TED英语演讲:为人父母的育儿的禁忌

 Alisa Volkman: So this is where our story begins -- the dramatic moments of the birth of our first son, Declan. Obviously a really profound moment, and it changed our lives in many ways. It also changed our lives in many unexpected ways, and those unexpected ways we later reflected on, that eventually spawned 1 a business idea between the two of us, and a year later, we launched Babble 2, a website for parents.

Rufus Griscom: Now I think of our story as starting a few years earlier. AV: That's true.
RG: You may remember, we fell head over heels in love.
AV: We did.
RG: We were at the time running a very different kind of website. It was a website called Nerve.com, the tagline of which was "literate 3 smut." It was in theory, and hopefully in practice, a smart online magazine about sex and culture.
AV: That spawned a dating site. But you can understand the jokes that we get. Sex begets 4 babies. You follow instructions on Nerve and you should end up on Babble, which we did. And we might launch a geriatric site as our third. We'll see.
RG: But for us, the continuity between Nerve and Babble was not just the life stage thing, which is, of course, relevant, but it was really more about our desire to speak very honestly about subjects that people have difficulty speaking honestly about. It seems to us that when people start dissembling, people start lying about things, that's when it gets really interesting. That's a subject that we want to dive into. And we've been surprised to find, as young parents, that there are almost more taboos 6 around parenting than there are around sex.
AV: It's true. So like we said, the early years were really wonderful, but they were also really difficult. And we feel like some of that difficulty was because of this false advertisement around parenting. (Laughter) We subscribed 7 to a lot of magazines, did our homework, but really everywhere you look around, we were surrounded by images like this. And we went into parenting expecting our lives to look like this. The sun was always streaming in, and our children would never be crying. I would always be perfectly 8 coiffed and well rested, and in fact, it was not like that at all.
RG: When we lowered the glossy 9 parenting magazine that we were looking at, with these beautiful images, and looked at the scene in our actual living room, it looked a little bit more like this. These are our three sons. And of course, they're not always crying and screaming, but with three boys, there's a decent probability that at least one of them will not be comporting 10 himself exactly as he should.
AV: Yes, you can see where the disconnect was happening for us. We really felt like what we went in expecting had nothing to do with what we were actually experiencing, and so we decided 11 we really wanted to give it to parents straight. We really wanted to let them understand what the realities of parenting were in an honest way.
RG: So today, what we would love to do is share with you four parenting taboos. And of course, there are many more than four things you can't say about parenting, but we would like to share with you today four that are particularly relevant for us personally. So the first, taboo 5 number one: you can't say you didn't fall in love with your baby in the very first minute. I remember vividly 12, sitting there in the hospital. We were in the process of giving birth to our first child.
AV: We, or I?
RG: I'm sorry. Misuse 13 of the pronoun. Alisa was very generously in the process of giving birth to our first child -- (AV: Thank you.) -- and I was there with a catcher's mitt 14. And I was there with my arms open. The nurse was coming at me with this beautiful, beautiful child, and I remember, as she was approaching me, the voices of friends saying, "The moment they put the baby in your hands, you will feel a sense of love that will come over you that is [on] an order of magnitude more powerful than anything you've ever experienced in your entire life." So I was bracing 15 myself for the moment. The baby was coming, and I was ready for this Mack truck of love to just knock me off my feet. And instead, when the baby was placed in my hands, it was an extraordinary moment. This picture is from literally 16 a few seconds after the baby was placed in my hands and I brought him over. And you can see, our eyes were glistening 17. I was overwhelmed with love and affection for my wife, with deep, deep gratitude 18 that we had what appeared to be a healthy child. And it was also, of course, surreal. I mean, I had to check the tags and make sure. I was incredulous, "Are you sure this is our child?" And this was all quite remarkable 19. But what I felt towards the child at that moment was deep affection, but nothing like what I feel for him now, five years later.
And so we've done something here that is heretical. We have charted our love for our child over time. (Laughter) This, as you know, is an act of heresy 20. You're not allowed to chart love. The reason you're not allowed to chart love is because we think of love as a binary 21 thing. You're either in love, or you're not in love. You love, or you don't love. And I think the reality is that love is a process, and I think the problem with thinking of love as something that's binary is that it causes us to be unduly 22 concerned that love is fraudulent, or inadequate 23, or what have you. And I think I'm speaking obviously here to the father's experience. But I think a lot of men do go through this sense in the early months, maybe their first year, that their emotional response is inadequate in some fashion.
AV: Well, I'm glad Rufus is bringing this up, because you can notice where he dips in the first years where I think I was doing most of the work. But we like to joke, in the first few months of all of our children's lives, this is Uncle Rufus. (Laughter)
RG: I'm a very affectionate uncle, very affectionate uncle.
AV: Yes, and I often joke with Rufus when he comes home that I'm not sure he would actually be able to find our child in a line-up amongst other babies. So I actually threw a pop quiz here onto Rufus.
RG: Uh oh.
AV: I don't want to embarrass him too much. But I am going to give him three seconds.
RG: That is not fair. This is a trick question. He's not up there, is he?
AV: Our eight-week-old son is somewhere in here, and I want to see if Rufus can actually quickly identify him.
RG: The far left. AV: No!
(Laughter)
RG: Cruel.
AV: Nothing more to be said.
(Laughter)
I'll move on to taboo number two. You can't talk about how lonely having a baby can be. I enjoyed being pregnant. I loved it. I felt incredibly connected to the community around me. I felt like everyone was participating in my pregnancy 24, all around me, tracking it down till the actual due-date. I felt like I was a vessel 25 of the future of humanity. That continued into the the hospital. It was really exhilarating. I was shower with gifts and flowers and visitors. It was a really wonderful experience, but when I got home, I suddenly felt very disconnected and suddenly shut in and shut out, and I was really surprised by those feelings. I did expect it to be difficult, have sleepless 26 nights, constant feedings, but I did not expect the feelings of isolation 27 and loneliness that I experienced, and I was really surprised that no one had talked to me, that I was going to be feeling this way. And I called my sister whom I'm very close to -- and had three children -- and I asked her, "Why didn't you tell me I was going to be feeling this way, that I was going to have these -- feeling incredibly isolated 28?" And she said -- I'll never forget -- "It's just not something you want to say to a mother that's having a baby for the first time."
RG: And of course, we think it's precisely 29 what you really should be saying to mothers who have kids for the first time. And that this, of course, one of the themes for us is that we think that candor 30 and brutal 31 honesty is critical to us collectively being great parents. And it's hard not to think that part of what leads to this sense of isolation is our modern world. So Alisa's experience is not isolated. So your 58 percent of mothers surveyed report feelings of loneliness. Of those, 67 percent are most lonely when their kids are zero to five -- probably really zero to two. In the process of preparing this, we looked at how some other cultures around the world deal with this period of time, because here in the Western world, less than 50 percent of us live near our family members, which I think is part of why this is such a tough period. So to take one example among many: in Southern India there's a practice known as jholabhari, in which the pregnant woman, when she's seven or eight months pregnant, moves in with her mother and goes through a series of rituals and ceremonies, give birth and returns home to her nuclear family several months after the child is born. And this is one of many ways that we think other cultures offset 32 this kind of lonely period.
AV: So taboo number three: you can't talk about your miscarriage 33 -- but today I'll talk about mine. So after we had Declan, we kind of recalibrated our expectations. We thought we actually could go through this again and thought we knew what we would be up against. And we were grateful that I was able to get pregnant, and I soon learned that we were having a boy, and then when I was five months, we learned that we had lost our child. This is actually the last little image we have of him. And it was obviously a very difficult time -- really painful. As I was working through that mourning process, I was amazed that I didn't want to see anybody. I really wanted to crawl into a hole, and I didn't really know how I was going to work my way back into my surrounding community. And I realize, I think, the way I was feeling that way, is on a really deep gut 34 level, I was feeling a lot of shame and embarrassed, frankly 35, that, in some respects, I had failed at delivering what I'm genetically 36 engineered to do. And of course, it made me question, if I wasn't able to have another child, what would that mean for my marriage, and just me as a woman. So it was a very difficult time. As I started working through it more, I started climbing out of that hole and talking with other people. I was really amazed by all the stories that started flooding in. People I interacted with daily, worked with, was friends with, family members that I had known a long time, had never shared with me their own stories. And I just remember feeling all these stories came out of the woodwork, and I felt like I happened upon this secret society of women that I now was a part of, which was reassuring 37 and also really concerning. And I think, miscarriage is an invisible loss. There's not really a lot of community support around it. There's really no ceremony, rituals, or rites 38. And I think, with a death, you have a funeral, you celebrate the life, and there's a lot of community support, and it's something women don't have with miscarriage.
RG: Which is too bad because, of course, it's a very common and very traumatic experience. Fifteen to 20 percent of all pregnancies 39 result in miscarriage, and I find this astounding 40. In a survey, 74 percent of women said that miscarriage, they felt, was partly their fault, which is awful. And astoundingly, 22 percent said they would hide a miscarriage from their spouse 41.
So taboo number four: you can't say that your average happiness has declined since having a child. The party line is that every single aspect of my life has just gotten dramatically better ever since I participated in the miracle that is childbirth and family. I'll never forget, I remember vividly to this day, our first son, Declan, was nine months old, and I was sitting there on the couch, and I was reading Daniel Gilbert's wonderful book, "Stumbling on Happiness." And I got about two-thirds of the way through, and there was a chart on the right-hand side -- on the right-hand page -- that we've labeled here "The Most Terrifying Chart Imaginable for a New Parent." This chart is comprised of four completely independent studies. Basically, there's this precipitous drop of marital 42 satisfaction, which is closely aligned 43, we all know, with broader happiness, that doesn't rise again until your first child goes to college. So I'm sitting here looking at the next two decades of my life, this chasm 44 of happiness that we're driving our proverbial convertible 45 straight into. We were despondent 46.
AV: So you can imagine, I mean again, the first few months were difficult, but we'd come out of it, and were really shocked to see this study. So we really wanted to take a deeper look at it in hopes that we would find a silver lining 47.
RG: And that's when it's great to be running a website for parents, because we got this incredible reporter to go and interview all the scientists who conducted these four studies. We said, something is wrong here. There's something missing from these studies. It can't possibly be that bad. So Liz Mitchell did a wonderful job with this piece, and she interviewed four scientists, and she also interviewed Daniel Gilbert, and we did indeed find a silver lining. So this is our guess as to what this baseline of average happiness arguably looks like throughout life. Average happiness is, of course, inadequate, because it doesn't speak to the moment-by-moment experience, and so this is what we think it looks like when you layer in moment-to-moment experience. And so we all remember as children, the tiniest little thing -- and we see it on the faces of our children -- the teeniest little thing can just rocket them to these heights of just utter adulation, and then the next teeniest little thing can cause them just to plummet 48 to the depths of despair. And it's just extraordinary to watch, and we remember it ourselves. And then, of course, as you get older, it's almost like age is a form of lithium.
As you get older, you become more stable. And part of what happens, I think, in your '20s and '30s, is you start to learn to hedge your happiness. You start to realize that "Hey, I could go to this live music event and have an utterly 49 transforming experience that will cover my entire body with goosebumps, but it's more likely that I'll feel claustrophobic and I won't be able to get a beer. So I'm not going to go. I've got a good stereo at home. So, I'm not going to go." So your average happiness goes up, but you lose those transcendent moments.
AV: Yeah, and then you have your first child, and then you really resubmit yourself to these highs and lows -- the highs being the first steps, the first smile, your child reading to you for the first time -- the lows being, our house, any time from six to seven every night. But you realize you resubmit yourself to losing control in a really wonderful way, which we think provides a lot of meaning to our lives and is quite gratifying.
RG: And so in effect, we trade average happiness. We trade the sort of security and safety of a certain level of contentment for these transcendent moments. So where does that leave the two of us as a family with our three little boys in the thick of all this? There's another factor in our case. We have violated yet another taboo in our own lives, and this is a bonus taboo.
AV: A quick bonus taboo for you, that we should not be working together, especially with three children -- and we are.
RG: And we had reservations about this on the front end. Everybody knows, you should absolutely not work with your spouse. In fact, when we first went out to raise money to start Babble, the venture capitalists said, "We categorically don't invest in companies founded by husbands and wives, because there's an extra point of failure. It's a bad idea. Don't do it." And we obviously went forward. We did. We raised the money, and we're thrilled that we did, because in this phase of one's life, the incredibly scarce resource is time. And if you're really passionate 50 about what you do every day -- which we are -- and you're also passionate about your relationship, this is the only way we know how to do it. And so the final question that we would ask is: can we collectively bend that happiness chart upwards 51? It's great that we have these transcendent moments of joy, but they're sometimes pretty quick. And so how about that average baseline of happiness? Can we move that up a little bit?
AV: And we kind of feel that the happiness gap, which we talked about, is really the result of walking into parenting -- and really any long-term partnership 52 for that matter -- with the wrong expectations. And if you have the right expectations and expectation management, we feel like it's going to be a pretty gratifying experience.
RG: And so this is what -- And we think that a lot of parents, when you get in there -- in our case anyway -- you pack your bags for a trip to Europe, and you're really excited to go. Get out of the airplane, it turns out you're trekking 53 in Nepal. And trekking in Nepal is an extraordinary experience, particularly if you pack your bags properly and you know what you're getting in for and you're psyched. So the point of all this for us today is not just hopefully honesty for the sake of honesty, but a hope that by being more honest and candid 54 about these experiences, that we can all collectively bend that happiness baseline up a little bit.
RG + AV: Thank you.
(Applause)




点击收听单词发音  






1
spawned

  
 


（鱼、蛙等）大量产（卵）( spawn的过去式和过去分词 )； 大量生产


参考例句：





The band's album spawned a string of hit singles. 这支乐队的专辑繁衍出一连串走红的单曲唱片。
The computer industry has spawned a lot of new companies. 由于电脑工业的发展，许多新公司纷纷成立。












2
babble

  
 


v.含糊不清地说，胡言乱语地说，儿语


参考例句：





No one could understand the little baby's babble. 没人能听懂这个小婴孩的话。
The babble of voices in the next compartment annoyed all of us.隔壁的车厢隔间里不间歇的嘈杂谈话声让我们都很气恼。












3
literate

  
 


n.学者；adj.精通文学的，受过教育的


参考例句：





Only a few of the nation's peasants are literate.这个国家的农民中只有少数人能识字。
A literate person can get knowledge through reading many books.一个受过教育的人可以通过读书而获得知识。












4
begets

  
 


v.为…之生父( beget的第三人称单数 )；产生，引起


参考例句：





It begets at least seven standard type offspring from such matings. 这类交配中生下至少七个标准型后代。 来自辞典例句
Violence begets violence until the innocent perish with the guilty. 暴力招致暴力直到这因罪行而无缘无故的毁灭。 来自电影对白












5
taboo

  
 


n.禁忌，禁止接近，禁止使用；adj.禁忌的；v.禁忌，禁制，禁止


参考例句：





The rude words are taboo in ordinary conversation.这些粗野的字眼在日常谈话中是禁忌的。
Is there a taboo against sex before marriage in your society?在你们的社会里，婚前的性行为犯禁吗？












6
taboos

  
 


禁忌( taboo的名词复数 )； 忌讳； 戒律； 禁忌的事物（或行为）


参考例句：





She was unhorsed by fences, laws and alien taboos. 她被藩蓠、法律及外来的戒律赶下了马。
His mind was charged with taboos. 他头脑里忌讳很多。












7
subscribed

  
 


v.捐助( subscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；签署，题词；订阅；同意


参考例句：





It is not a theory that is commonly subscribed to. 一般人并不赞成这个理论。 来自《简明英汉词典》
I subscribed my name to the document. 我在文件上签了字。 来自《简明英汉词典》












8
perfectly

  
 


adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地


参考例句：





The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。












9
glossy

  
 


adj.平滑的；有光泽的


参考例句：





I like these glossy spots.我喜欢这些闪闪发光的花点。
She had glossy black hair.她长着乌黑发亮的头发。












10
comporting

  
 


v.表现( comport的现在分词 )


参考例句：



















11
decided

  
 


adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的


参考例句：





This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。












12
vividly

  
 


adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地


参考例句：





The speaker pictured the suffering of the poor vividly.演讲者很生动地描述了穷人的生活。
The characters in the book are vividly presented.这本书里的人物写得栩栩如生。












13
misuse

  
 


n.误用，滥用；vt.误用，滥用


参考例句：





It disturbs me profoundly that you so misuse your talents.你如此滥用自己的才能，使我深感不安。
He was sacked for computer misuse.他因滥用计算机而被解雇了。












14
mitt

  
 


n.棒球手套，拳击手套，无指手套；vt.铐住，握手


参考例句：





I gave him a baseball mitt for his birthday.为祝贺他的生日，我送给他一只棒球手套。
Tom squeezed a mitt and a glove into the bag.汤姆把棒球手套和手套都塞进袋子里。












15
bracing

  
 


adj.令人振奋的


参考例句：





The country is bracing itself for the threatened enemy invasion. 这个国家正准备奋起抵抗敌人的入侵威胁。
The atmosphere in the new government was bracing. 新政府的气氛是令人振奋的。












16
literally

  
 


adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实


参考例句：





He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。












17
glistening

  
 


adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 )


参考例句：





Her eyes were glistening with tears. 她眼里闪着晶莹的泪花。
Her eyes were glistening with tears. 她眼睛中的泪水闪着柔和的光。 来自《用法词典》












18
gratitude

  
 


adj.感激，感谢


参考例句：





I have expressed the depth of my gratitude to him.我向他表示了深切的谢意。
She could not help her tears of gratitude rolling down her face.她感激的泪珠禁不住沿着面颊流了下来。












19
remarkable

  
 


adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的


参考例句：





She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。












20
heresy

  
 


n.异端邪说；异教


参考例句：





We should denounce a heresy.我们应该公开指责异端邪说。
It might be considered heresy to suggest such a notion.提出这样一个观点可能会被视为异端邪说。












21
binary

  
 


adj.二，双；二进制的；n.双(体)；联星


参考例句：





Computers operate using binary numbers.计算机运行运用二进位制。
Let us try converting the number itself to binary.我们试一试，把这个数本身变成二进制数。












22
unduly

  
 


adv.过度地，不适当地


参考例句：





He did not sound unduly worried at the prospect.他的口气听上去对前景并不十分担忧。
He argued that the law was unduly restrictive.他辩称法律的约束性有些过分了。












23
inadequate

  
 


adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的


参考例句：





The supply is inadequate to meet the demand.供不应求。
She was inadequate to the demands that were made on her.她还无力满足对她提出的各项要求。












24
pregnancy

  
 


n.怀孕，怀孕期


参考例句：





Early pregnancy is often accompanied by nausea.怀孕早期常有恶心的现象。
Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage.怀孕期吸烟会增加流产的危险。












25
vessel

  
 


n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管


参考例句：





The vessel is fully loaded with cargo for Shanghai.这艘船满载货物驶往上海。
You should put the water into a vessel.你应该把水装入容器中。












26
sleepless

  
 


adj.不睡眠的，睡不著的，不休息的


参考例句：





The situation gave her many sleepless nights.这种情况害她一连好多天睡不好觉。
One evening I heard a tale that rendered me sleepless for nights.一天晚上，我听说了一个传闻，把我搞得一连几夜都不能入睡。












27
isolation

  
 


n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离


参考例句：





The millionaire lived in complete isolation from the outside world.这位富翁过着与世隔绝的生活。
He retired and lived in relative isolation.他退休后，生活比较孤寂。












28
isolated

  
 


adj.与世隔绝的


参考例句：





His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。












29
precisely

  
 


adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地


参考例句：





It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。












30
candor

  
 


n.坦白，率真


参考例句：





He covered a wide range of topics with unusual candor.他极其坦率地谈了许多问题。
He and his wife had avoided candor,and they had drained their marriage.他们夫妻间不坦率，已使婚姻奄奄一息。












31
brutal

  
 


adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的


参考例句：





She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。












32
offset

  
 


n.分支，补偿；v.抵消，补偿


参考例句：





Their wage increases would be offset by higher prices.他们增加的工资会被物价上涨所抵消。
He put up his prices to offset the increased cost of materials.他提高了售价以补偿材料成本的增加。












33
miscarriage

  
 


n.失败，未达到预期的结果；流产


参考例句：





The miscarriage of our plans was a great blow.计划的失败给我们以巨大的打击。
Women who smoke are more to have a miscarriage.女性吸烟者更容易流产。












34
gut

  
 


n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏


参考例句：





It is not always necessary to gut the fish prior to freezing.冷冻鱼之前并不总是需要先把内脏掏空。
My immediate gut feeling was to refuse.我本能的直接反应是拒绝。












35
frankly

  
 


adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说


参考例句：





To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。












36
genetically

  
 


adv.遗传上


参考例句：





All the bees in the colony are genetically related. 同一群体的蜜蜂都有亲缘关系。
Genetically modified foods have already arrived on American dinner tables. 经基因改造加工过的食物已端上了美国人的餐桌。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 基因与食物












37
reassuring

  
 


a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的


参考例句：





He gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. 他轻拍了一下她的肩膀让她放心。
With a reassuring pat on her arm, he left. 他鼓励地拍了拍她的手臂就离开了。












38
rites

  
 


仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 )


参考例句：





to administer the last rites to sb 给某人举行临终圣事
He is interested in mystic rites and ceremonies. 他对神秘的仪式感兴趣。












39
pregnancies

  
 


怀孕，妊娠( pregnancy的名词复数 )


参考例句：





Since the wartime population needed replenishment, pregnancies were a good sign. 最后一桩倒不失为好现象，战时人口正该补充。
She's had three pregnancies in four years. 她在四年中怀孕叁次。












40
astounding

  
 


adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词)


参考例句：





There was an astounding 20% increase in sales. 销售量惊人地增加了20%。
The Chairman's remarks were so astounding that the audience listened to him with bated breath. 主席说的话令人吃惊，所以听众都屏息听他说。 来自《简明英汉词典》












41
spouse

  
 


n.配偶(指夫或妻)


参考例句：





Her spouse will come to see her on Sunday.她的丈夫星期天要来看她。
What is the best way to keep your spouse happy in the marriage?在婚姻中保持配偶幸福的最好方法是什么？












42
marital

  
 


adj.婚姻的，夫妻的


参考例句：





Her son had no marital problems.她的儿子没有婚姻问题。
I regret getting involved with my daughter's marital problems;all its done is to bring trouble about my ears.我后悔干涉我女儿的婚姻问题, 现在我所做的一切将给我带来无穷的烦恼。












43
aligned

  
 


adj.对齐的，均衡的


参考例句：





Make sure the shelf is aligned with the top of the cupboard.务必使搁架与橱柜顶端对齐。












44
chasm

  
 


n.深坑，断层，裂口，大分岐，利害冲突


参考例句：





There's a chasm between rich and poor in that society.那社会中存在着贫富差距。
A huge chasm gaped before them.他们面前有个巨大的裂痕。












45
convertible

  
 


adj.可改变的，可交换，同意义的；n.有活动摺篷的汽车


参考例句：





The convertible sofa means that the apartment can sleep four.有了这张折叠沙发，公寓里可以睡下4个人。
That new white convertible is totally awesome.那辆新的白色折篷汽车简直棒极了。












46
despondent

  
 


adj.失望的，沮丧的，泄气的


参考例句：





He was up for a time and then，without warning,despondent again.他一度兴高采烈，但忽然又情绪低落下来。
I feel despondent when my work is rejected.作品被拒后我感到很沮丧。












47
lining

  
 


n.衬里，衬料


参考例句：





The lining of my coat is torn.我的外套衬里破了。
Moss makes an attractive lining to wire baskets.用苔藓垫在铁丝篮里很漂亮。












48
plummet

  
 


vi.(价格、水平等)骤然下跌；n.铅坠；重压物


参考例句：





Mengniu and Yili have seen their shares plummet since the incident broke.自事件发生以来，蒙牛和伊利的股票大幅下跌。
Even if rice prices were to plummet,other brakes on poverty alleviation remain.就算大米价格下跌，其它阻止导致贫困的因素仍然存在。












49
utterly

  
 


adv.完全地，绝对地


参考例句：





Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。












50
passionate

  
 


adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的


参考例句：





He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。












51
upwards

  
 


adv.向上，在更高处...以上


参考例句：





The trend of prices is still upwards.物价的趋向是仍在上涨。
The smoke rose straight upwards.烟一直向上升。












52
partnership

  
 


n.合作关系，伙伴关系


参考例句：





The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。












53
trekking

  
 


v.艰苦跋涉，徒步旅行( trek的现在分词 )；（尤指在山中）远足，徒步旅行，游山玩水


参考例句：





She can't come pony trekking after all because she's in a delicate condition. 她结果还是不能坐小马车旅行，因为她已怀孕。 来自《简明英汉词典》
We spent the summer trekking in the foothills of the Himalayas. 我们整个夏天都在喜马拉雅山的山麓艰难跋涉。 来自互联网












54
candid

  
 


adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的


参考例句：





I cannot but hope the candid reader will give some allowance for it.我只有希望公正的读者多少包涵一些。
He is quite candid with his friends.他对朋友相当坦诚。