2017年6月六级
Rich Children and Poor Ones Are Raised Very Differently
[A] The lives of children from rich and poor American families look more different than ever before.
[B] Well-off families are ruled by calendars(日程安排很紧), with children enrolled in ballet（芭蕾）, soccer and after-school programs, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. There are usually two parents, who spend a lot of time reading to children and worrying about their anxiety levels and hectic（忙碌的） schedules.
[C] In poor families, meanwhile, children tend to spend their time at home or with extended family, the survey found. They are more likely to grow up in neighborhoods that their parents say aren’t great for raising children, and their parents worry about them getting shot, beaten up or in trouble with the law.
[D] The class differences in child rearing are growing, researchers say—a symptom of widening inequality with far-reaching consequences. Different upbringings set children on different paths and can deepen socioeconomic divisions（经济分化）, especially because education is strongly linked to earnings. Children grow up learning the skills to succeed in their socioeconomic stratum, but not necessarily others.
[E] “Early childhood experiences can be very consequential （重要的，间接的，后果的）for children’s long-term social, emotional and cognitive development,” said Sean F. Reardon, professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford University. “And because those influence educational success and later earnings, early childhood experiences cast a lifelong shadow.” The cycle continues: Poorer parents have less time and fewer resources to invest in their children, which can leave children less prepared for school and work, which leads to lower earnings.
[F] American parents want similar things for their children, the Pew report and past research have found: for them to be healthy and happy, honest and ethical, caring and compassionate（同情，怜悯）. There is no best parenting style or philosophy, researchers say, and across income groups, 92 percent of parents say they are doing a good job at raising their children. Yet they are doing it quite differently. Middle-class and higher-income parents see their children as projects in need of careful cultivation, says Annette Lareau, whose groundbreaking research on the topic was published in her book Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life. They try to develop their skills through close supervision and organized activities, and teach children to question authority figures（质疑权威） and navigate elite institutions.
[G] Working-class parents, meanwhile, believe their children will naturally thrive, and give them far greater independence and time for free play. They are taught to be compliant and deferential to adults. There are benefits to both approaches. Working-class children are happier, more independent, whine less and are closer with family members, Ms. Lareau found. Higher-income children are more likely to declare boredom and expect their parents to solve their problems. Yet later on, the more affluent children end up in college and enroute to the middle class, while working-class children tend to struggle. Children from higher-income families are likely to have the skills to navigate bureaucracies and succeed in schools and workplaces, Ms. Lareau said.
[H] “Do all parents want the most success for their children? Absolutely,” she said. “Do some strategies give children more advantages than others in institutions? Probably they do. Will parents be damaging children if they have one fewer organized activity? No, I really doubt it.”
[I] Social scientists say the differences arise in part because low-income parents have less money to spend on music class or preschool, and less flexible schedules to take children to museums or attend school events. Extracurricular activities epitomize the differences in child rearing in the Pew survey, which was of a nationally representative sample of 1,807 parents. Of families earning more than $75,000 a year, 84 percent say their children have participated in organized sports over the past year, 64 percent have done volunteer work and 62 percent have taken lessons in music, dance or art. Of families earning less than $30,000, 59 percent of children have done sports, 37 percent have volunteered and 41 percent have taken arts classes.
[J] Especially in affluent families, children start young. Nearly half of high-earning, college-graduate parents enrolled their children in arts classes before they were 5, compared with one-fifth of low-income, less-educated parents. Nonetheless, 20 percent of well-off parents say their children’s schedules are too hectic, compared with 8 percent of poorer parents.
[K] Another example is reading aloud, which studies have shown gives children bigger vocabularies and better reading comprehension in school. Seventy-one percent of parents with a college degree say they do it every day, compared with 33 percent of those with a high school diploma or less, Pew found. White parents are more likely than others to read to their children daily, as are married parents. Most affluent parents enroll their children in preschool or day care, while low-income parents are more likely to depend on family members. Discipline techniques vary by education level: 8 percent of those with a postgraduate degree say they often spank their children, compared with 22 percent of those with a high school degree or less.
[L] The survey also probed attitudes and anxieties. Interestingly, parents’ attitudes toward education do not seem to reflect their own educational background as much as a belief in the importance of education for upward mobility. Most American parents say they are not concerned about their children’s grades as long as they work hard. But 50 percent of poor parents say it is extremely important to them that their children earn a college degree, compared with 39 percent of wealthier parents.
[M] Less-educated parents, and poorer and black and Latino parents are more likely to believe that there is no such thing as too much involvement in a child’s education. Parents who are white, wealthy or college-educated say too much involvement can be bad. Parental anxieties reflect their circumstances. High-earning parents are much more likely to say they live in a good neighborhood for raising children. While bullying is parents’ greatest concern over all, nearly half of low-income parents worry their child will get shot, compared with one-fifth of high-income parents. They are more worried about their children being depressed or anxious.
[N] In the Pew survey, middle-class families earning between $30,000 and $75,000 a year fell right between working-class and high-earning parents on issues like the quality of their neighborhood for raising children, participation in extracurricular activities and involvement in their children’s education.
[O] Children were not always raised so differently. The achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is 30 percent to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than those born 25 years earlier, according to Mr. Reardon’s research. People used to live near people of different income levels; neighborhoods are now more segregated by income. More than a quarter of children live in single-parent households—a historic high, according to Pew—and these children are three times as likely to live in poverty as those who live with married parents. Meanwhile, growing income inequality has coincided with the increasing importance of a college degree for earning a middle-class wage.
[P] Yet there are recent signs that the gap could be starting to shrink. In the past decade, even as income inequality has grown, some of the socioeconomic differences in parenting, like reading to children and going to libraries, have narrowed.
[Q] Public policies aimed at young children have helped, he said, including public preschool programs and reading initiatives. Addressing disparities in the earliest years, it seems, could reduce inequality in the next generation
36. Working-class parents teach their children to be obedient and show respect to adults.
37. American parents, whether rich or poor, have similar expectations of their children despite different ways of parenting.
38. While rich parents are more concerned with their children’s psychological well-being, poor parents are more worried about their children’s safety.
39. The increasing differences in child rearing between rich and poor families reflect growing social inequality.
40. Parenting approaches of working-class and affluent families both have advantages.
41. Higher-income families and working-class families tend to live in different neighborhoods.
42. Physical punishment is used much less by well-educated parents.
43. Ms. Lareau doesn’t believe participating in fewer after-class activities will negatively affect children’s development.
44. Wealthy parents are concerned about their children’s mental health and busy schedules.
45. Some socioeconomic differences in child rearing have shrunk in the past ten years.
2014年6月六级
The Street-Level Solution
A) When I was growing up, one of my father’s favorite sayings (borrowed from the humorist Will Rogers) was: “It isn’t what we don’t know that causes the trouble; it’s what we think we know that just ain’t so. “One of the main insights to be taken from the 100 000 Homes Campaign and its strategy to end chronic homelessness is that, until recently, our society thought it understood the nature of homelessness, but it didn’t.
B) That led to a series of mistaken assumptions about why people become homeless and what they need. Many of the errors in our homelessness policies have stemmed from the conception that the homeless are a homogeneous group. It’s only in the past 15 years that organizations like Common Ground, and others, have taken a street-level view of the problem--distinguishing the “episodically homeless” from the, “chronically homeless” in order to understand their needs at an individual level. This is why we can now envisage a different approach--and get better results.
C) Most readers expressed support for the effort, although a number were skeptical, and a few utterly dismissive, about the chances of long-term homeless people adapting well to housing. This is to be expected; it’s hard to imagine what we haven’t yet seen. As Niccolò Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, one of the major obstacles in any effort to advance systemic change is the “incredulity of men,” which is to say that people “do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.” Most of us have witnessed homeless people on the streets for decades. Few have seen formerly homeless people after they have been housed successfully. We don’t have reference points for that story. So we generalize from what we know--or think we know.
D) But that can be misleading, even to experts. When I asked Rosanne Haggerty, founder of Common Ground, which currently operates 2,310 units of supportive housing (with 552 more under construction), what had been her biggest surprise in this work, she replied: “Fifteen years ago, I would not have believed that people who had been so broken and stuck in homelessness could thrive to the degree that they do in our buildings.” And Becky Kanis, the campaign’s director, commented: “There is this sense in our minds that someone who’s on the streets is almost in their DNA different from someone who has a house. The campaign is creating a first-hand experience for many people that that is really not the case.”
E) One of the startling realizations that I had while researching this column is that anybody could become like a homeless person--all it takes is a traumatic (创伤的) brain injury. A bicycle fall, a car accident, a slip on the ice, or if you’re a soldier, a head wound--and your life could become unrecognizable. James O’Connell, a doctor who has been treating the most vulnerable homeless people on the streets of Boston for 25 years, estimates that 40 percent of the long-term homeless people he’s met had such a brain injury. “For many it was a head injury prior to the time they became homeless,” he said. “They became unpredictable. They’d have mood swings, fits of explosive behavior. They couldn’t hold onto their jobs. Drinking made them feel better. They’d end up on the streets.”
F) Once homeless people return to housing, they’re in a much better position to rebuild their lives. But it’s important to note that housing alone is not enough. As with many complex social problems, when you get through the initial crisis, you have another problem to solve which is no less challenging. But it is a better problem.
G) Over the past decade, O’Connell has seen this happen. “I spend half my time on the streets or in the hospital and the other half making house calls to people who lived for years on the streets,” he said. “So from a doctor’s point of view it’s a delightful switch, but it’s not as if putting someone in housing is the answer to addressing all of their problems. It’s the first step.”
H) Once in housing, formerly homeless people can become isolated and lonely. If they’ve lived on the streets for years, they may have acquired a certain standing as well as a sense of pride in their survival skills. Now indoors, those aspects of their identity may be stripped away. Many also experience a profound disorientation at the outset. “If you’re homeless for more than six months, you kind of lose your bearings,” says Haggerty. “Existence becomes not about overcoming homelessness but about finding food, begging, looking for a job to survive another day. The whole process of how you define stability gets reordered.”
I) Many need regular, if not continuous, support with mental health problems, addictions and illnesses-and, equally important, assistance in the day-to-day challenges of life, reacquainting with family, building relationships with neighbors, finding enjoyable activities or work, managing finances, and learning how to eat healthy food.
J) For some people, the best solution is to live in a communal (集体) residence, with special services. This isn’t available everywhere, however. In Boston, for example, homeless people tend to be scattered in apartments throughout the city.
K) Common Ground’s large residences in New York offer insight into the possibilities for change when homeless people have a rich array of supports. In addition to more traditional social services, residents also make use of communal gardens, classes in things like cooking, yoga, theatre and photography, and job placement. Last year, 188 formerly homeless tenants in four of Common Ground’s residences, found jobs.
L) Because the properties have many services and are well-managed, Haggerty has found post-housing problems to be surprisingly rare. In the past 10 years, there have been only a handful of incidents of quarrels between tenants. There is very little graffiti (破坏) or vandalism (涂鸦). And the turnover is almost negligible. In the Prince George Hotel in New York, which is home to 208 formerly homeless people and 208 low-income tenants, the average length of tenancy is close to seven years. (All residents pay 30 percent of their income for rent for the formerly homeless, this comes out of their government benefits.) When people move on, it is usually because they’ve found a preferable apartment.
M) “Tenants also want to participate in shaping the public areas of the buildings,” said Haggerty. “They formed a gardening committee. They want a terrace on the roof. Those are things I didn’t count on.” The most common tenant demand? “People always want more storage space--but that’s true of every New Yorker,” she adds. “In many ways, we’re a lot like a normal apartment building. Our tenants look like anyone else.”
N) As I mentioned, homelessness is a catch-all for a variety of problems. A number of readers asked whether the campaign will address family homelessness, which has different causes and requires a different solution. I’ve been following some of the promising ideas emerging to address and prevent family homelessness. Later in 2011, I’ll explore these ideas in a column. For now, l’11 conclude with an update on the 100,000 Homes Campaign. Since Tuesday, New Orleans and a few other communities have reported new results. The current count of people housed is 7,043.
46. Tenants in Common Ground’s residences all want more room for storage.
47. Homes Campaign provides first-hand proof that the homeless are not what they were once believed to be.
48. Common Ground’s residences are well-managed and by and large peaceful.
49. Housing the homeless is only the first step to solving all their problems.
50. A large percent of the chronically homeless have suffered from brain injury.
51. After being housed many homeless people become confused at first as to how to deal with life off the street.
52. Some people think the best way to help the homeless is to provide them with communal housing.
53. The homeless with health problems should be given regular support in their daily lives.
54. Until recently American society has failed to see what homelessness is all about.
55. Many formerly homeless tenants in New York’s Common Ground’s residences got hired.