《参考消息》2006年7月24日第6版：过度保护孩子不足取
《泰晤士报》2006年7月19日文章：我们脆弱的孩子
Our cotton-wool kids
Carol Midgley
School is out. The thing weighing heaviest on most parents’ minds will almost certainly be fear of catastrophe: fear of their children being injured in a road accident; of them drowning in the swimming pool; of them hanging around bored on street corners and being mugged or offered drugs; of being t________① by a paedophile[1].
Parents, of course, have rightly fretted about protecting their children.（1）What is new and perhaps a little weird is that the more that medicine and child supervision, and road, car and playground safety improve, the more our anxiety seems to grow. Study after study indicates that mothers and fathers are palpably more fearful for their children than they were 30 and 40 years ago. We see dangers lurking[2] on every corner that would scarcely have occurred to our parents and grandparents. But do children today really face more dangers than we did then? _____________________.（让我们回到30年前的1976年去看看当时的情况。）In that year a total of 668 children (0 to 15 year-olds) were killed on the roads in England and Wales, either in cars or as p________②.
Now let’s compare that with today. In 2004 the number of 0 to 15 year-olds killed was 166 — a reduction of 75 per cent. （2）Such fatalities and serious injuries have been falling consistently since the 1970s, thanks largely to better car safety features, child seats and road design. Nevertheless, many parents are convinced that the roads are more hazardous than in their day because there is “more traffic” and “people drive faster”.
The fear of a t________③ person attacking or killing children has increased dramatically. Thirty years ago around half of parents would cite stranger danger as a serious fear: now it is more than 90 per cent. The media may be partly responsible for this. High-profile paedophile cases, international coverage of horrific murders, and instances of children being groomed[3] by sexual predators over the internet are scorched[4] on our consciousness and may account for parents seeing their children as significantly v________④ to strangers. Yet the number of child murders has remained more or less constant for the past 30 years.
Why are we so racked[5] with anxiety? Linda Blair, a clinical psychologist and columnist for Psychologies magazine, believes that because we control c________⑤ now, wait longer to have children and have fewer of them, they are increasingly more precious to us. （3）This doesn’t mean that parents of yesteryear[6] loved their children less, it is that while they were prepared to live with risk, we will go to any lengths[7] to try to eliminate it. Also mass media coverage of, s________⑥, an abduction is usually broadcast without mention of how rare they are (five to seven occur a year). Meanwhile, our children are wrapped so tigh
