大学体验英语 快速阅读教程3 Unit 7 Parenting and Nursing

Unit 7 Parenting and Nursing
Text A Doctor’s Orders
In Boston, a pediatric resident is experiencing a vague sense of disquiet as she interviews a Puerto Rican mother who has brought her baby in for a checkup. When she is at work, the mother explains, the two older children, aged six and nine, take care of the two younger ones, a two-year-old and a three-month-old baby. Warning bells go off for the resident: young children cannot possibly be sensitive to the needs of babies and toddlers (学步的儿童).And yet the baby is thriving; he is we over ninetieth percentile in weight and height and is full of smiles.
The resident questions the mother in detail: How is the baby fed? Is the apartment safe for a two year-old? The responses are all reassuring, but the resident nonetheless launches into a lecture on the importance of the mother to normal infant development. The mother falls silent, and the resident is now convinced that something is seriously wrong. And something is 一the resident's model of child care.
The resident subscribes to what I call "the continuous care and contact" model of parenting, which demands a high level of contact, frequent feeding, and constant supervision, with almost all care provided by the mother. According to this model, a mother should also enhance cognitive development with play and verbal engagement. The pediatric resident is comfortable with this formula 一she is not even conscious of it 一because she was raised this way and treats her own child in the same manner. But at the Child Development Unit of Children's Hospital In Boston, which I direct, I want residents to abandon the idea that there is only one way to raise a child. Not to do so may interfere with patient care.
Many models of parenting are valid. Among Efe foragers of Congo's Ituri Forest, for example, a newborn is routinely cared for by several people. Babies are even nursed by many women. But few individuals ever play with the infant; as far as the Efe are concerned, the baby's job is to steep.
In Peru the Quechua swaddle their infants in a pouch of blankets that the mother, or a child caretaker, carries on her back. Inside the pouch, the infant cannot move, and its eyes are covered. Quechua babies are nursed in a perfunctory (马虎的）fashion. with three or four hours between feedings.
As I explain to novice pediatricians, such practices do not fit the continuous care and contact model; yet these babies grow up just fine. But my residents see these cultures as exotic(外来的)，not relevant to the industrialized world. And so I follow up with examples closer to home: Dutch parents who leave an infant alone in order to go shopping, sometimes pinning the child's shirt to the bed lo keep the baby on its back; or Japanese mothers who periodically wake a sleeping infant to teach the child who is in charge. The questions soon follow. "How could a mother leave her infant alone?" "Why would a parent ever want to wake up a sleeping baby?"
The data from cross-cultural studies indicate that child-care practices vary，and that these styles aim to make the child into a culturally appropriate adult. The Efe make future Efe. The resident makes future residents. A doctor who has a vague sense that
something is wrong with how someone cares for a baby may first need to explore his of her own assumptions, the hidden "should" that are based solely on tradition. Of course, pediatric residents must make sure children are cared for responsibly. I know I have helped residents broaden their views when their lectures on good mothering are replaced by such comments as "What a gorgeous baby? I can’t imagine how you manage both work and three others at home!"
1. Why is the pediatric resident experiencing a sense of disquiet when she interviews a Puerto Rican mother?
A. Because the mother has brought her baby in for a checkup.
B. Because the mother has to look after four children altogether.
C. Because the resident worries about the way the baby n cared for.
D. Because the baby is below the average in weight and height
2.Which of the following is the model of parenting that the resident approves of?
A. Continuous care and contact.
B. Numerous caretakers.
C. Perfunctory nursing.
D. Frequently keeping the baby on its back.
3. According to the author, which of the following is a valid strategy to bring up a baby?
A. Playing with the baby constantly.
B. Nursing a baby in an extremely careful way.
C. Going out shopping with a baby.
D. Caring for a baby in a routine way.
4. What is the result of various child-care practices?
A. Making the child into Efe.
B. Making the child into a culturally appropriate adult.
C. Making the child explore his or her own assumptions
D. Making the child into a future resident.
5. How has the author helped the residents?
A. Broadening their horizon.
B. Lecturing on good mothering.
C. Teaching them how to make gorgeous baby.
D. Improving their understanding of working mothers
Text B The Crying Game
A）All normal human infants cry，although they very a great deal in how much. A mysterious and still unexplained phenomenon is that crying tends to increase in the first few weeks of life, peak in the second or third month, and then decrease. Some babies in the United States cry so much during the peak period — often in excess of three hours a day — and seem so difficult to soothe that parents come to doubt their nurturing skills or begin to fear that their offspring(子孙后代)is suffering from a painful disease. Some mothers discontinue nursing and switch to bottle-feeding because they believe their breast milk is insufficiently nutritious and that their infants are always hungry. In extreme cases, the crying may provoke physical abuse, sometimes even precipitating (使发生）the infant’s death.
B) A look at another culture, the Kung San hunter-gatherers of southern Africa, provides us with an opportunity to see whether care-giving strategies have any effect on infant crying. Both the Kung San and Western infants escalate (使增强）their crying during the early weeks of We, with a similar peak at two or three months. A comparison of Dutch, American, and Kung San infants shows that the number of individual crying episodes are virtually identical. What differs is their length: Kung San infants cry about half as long as Western babies. This implies that care-giving can influence only some aspects of crying, such as duration.
C) What is particularly striking about child-rearing among the Kung San is that infants are in constant contact with a caregiver; they are carried or held most of the time, are usually in an upright position, and are breast-fed about four times an hour for one to two minutes at a time. Furthermore, the mother almost always responds to the smallest cry or fret(烦躁) within ten seconds.
D) I believe that crying was adaptive for our ancestors. As seen in the contemporary Kung San, crying probably elicited a quick response, and thus consisted of frequent but relatively short episodes. This pattern helped keep an adult close by to provide adequate nutrition as well as protection from predators. I have also argued that crying helped an infant forge a strong attachment with the mother and —because new pregnancies are delayed by the prolongation of frequent nursing 一secure more of her care-giving resources.
E) In the United States, where the threat of predation has receded (降低）and adequate nutrition is usually available even without breast-feeding, crying may be less adaptive. In any case, care-giving in the United States may be viewed as a cultural experiment in which the infant is relatively more separated — and separable — from the mother, both in terms of frequency of contact and actual distance.
F) The Western strategy is advantageous when the mother's employment outside of the home and away from the baby is necessary to sustain family resources. But the trade-off seems to be an increase in the length of crying bouts.
1. Care-giving strategies have some effects on infant's crying in its duration.
2. Mothers go out and earn money to sustain family resources at the cost of increasing the length of the infant's crying.
3. The care-giving strategy in Kung San is similar to that in the United States in terms of the effect on the number of individual crying episodes.
4. The reason is still unknown why Western infants' crying tends to increase in the first few weeks of life and peak in the second or third month.
5. Crying was adaptive for our ancestors because it would help the infants get sufficient nutrition and protection.
6. In the United States, infants' constant crying may lead to parents' extreme actions, sometimes even resulting in the infants' death.
7. The crying episodes of the infants in Kung San and in the United States are almost the same in all the ways except for their length.
8. The Kung San infants are crying in a frequent and relatively short manner to get enough nutrition and protection from predators.
9. The author claimed in terms of crying infants try to build a strong attachment with the mother for frequent nursing will delay new pregnancies.
10. It is more suitable to adopt the western strategy when the mother has to go out to work to support the family.。