They are said to be reluctant to forsake the pleasures of single life. But nothing could be further from the truth; British women are much more attached to marriage than their European counterparts, around 95.1 percent of British women have married at least once by age 49, the highest figure in the European Union. Only 91.2 percent of British men have walked up the aisle by the same age.
Meanwhile, the much discussed trend for delaying marriage until later in life--blamed on career women reluctant to have children--may actually reflect a return to the historical norm.
The average age of first marriage in Europe 200 years ago was 28, the same as British brides in 1998, according to a paper for the National Family and Parenting Institute, the independent thinktank set up by Jack Straw to advise on family issues.
"The public conversation about marriage has often been conducted in an atmosphere fraught with anxiety that can easily tip over into what commentators have described as a moral panic," the report, comparing European trends in marriage, adds.
"Changes in the marriage rate and in the way people form. relationships are part and parcel of a society where change is rapid and individuals feel helpless in the face of new developments; yet it is vital that these issues can be discussed without blame."
The paper does not include divorce rates. In 1997 Britain had the highest divorce rate in Europe, although by 1999 the rate had fallen to the level of the late 1980s.
Despite much political consternation about the family, the report suggests British attitudes are more socially conservative than those of many EU counterparts.
Nine out of 10 couples in Britain living with their children are married, compared to half in Finland. And while cohabiting is becoming the norm for European twentysomethings, "change has happened much more rapidly across the whole of the EU than in the UK", the report finds. Around a third of British under-thirties live with a partner, but it is closer to half in France and 40 per cent in Germany.
"This report is about let's bring a cool head to this debate," said Gill Keep, head of policy at the institute. "It is much easier to take the panic out of the discussion if you look at it in a comparative way; things that you think are destroying your own society are actually common trends and they may not be that destructive."
She said that despite anxiety over later marriages--the average age of first-time brides rose from 23 in the postwar period to 28 for women and 30 for men by 1999--historically this would have seemed normal.
Social historian Christina Hardyment said that in the nineteenth century couples would not marry until they could afford to support a household. "Women below the middle classes would always work in some capacity, mainly in domestic service, and it made sense to save; people think of kings and queens and nobility being married off at 12 but that was highly unusual," she said.
It is a well-known fact that British women are unwilling to abandon single life for a marriage.
A.True
B.False
时间:2023-10-04 10:26:19
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Which of the following commands can be used to watch system errors as they are logged?()
A . smit errpt
B . smit errdemon
C . smit alog
D . smit syslogd
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Through doing this,the teacher will be able to ascertain the extent to__the children understand what they are reading.
A . how
B . which
C . that
D . what
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Which of the following commands should be used to watch system errors as they are logged?()
A . errpt -c
B . tail -f /var/adm/ras/errlog
C . syslogd -d
D . /usr/lib/errdemon -s 8192
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Bacteria which live are said to be aerobic()
A . in the presence of oxygen
B . without oxygen
C . in the presence of nutrition
D . without nutritio
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Be careful with those fireworks; they are()to go off unexpectedly.
A . easy
B . probable
C . available
D . liable
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All liabilities in connection()the said damage()from the accident are to be for ship-owner’s account.
A . to/rising
B . with/arising
C . to/arising
D . with/arised
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Goods may be dangerous not merely by reason of the fact that they may endanger the safety of the vessel,but also because they are liable to cause the vessel to be().
A . despatched
B . detained
C . detected
D . delivered
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In Poland, rules are not to be scared, they can often be bent, or made to fit different situations.
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Just because audience members are looking at us doesn’t mean they are paying attention. They need to be motivated to keep on listening.
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One day they passed more than 20 villages in _______, and some of these are said to have stretched for six miles or more.
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People are reluctant to show you the rope s when they know you are new.
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Markets made up of buyers with diverse needs are said to be target markets.
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The important components are tested for accuracy. If they are not qualified, they need to be repaired before they can be used.
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1.The man is reported to have said in private that "we are being made fools of by many of our clients, so we are entitled to have them bow to us as compensation."
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which of the following is said to be the main reason why more people are looking for work?
[A] Young people start working younger.
[B] Recent graduates have entered the labor market.
[C] More people must have tow jobs to support their families.
[D] More women have entered the job market.
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When long-term liabilities come due and they are to be renewed rather than paid within one year, they are reported as ().
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Bonds that can be changed to shares of common stock are said to be______.
A.callable
B.general obligation
C.convertible
D.zero-coupon
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From the participants' response to the videotape, it can be said that they could hardly______.
A.believe they had told lies
B.tell where they had lied
C.agree to make the tape public
D.tolerate their having been videotaped
此题为多项选择题。
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In what now seems like the prehistoric times of computer history, the earth's postwar era, there was quite a wide-spread concern that computers would take over the world from man one day. Already today, less than forty years later, as computers are relieving us of more and more of the routine tasks in business and in our personal lives, we are faced with a less dramatic but also less foreseen problem. People tend to be over-trusting of computers and are reluctant to challenge their authority. Indeed, they behave as if they were hardly aware that wrong buttons may be pushed, or that a computer may simply malfunction.
Obviously, there would be no point in investing in a computer if you had to check all its answers, but people should also rely on their own internal computers and check the machine when they have the feeling that something has gone wrong.
Questioning and routine double-checks must continue to be as much a part of good business as they were in pre-computer days. Maybe each computer may provide; it should not be seen as a substitute for fundamental thinking and reasoning skills.
What is the main purpose of this passage?
A.To look back to the early days of this passage.
B.To explain what technical problems may occur with computers.
C.To discourage unnecessary investment in computers.
D.To warn against a mentally lazy attitude towards computers.
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There must be few questions on which responsible opinion is so utterly divided as on that of how much sleep we ought to have. There are some who think we can leave the body to regulate these matters for itself. "The answer is easy," says Dr. A. Burton. "With the tight amount of sleep you should wake up fresh and alert five minutes before the alarm tings." If he is right many people must be under sleeping, including myself. But we must remember that some people have a greater inertia than others. This is not meant rudely. They switch on Slowly, and they are reluctant to switch off. They are alert at bedtime and sleepy when it is time to get up, and this may have nothing to do with how fatigued their bodies are, or how much sleep they must take to lose their fatigue.
Other people feel sure that the present trend is towards too little sleep. To quote one medical opinion, "Thousands of people drift through life suffering from the effects of too little sleep; the reason is not that they can't sleep. Like advancing colonists, we do seem to be grasping ever more of the land of sleep for our waking needs, pushing the boundary back and reaching, apparently, for a point in our evolution where we will sleep no more. This in itself, of course, need not be a bad thing. What could be disastrous, however, is that we should press too quickly towards this goal, sacrificing sleep only to gain more time in which to jeopardize our civilization by actions and decisions made weak by fatigue.
Then, to complete the picture, there are those who believe that most people are persuaded to sleep too much. Dr. H. Roberts, writing in Every Man in Health, asserts it may safely be stated also. It would be a pity to retard our development by holding back those people who are gifted enough to work and play well with less than the average amount of sleep, if indeed it does them no harm. If one of the trends of evolution is that more of the life span is to be spent in gainful waking activity, then surely these people are in the van of this advance.
The author seems to indicate that ______.
A.there are many controversial issues like the right amount of sleep
B.among many issues the right amount of sleep is the least controversial
C.people are now moving towards solving many controversial issues
D.the right amount of sleep is a topic of much controversy among doctors
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New accountants are advised to read their job______carefully before they are assigned new clients to be taken care of.
A.described
B.descriptions
C.describing
D.descriptive
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In his essay“of Studies,”Bacon Said:“Some books are to be tasted,others to be swallowed,
A.A.Skimmed
B.B.perfected
C.C.imitated
D.D.digested
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If a linguistic study aims to establish rules for “correct and standard” behavior. in using language, i.e. to tell people what they should and what they should not say, it is said be ().
A.descriptive
B.synchronic
C.prescriptive
D.diachronic
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They have to be customers or people who are interested in the product.
A.respected
B.prospective
C.formal
D.necessary