2006-2013阅读理解.docx

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1、Only two countries in the advanced world provide no guarantee for paid leave from work to care for a newbornchild. Last spring one of the two, Australia, gave up the dubious distinction by establishing paid family leavestarting in 2011. I wasn,t surprised when this didn,t make the news here in the U

2、nited States一we,re now the onlywealthy country without such a policy.The United States does have one explicit family policy, the Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993. Itentitles workers to as much as 12 weeks* unpaid leave for care of a newborn or dealing with a family medicalproblem. Despit

3、e the modesty of the benefit, the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups fought itbitterly, describing it as government-run personnel managemcnt and a dangerous precedent11. In fact, every stepof the way, as (usually) Democratic leaders have tried to introduce work-family balance measures int

4、o the law,business groups have been strongly opposed.As Yale law professor Anne Alstott argues, justifying parental support depends on defining the family as asocial good that, in some sense, society must pay for. In her book No Exit: What Parents Owe Their Children andWhat Society Owes Parents, she

5、 argues that parents are burdened in many ways in their lives: there is nno exitnwhen it comes to children. Society expectsand needsparents to provide their children with continuity of care,meaning the intensive, intimate care that human beings need to develop their intellectual emotional and moralc

6、apabilities. And society expectsand needsparents to persist in their roles for 18 years, or longer if needed/*While most parents do this out of love, there are public penalties for not providing care. What parents do, inother words, is of deep concern to the state, for the obvious reason that caring

7、 for children is not only morallyurgent but essential for the future of society. The state recognizes this in the large body of family laws that governchildren* welfare, yet parents receive little help in meeting the life-changing obligations society imposes. Toclassify parenting as a personal choic

8、e for which there is no collective responsibility is not merely to ignore thesocial benefits of good parenting; really, it is to steal those benefits because they accrue (不断积累)to the whole ofsociety as today,s children become tomorrow,s productive citizenry (公民).In fact, by some estimates, the value

9、 ofparental investments in children, investments of time and money (including lost wages), is equal to 20-30% ofgross domestic product. If these investments generate huge social benefitsas they clearly do-the benefits ofproviding more social support fbr the family should be that much clearer.A new s

10、tudy from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) atTufts University shows that today,s youth vote in larger numbers than previous generations, and a 2008 study fromthe Center for American Progress adds that increasing numbers of young voters and activists s

11、upport traditionallyliberal causes. But there,s no easy way to see what those figures mean in real life. During the presidential campaign,Barack Obama assembled a racially and ideologically diverse coalition with his message of hope and change; asthe reality of life under a new administration settle

12、s in, some of those supporters might become disillusioned. Asthe nation moves further into the Obama presidency, will politically engaged young people continue to support thepresident and his agenda, or will they gradually drift away?The writers of Generation O （short tor Obama）, a new Newsweek blog

13、 that seeks to chronicle the lives of agroup of young Obama supporters, want to answer that question. For the next three months, Michelle Kremer and11 other Obama supporters, ages 19 to 34, will blog about life across mainstream America, with one twist: by tyingall of their ideas and experiences to

14、the new president and his administration, the bloggers will try to start aconversation about what it means to be young and politically active in America today. Malena Amusa, a24-year-old writer and dancer from St. Louis sees the project as a way to preserve history as it happens. Amusa,who is travel

15、ing to India this spring to finish a book, then to Senegal to teach English, has ongoing conversationswith her friends about how the Obama presidency has changed their daily lives and hopes to put some of thoseideas, along with her global perspective, into her posts. She,s excited because, as she pu

16、ts it, I dont have to waituntil 15 years from now11 to make sense of the world.Henry Flores, a political-science professor at St. Mary,s University, credits this younger generations politicalstrength to their embrace of technology. ,The Internet exposes them to more thinking/1 he says, “and groups thatare like-minded in different parts of the country sttrt to come together. That,s exact