Text 4
It’s no surprise that Jennifer Senior’s insightful,provocative magazine cover story, “I love My Children, I Hate My Life,” isarousing much chatter-nothing gets people talking like the suggestion thatchild rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enrichingexperience Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy ormiserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness, instead of thinkingof it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we shouldconsider being happy as a past-tense condition Even though the day-to-dayexperience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that “thevery things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intensegratification and delight.”
The magazine cover showing an attractive motherholding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstandsthis week. There are also stories about newly adoptive-and newly single-momSandra 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 celebratesprocreation, o sot any wonder that admitting you regret having children isequivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing ? It doesn’t seem quitefair, then , to compare the regrets of parent to the regrets of the children.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 thesingle most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be adirect result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.
Of course the image of parenthood that celebritymagazine like Us Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic, especiallywhen the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studiesconcluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents arethe least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is toraise a kid without a partner to lean on; yet to hear Sandra and Britney tellit, raising a kid on their “own (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece ofcake.”
It’s hard to imagine that many people are dumb enoughto 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 towonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancingparenthood aren’t in some small, subconscious way contributing to our owndissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way that a small partof us hoped getting “the Rachel” might make us look just a little bit likeJennifer Aniston.
36. Jennifer Senior suggests in her article thatraising a child can bring
[A] temporary delight.
[B] enjoyment in progress.
[C] happiness in retrospect.
[D] lasting reward.
37. We learn from Paragraph 2 that
[A] celebrity moms are a permanent source for gossip.
[B] single mothers with babies deserve greaterattention.
[C] news about pregnant celebrities is entertaining.
[D] having children is highly valued by the public.
38. It is suggested in Paragraph 3 that childlessfolk.
[A] are constantly exposed to criticism.
[B] are largely ignored by the media.
[C] fail to fulfill their social responsibilities.
[D] are less likely to be satisfied with their life.
39. According to Paragraph 4, the message conveyed bycelebrity magazines is
[A] soothing.
[B] ambiguous.
[C] compensatory.
[D] misleading.
40. Which of the following can be inferred from thelast paragraph?
[A] Having children contributes little to the glamourof celebrity moms.
[B] Celebrity moms have influenced our attitudetowards child rearing.
[C] Having children intensifies our dissatisfactionwith life.
[D] We sometimes neglect the happiness from childrearing.
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