2024 年讨论生考试英语阅读试题及答案 Today only one person in five in the United States lives within 50 miles of his birthplace. Since the country was first settled, Americans have moved around a great deal, and are often far away from their parents. Because they have broken ties with their past at a young age, chosen their own occupations, established their own homes and developed their own lifestyles, few American children grow up closely surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins as they do in Italy, Nigeria, or India, for example. This along with the fact that modern American families do not have servants has made the babysitter a vital part of the American scene. A sitter is someone who is hired to care for children for a specific length of timeusually relatively shortwhile the parents are out for an evening, going to a party or a course of study for example. Sometimes the babysitter is also hired for longer period, perhaps when the parents are away for a weekend. In such cases the sitter is likely to be a mature and motherly woman. For short periods, teenagers, college students, nursing students, and others are commonly employed on an hourly basis. From the point of view of convenience, the best sitters are often young people who live in your apartment building or close by in the neighborhood. This gives you a chance to meet the parents and see what they are like. If an emergency occurs, young sitters can call upon their parents quickly for help; you do not have to take them far to see them home at night or pay expensive taxi fares. Another advantage is that young people living close by can usually fill in quite readily on short notice or for short periods of...
