In a family where the roles of men and women are not sharply separated and where many household tasks are shared to a greater or lesser extent, notions (觀念) of male superiority are hard to maintain.
The pattern of sharing in tasks and in decisions makes for equality, and this in turn leads to further sharing. In such a home, the growing boy and girl learn to accept that equality more easily than their parents did and to prepare more fully for participation in a world characterized by cooperation rather than by the “battle of the sexes”.
If the process goes too far and man's role is regarded as less important and that has happened in some cases 一 we are as badly off as before, only in reverse.
It is time to reassess (重新確定) the role of the man in the American family. We are getting a little tired of“Momism”一 but we don't want to exchange it for a “neopopism”. What we need, rather, is the recognition that bringing up children involves a partnership of equals. There are signs that psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and specialists on the family are becoming more aware of the part men play and that they have decided that women should not receive all the credits 一 nor all the blame. We have almost given up saying that a woman's place is in the home. We are beginning, however, to analyze man's place in the home and to insist that he does have a place in it. Nor is that place irrelevant(不相關(guān)的 ) to the healthy development of the child.
The family is a cooperative enterprise for which it is difficult to lay down rules, because each family needs to work out its own way for solving its own problems.
Excessive authoritarianism (權(quán)力主義 ) has unhappy consequences, whether it wears skirts or trousers, and the ideal of equal rights and equal responsibilities is pertinent (有關(guān)系的 ) not only to a healthy democracy (民主 ) but also to a healthy family.
73. Sharing the tasks and decisions in the home leads to
A. A masculine (男子氣的) women B. inequality C. effeminate men D. further sharing
74. The danger in the sharing of the household tasks by the mother and father is that __
A. the role of the father may become an inferior (次要的) one
B. the role of the mother may become an inferior one
C. the children will grow up believing that life is a battle of the sexes
D. the father will be less capable in his profession
75. The author states that bringing up children
A. is primarily the mother' s job B. belongs among the duties of the father
C. belongs to the one who is free more often D. involves partnership of equals
