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Файл:США. Этические проблемы. Учебное пособие на английском языке.pdf
“I know,” he said. “Ah... mmmmmmm. Some other time. Run
along, now.”
“I’m sure you’d enjoy it, Daddy,” Marge said. “Eh? Yes, I know I
would. But later.”
“Oh,” Marge said. “Well, some other time, then. Will you, Daddy?
Some other time?”
“Oh, of course,” he said. “You bet.”
But she didn’t go away. She still stood there quietly, like a good
child. And after a long time, she put the book down on the stool at his
feet, and said: “Well, whenever you get ready, just read it to yourself.
Only read it loud enough so I can hear, too.”
“Sure,” he said. “Sure. Later.”
And that was what John Carmody was remembering. Now. Not the
long plans of love and care for the years ahead. He was remembering
the way a well-mannered child had touched his hand with timid little
fingers, and said:
“Just read it to yourself. Only read it loud enough so I can hear,
too.”
And that was why, now, he put his hand on the book. From the
corner table where they had piled some of Marge’s playthings, picking
them up from the floor where she had left them.
The book wasn’t new any more; and the green cover was dented
and thumbed. He opened it to the lovely picture.
And reading that story, his lips moving stiffly with anguish to form
the words, he didn’t try to think any more, as he should be thinking,
about important things: about his careful and shrewd and loving plans
for years to come; and for a little while he forgot, even, the horror
bitterness of his hate for the half-drunken punk kid who had careened
down the street in a secondhand car — and who was now in jail on
manslaughter charges.
He didn’t even see his wife, white and silent, dressed for Marges
funeral, standing in the doorway, trying to make her voice say calmly:
“I’m ready, dear. We must go.”
Because John Carmody was reading:
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“Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in a
woodcutter’s hut, in the Black Forest. And she was so fair that the
birds forgot their singing from the bough, looking at her. And there
came a day when...”
He was reading it to himself. But loud enough for her to hear, too.
Maybe.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Comment on the opening paragraph in the story. What message
does it convey?
2. How does the author describe the feelings and the mood of John
Carmody at the beginning of the story?
3. What was “the queer little thing” that John could remember in
the afternoon staring through the living-room window? Was it that
queer and little?
4. What kind of father is the narrator of the story?
5. What is the composition of the story like? Why do you think the
author arranged it this way? What is the effect achieved?
6. Comment on the title of the story — why is it called “Later”?
7. What is the message of the whole story?
8. What did the story make you think about?
9. What is your general feeling about the story?
TEXT 4
THE MYTH OF QUALITY TIME
by Laura Shapiro
For the New York lawyer, it all hit home in the grocery store. She
had stopped in with her 6-year-old to pick up a few things, but since
the babysitter normally did the shopping, she was unprepared for what
was about to happen. Suddenly there was her son, whooping and
tearing around the store, skidding the length of the aisles on his knees.
“This can’t be my child,” she thought in horror. Then the cashier gave
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the final twist to the knife. “Oh,” she remarked. “So you are the
mother.” That was the moment when the lawyer was forced to admit
that spending “quality time” with the kids didn’t seem to be working.
She and her husband, a journalist, had subscribed in good faith to the
American careerists’ most treasured rule of parenting: it isn’t how
much time you spend with your kids, it’s how you spend the time. But
despite carefully scheduled hours of parental attention between dinner
and bed, their kids were in danger of turning into little brats. “I don’t
want to come home and find my kids watching cartoons and
demanding every new product Disney put out this week,” she says.
“It’s not that sitters do a bad job, but sitters don’t raise kids. Parents
do.” Next month the family is moving to a suburb, and she’ll go to
work part-time.
Not every family can, or wants to, make a life change on that scale.
But many American parents are starting to question whether time
devoted to their children really can be penciled into the day’s
calendar. Like a business appointment with a couple of short,
excitable clients. No wonder a growing number of psychologists and
educators would like to get rid of the whole idea of quality time. “I
think quality time is just a way of deluding ourselves into
shortchanging our children,” says Ronald Levant, a psychologist at
Harvard Medical School. “Children need vast amount of parental time
and attention. It’s an illusion to think they are going to be on your
timetable, and that you can say OK, we’ve got half an hour, let’s get
on with it.”
The concept of quality time arrived on the scene in America in the
early ‘70s, featured in a wave of research including a now famous
study by Alison Clarke-Stewart of the University of California, Irvine.
She found that the more actively mothers were involved with their
babies, talking and cooing and so forth, the better it was for the
babies’ cognitive and social development. Babies who spent time with
their mothers but didn’t get as much of the goo-gooing and eye
contact did less well. “But to be able to have that high-quality time,
you have to invest of certain amount of pure time,” says ClarkeStewart. “It’s not just 10 minutes a week.” Such nuances quickly
dropped away as baby-boomer couples found quality time an immense
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help in mingling two careers and a potty chair. Today it’s not even
clear what most people mean when they use the term — is playing
patty-cake supposed to be a higher-quality activity than driving to
ballet lessons? Does family dinner count if the TV is on? Very softly?
All we probably know is that whenever time with kids is in short
supply, calling it “quality time” makes parents feel better.
Experts say that many of the most important elements in children’s
lives — regular routines and domestic rituals, consistency, the sense
that their parents know and care about them — are exactly what’s
jettisoned when quality time substitutes for quantity time. “Mom is
working unlit 4:30 and has to get the groceries and do the laundry and
the chores and pick somebody up from soccer and drop somebody off
at ice skating,” says Chicago psychologist Vicky Curran. The
structure of the day disappears. But the structure, and the availability
to one another, provide the safe arena we know as home.” Nor do kids
shed their need for parental time when they get to be teenagers. “One
of the functions of parents is monitoring — you monitor their
homework, their friends, what they’re really doing in their spare
time,” says Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a developmental psychologist at
Columbia University. “I don’t think we’ve said enough to parents
about how the demands on them change when early adolescence hits,
and kids may start to engage in drugs or sex. Monitoring is critical.”
Parents who race in the door at 7:30 p.m. and head straight for the
fax-machine are making it perfectly clear where their loyalties lie, and
the kids are showing the scars. “I see apathy, depression — a lack of
the spunkiness I associate with being a kid,” says Levant. “These kids
don’t have the self-esteem that comes from knowing your parents are
really interested in you, really behind you.” The result is inconsistent
discipline and all the problems it spawns. There’s a tremendous
amount of research showing that inconsistency leads to kids’ being
more aggressive, more deviant and more oppositional.
Underlying at least some criticism of Hochschild’s work is the fear
that to acknowledge problems with our kids is to invite a backlash
against women’s working. That’s mighty unlikely to change. Not only
do women work for the same reasons men do — they need the money —
but surveys have also consistently shown that employed women are
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happier, healthier and feel more valued, even at home, than women
who are full-time homemakers.
Research shows that men do more and better child care when their
wives aren’t home. Studies also clearly indicate that children whose
fathers are thoroughly involved in their care do better socially and
cognitively than kids whose fathers play a more marginal role. What’s
more, the involved fathers are happier than the marginal ones — you
know, the daddies talking intently into cell-phones during the entire
Little League game.
In light of this data, one way to start solving the problems posed by
quality time seems obvious: guys, go home.
CULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS
Look up the following entries in the Dictionary of U. S. Life and
Culture (Жизнь и культура США: Лингвострановедческий
словарь) or other dictionaries and encyclopedias:
backlash
Disney
grocery store
homemaker
Little League
quality time
ACTIVE VOCABULARY
quality time (n) — the time that you spend giving someone your full
attention, especially time that you spend with your children when
you are not busy
grocery store (n) AmE — a supermarket
grocery (n) — the food and supplies sold by the grocer
aisle (n) — a long passage between rows of seats in a church, plane,
theatre, etc., or between rows of shelves in a store
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suburb (n) — an area where people live situated far from downtown
area: a suburb of Los Angeles; a kid from the suburbs
calendar (n) —a book with separate spaces or pages for each day of
the year, on which you write down the things you have to do: a desk
calendar; an event that deserves a place on your calendar. Cf. Br.
diary
potty (n) — a container used by very young children as a toilet
to go potty — AmE to use the toilet (used by young children or
when speaking to them): Do you need to go potty?
potty mouth — AmE someone who uses offensive words
potty break — AmE infml a time when you stop what you are
doing, esp. when driving a car, so that you can use the toilet —
used humorously
backlash (n) — a strong negative reaction by a number of people
against recent events, esp. against political or social developments
homemaker (n) — esp. AmE a woman or man who works at home
cleaning, cooking, etc. and does not have another job
EXERCISES
I. Translate the following sentences into Russian paying
attention to the active vocabulary:
1. Do you spend quality time with your youngsters at teatime, read
to them, and play with them?
2. Perhaps you could carve out a little quality time.
3. We think we are having quality time with our children; they
think we are eating pizza.
4. I reached the road, picked up my groceries, and left her in
peace.
5. It seems as though every day a new kind of cereal appears on
the grocery shelves.
6. Price promotions are predominantly used by fast-moving
consumer goods producers, especially in the grocery trade.
7. An aisle of steps ran through the room, front to back.
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8. Last year the musical had the audience dancing in the aisles, so
tickets are selling fast.
9. Don’t you get bored living out here in the suburbs?
10. More and more people are moving to the suburbs every year.
11. My calendar is full for the rest of the week.
12. The 1970s saw the first backlash against the emerging
women’s movement.
13. The management fear a backlash from angry fans over the
team’s recent poor performances.
14. For years she was a homemaker raising three children.
15. They enroll homemakers in individual or group teaching
sessions.
16. Traders talked about tariffs and homemakers about tea.
II. Answer the questions using the active vocabulary:
1. What is meant by quality time?
2. Comment on the phrase: “It isn’t how much time you spend with
your kids, it’s how you spend the time.”
3. Can the time devoted to the children really be penciled into the
day’s calendar? Why?
4. When did the concept of quality time first appear? Has it
changed ever since?
5. Do you agree that “the structure and the availability to one
another provide the safe arena we know as home”? Justify your point
of view.
6. What is the role of the “safe arena” for kids? For parents?
7. How does the active participation of fathers in raising kids
influence the children psychologically and cognitively? What does
research show?
DISCUSSION
Find the “formula” and counter-formula” of quality time. Express
your attitude towards them.
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TEXT 5
SPLITTING UP
by J. Adelson
“Which is worse for the child, a single, loving, and caring parent or
two disgruntled parents whose tension is palpable and sometimes
violently loud?” A somewhat more sophisticated presentation of the
same idea can be seen throughout current expert writing on divorce,
which typically portrays a beleaguered but “loving and caring” mother
who has rescued her children from a hate-filled and often violent
marriage.
But why should we assume that divorce is always preceded by
open conflict? Some marriages die a quiet death, preceded by
boredom, silent contempt, or sheer inanition. It is not uncommon for
the grown children of such divorces to report how amazed they were
when they first heard of their parents’ coming separation, since to
them the family atmosphere had been quite ordinary, or no more
troubled than that of other families they knew. And why should we
assume the presence of a loving, caring mother? Why not an
indifferent mother, or a narcissist, or an alcoholic? Yet such mothers,
though they are to be found often enough in the real world, rarely
appear in the standard social-science literature.
On the subject of what is better or worse for children, the new
studies, based as they are on very recent research findings, have much
to tell us. Without exception, when one compares children from intact
families with children from one-parent families where a divorce has
taken place, the data offer cause for deep alarm:
Children in such situations are twice as likely to drop out of high
school, and are much more likely to do poorly in reading, spelling,
and mathematics. Such children are two to three times more likely to
have emotional or behavior problems. They rate higher on
dependency, anxiety, and aggressiveness, and lower on self-control.
They rate low in peer popularity.
They also score low in physical health and well-being. They show
substantially higher crime rates. According to one study reported by
Popenoe, “60 percent of rapists, 72 percent of adolescent murderers,
and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates come from fatherless
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homes.”They suffer much higher rates of both physical and sexual
abuse, in the latter case most often carried out by the mother’s
boyfriend. Single mothers report being much more violent toward
their children than do mothers in intact families.
Finally, their problems persist. A study by Judith Wallerstein found
that five, ten, and fifteen years after their parents’ divorce, many
children remain depressed, cannot achieve normality, and experience
difficulties in love and attachment. The girls in particular are more
often sexually active, likelier to contract venereal disease, to have
children out of wedlock, and to enter into marriages which fail.
One can detect signs of a general shift in the culture at large;
people are not quite so quick as they once were to take an optimistic
view of material separation, particularly as it affects children. But
whether this will lead to a widespread change in behavior is, so far,
doubtful. The dolorous statistics on the long-term harmfulness of
divorce are not fully accepted, even by many specialists.
And why should they be? After all, they run counter to our
persistent belief in renewal, in the limitless possibilities of the self.
And they suggest something that many Americans still show no signs
of wanting to hear: namely, that there is often a very high price to be
paid for the individualism that is so central to the American ethos.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What image of spouses getting a divorce is created in standard
social science literature?
2. What is the stereotypical presentation of a mother/father in a
single-parent family?
3. What do comparisons of children from intact and one-parent
families tell us?
4. How does divorce affect the well-being of children? What data
does the text present?
5. Comment on the last paragraph of the text. How does it allude
to the American values?
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DISCUSSION STARTERS
1. When Kimberly Mays was nine years old, her father Robert told
her some terrible news: he and his late wife Barbara were not
Kimberly’s biological parents. Her biological parents were Ernest and
Regina Twigg, who lived in Pennsylvania.
In 1988, the Twiggs’ daughter Arlena died of a heart defect. Blood
tests revealed that Arlena and Kimberly, who were both born in the
same rural hospital in Florida, had been switched at birth. Thus, the
girl who died, Arlena, was actually the Mayses’ biological daughter
and Kimberly was actually the Twiggs’ biological daughter.
Once they knew the truth, the Twiggs sought more contact with
Kimberly. In a 1989 agreement, the Twiggs agreed not to seek
custody of Kimberly in return for visitation rights. After only five
visits, Robert called off the visits because they were causing severe
emotional distress in the Mayses’ home. The Twiggs sued for custody,
but they lost in state court. Not wanting to give their daughter up, the
Twiggs decided to appeal to a higher court.
Kimberly, who was fourteen at the time, decided enough was
enough. She wanted to make the Twiggs leave her alone. She went to
court in order to terminate the Twiggs’ rights as her natural parents, in
effect, she wanted to divorce her parents.
If you were the judge in this case, how would you rule? Why?
Give reasons to support your decision.
2. In 1993, a 59-year-old British businesswoman gave birth to
twins. Since her body was no longer producing its own eggs, she used
donated eggs that had been implanted into her uterus at a clinic in
Italy. In June 1994, an Italian woman, age 62, gave birth to a healthy
baby. She also had undergone a similar procedure at the same clinic in
Rome.
The medical procedure involves finding a donor. This is often a
friend or family member. The egg donor receives hormones to
increase egg production. The mother-to-be receives different
hormones to prepare her body for pregnancy. When the donor begins
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