Passage Three
My mother used to tell my father that he was a very good mother. This was her way of praising his attendance at every concert and game, his patience and care. In those days, "good mother"was the highest domestic achievement; to have called him a good father, given how low the bar was set, wouldn't have done him justice.
But that was long, long ago. Now fathers sing to their babies in uteri, come to birthing class, coach mom through delivery （as opposed to the days of the hospital clubs, where fathers smoked and paced while mothers delivered their offspring）. They can buy strap-on breasts, so they can share in the bonding. And baby toupees, for those sensitive about hairlessness. I can't help thinking that the increased engagement of fathers has some direct connection to the increased availability of baby gadgets, since having two fanatically engaged parents offers twice the target for retailers.
The typical father spends about seven hours per week in "primary child care", which doesn't sound like a lot until you realize it's more than twice as much as in1965.
Among other things, this all means fathers are now much better positioned to write parenting books like Michael Lewis'Home Game and Sam Apple's American Parent: My Strange and Surprising Adventures in Modern Babyland.
The dad diarists approach their subject like anthropologists, engaged in rational inquiry into an alien culture and the nature of nurture. Thus I learned from Apple things I never knew from reading What to Expect When You're Expecting, like the fact that in the Ist century Pliny the Elder recommended that women in labor drink goose semen mixed with water to ease the process along.
Maybe the respectful distance men keep reflects the obvious ambivalence so many women show about male involvement. We talk about fathers like puppies tripping over their big paws, a portrait long mirrored in a culture in which"Father Knows Least". We diminish with faint praise; dads still get points for returning children at the end of the day with all their limbs in place. But the more engaged fathers become, the more women have to reckon with what a true parenting partnership would look like.
Why did the author’s mother call her father a “very good mother”?
A、Her mother said that as a joke.
B、Her mother wanted to console him.
C、Her father was always very tough with children.
D、Her father took care of the children most of the time.
【正确答案】：D
【题目解析】：根据第一段This was her way of praising his attendance at every concert and game, his patience and care可以得出答案。
