Question

While parents, particularly mothers, have always been attached to their infants (婴儿)， societal conditions frequently made this attachment difficult to maintain (保持). First of all, the high infant death rate in the premodem times meant that such attachments often ended in hopelessness. Perhaps to prevent the sadness that infant death caused, a number of societal pruetices developed which worked against early attachment of mother and child.

One of these premodem  attachment-discouraging practices was to leave infants unnamed until they had survived into the second year. Another practice that discouraged  maternat(母亲的)attachment was tightly wrapping(包裹) infants. Wrapping effectively prevented the close physical interactions like stroking (抚摸)and kissing that are so much a part of modem mothers’ and fathers’ affection for their infants.

A third practice which had the same distancing offcet  was wet-nursing. Breast-feeding (母乳哺育)was not popular among the well-to-do in the early modern times; infants were often fed by wet nurses hired for the purpose. In some places. such as nineteenth-century France, city infants were sent to wet nurses in the country. Often a wet nurse would feed her own child first, leaving little milk for the city infunt-who. in many cases, died. In Rouen, the death rate for children sent to a wet nurse was 35 percent.

1.Babies were unnamed until they were two so that        .

A. an old social custom could be kept up

B. maternal attachment could be maintained

C. their parents would not be too sad if they died

D. their parents would not be too sad if they died

2. Why were babies wrapped?

A. To protect them from the cold.

B. To distance their mothers from them.

C. To make them feet more comfortable.

D. To make it easy for their mothers to hold them.

3. Wet nurses were women who           .

A. bubysat city infants

B. fed babies of other families

C. sent their babies to the country

D. failed to look after their babies

4. Which is the best title  for the passage?

A. Societal Conditions in Premodem Times

B. Praetices  of  Reducing Matemal Attachment

C. Poor Health Service and High Infant Death Rate

D. Differences between Modem and Premodern Parents

Answer 1

1.D  2.B  3.B  4.B