关爱孩子是全世界通用的标准，英语语言国家也不例外，关注考研英语，就要了解相应文化了，命题人也会从这些共通的文化出发，进行考研英语的命题，整理历年相关真题和与孩子有关的相关词汇，助力英语复习。

　一、考研真题对对碰

　　老师始终在倡导考生要认真研究真题，然而这个研究不光是每个单词、每句话，考生们还要对考研英语的高频题材进行细致研究，将其归类汇总成一种类型的真题，再综合将单词、长难句细致学习。“孩子”的题材长盛不衰，值得考生注意。在考研英语一07年、11年，考研英语二12年阅读理解中均有文章出现。

　　(2011年Text4)提倡理性的育儿幸福观

　　作者在第一段介绍了詹妮弗做妈妈的报道，之后通过其他杂志的相关报道指出了社会对生育的鼓励。接着作者表达了自己的看法：杂志类似的报道给没有孩子的父母带来了压力。最后作者指出媒体影响下的社会育儿观，实际上加剧了人们对育儿体验的不满。

　　It's no surprise that Jennifer Senior’s insightful, provocative magazine cover story, “I love My Children, I Hate My Life,” is arousing much chatter – nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience.①Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that “the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight.”

　　The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive– and newly single–mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual “Jennifer Aniston is pregnant” news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands.

　　In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation, is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing? It doesn‘t seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the children.Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn’t have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message②that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.

　　Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like Us Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents are the least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is to raise a kid without a partner to lean on; yet to hear Sandra and Britney tell it, raising a kid on their “own” (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake.

　　It's hard to imagine that many people are dumb enough to want children just because Reese and Angelina make it look so glamorous: most adults understand that a baby is not a haircut. But it’s interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing parenthood aren‘t in some small, subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way that a small part of us hoped getting “the Rachel” might make us look just a little bit like Jennifer Aniston.

　　长难句分析：

　　{C}①{C}It’s no surprise是句子主干，it为形式主语，真正的主语为that后面的句子。译文为：詹妮弗·西尼尔的杂志封面文章《我爱我的孩子，我讨厌我的生活》颇具见解且发人深省，毫无疑问这正引起大家的热议。没有什么比“抚养孩子绝对完全是一段令人愉悦、丰富生活的经历”更能引起人们的讨论。

　　{C}②{C}划线部分为句子主干，本句由两个分句组成，两个分句由but连词链接。在第一个分句中，Unhappy parents为主语，rarely are provoked to wonder为谓语。第二个分句中，that引导的为同位语从句来修饰the massage,冒号后面的同位语从句补充说明第二个分句。

　　

　　在2007年考研英语阅读理解中一篇父母帮助孩子顺利进入成年期的文章成为考题，在2012年考研英语二阅读理解Text2中命题人又从孩子的“衣”入手来命名考题。各位考生可以及时翻阅总结。

　　二、词汇大拓展

　　rear抚养，抚育

　　cute可爱的，精明的

　　adoptive收养的

　　parenthood做父母的身份

　　bother困扰，费心

　　childless无后代的

　　brat乳臭未干小儿，调皮捣蛋的小孩

　　moppet小女孩

　　adolescence青年期