent compared to before the task, (45) the tea group actually reported a four percent reduction in anxiety---despite the difficult test, they were more relaxed than when they started.
According to a survey carried out for the research, 68 percent of Britons (46) tea in a dilemma, making it the nation’s most common response to trouble of (47) kind. About 60 percent said the promise of comfort a
A. beginning
B. moment
C. end
D. core
我来回答:
