Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main
point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
The
greatest recent social changes have been in the lives of women. During the
twentieth century there has been a remarkable shortening of the proportion of a
woman's life spent in caring for the children. A woman marrying at the end of
the nineteenth century would probably have been in her middle twenties and
would be likely to have seven or eight children, of whom four or five lived
till they were five years old. By the time the youngest was fifteen, the mother
would have been in her early fifties and would expect to live a further twenty
years, during which custom, opportunity and health made it unusual for her to
get paid work. Today women marry younger and have fewer children. Usually a
woman's youngest child will be fifteen when she is forty-five years and is
likely to take paid work until retirement at sixty. Even while she has the care
of children, her work is lightened by household appliances and convenience
foods.
This
important change in woman's life-pattern has only recently begun to have its
full effect on women's economic position. Even a few years ago most girls left
school at the first opportunity, and most of them took a full-time job.
However, when they married, they usually left work at once and never returned
to it. Today the school leaving age is sixteen, many girls stay at school after
that age, and though women tend to marry younger, more married women stay at
work at least until shortly before their first child is born. Very many more
afterwards return to full-or-part-time work. Such changes have led to a new
relationship in marriage, with the husband accepting a greater share of the
duties and satisfactions of family life, and with both husband and wife sharing
more equally in providing the money, and running the home, according to the
abilities and interests of each of them.
答案: Women's lives have changed greatly, because they marry younger, have fewer children to care for, and have modern technology to help them, which makes it possible for them to get back to work. This results in women's rise in family economic position to share equally the duties of supporting family and chores with their husbands.