A．The very thought of a male babysitter （ 保姆 ） is enough to make some parentsanxious. Every online parenting forum seems to have a thread on the issue ofmale babysitters， such as "Hiring a Male Babysitter （or Manny）" on the sitePark Slope Parents. In a satire （ 讽刺作品 ） on The Onion titled， DesperateMom Okays Male Babysitter， the morn normally wouldn"t hire a malebabysitter and knew it wasn"t ideal， but she really needed the night oft: B．In an article for the Washington Post， author Petula Dvorak hires a malebabysitter and realizes it "is apparently something few parents would do." She said she received raised eyebrows from other parents at the playground when she introduced the new sitter and felt compelled to explain how long she"sknown him and how much she likes him to anyone who would listen. "When it comes to kids， we are pretty close to being a society that has demonized （ 妖魔化 ） men，" Dvorak writes， noting that a government study found that in 96percent of ual assaults on children the offenders were male. C．This anxiety about male babysitters is remarkable when you look at the history of babysitting. Throughout the twentieth century， boys were not only accepted as babysitters， they were often preferred over girls. The reason is twofold: age girls were dismissed asflighty （轻浮的 ） and selfish; and young boys needed male role models as their fathers were unemployed during the Great Depression or gone all at work in the latter half of the century. D．According to Miriam Forman-Brunell， a history professor and the author of Babysitter: An American History， babysitting in its modern incarnation（ 化身） came about in the 1920s， with "the expansion of suburbs for the first time." Parents were more likely to be separated from extended family members that once were relied on to watch children. Coincidentally， the 1920s also gave rise to the notion of a modem age girl who cared more about boys， movies and makeup than taking care of kids. To s， the rise of the age girl signaled disorder and fueled anxieties. E．As Forman-Brunell writes， because adolescent girls "attended sports s and flirted with men on the street comers， especially in front of the innocent babies they took care of，" the authors of a popular mid-1920s child-rearing manual criticized adolescent girls and dismissed them as acceptable child-careproviders. F．Although babysitting first appeared in the 1920s， it didn"t flourish as a culturalphenomenon until after World War II. The baby boom created plentifuljobs for babysitters. Still， though women had enjoyed greater employment opportunities during World War II， parents were hesitant to use a female babysitter. During this period， "parents were very anxious about hiring the girl next door， as has always been the case. It just has so much to do with their perception of age girls，" says Forman-Brunell. G．Even as age girls were provoking anxiety in parents， male babysitters were idealized as the perfect solution. During the Great Depression， Forman- Brunell says， unemployed adolescent boys became "saviors （ 救星） to upset mothers and tired housewives unsatisfied with neighborhood girls." H．In glowing descriptions in Parents Magazine from the 1930s， it seemed as if there was nothing boy helpers couldn"t do. Some child-rearing experts during the Great Depression believed that male babysitters could go so far as to "restore boyhood" for their young charges. While husbands became depressed due to unemployment or deserted their families， Parents Magazine reassured readers that boys were up to the task of babysitting. I．"It"s surprising that you would find the entrepreneurial， perfect male babysitter in popular culture， but he"s everywhere，" says Forman-Brunell， "and he"s not burdened by the same expectations that girls are." Being smart， competitive， and business-oriented were all considered positive characteristics of a male babysitter. J．By the late 1940s， some Ivy-League schools institutionalized babysitting for male college students. For example， Forman-Brunell writes， male undergraduates at Princeton organized the "Tiger Tot Tending Agency" where， beginning in 1946， "college boys babysat for the children of faculty members and married students for thirty-five cents an hour". One mother who hired male babysitters through the Tiger Tot agency told Princeton Alumni Weekly， "I loved the idea of four tall and strong young men watching over my baby daughter. Diapers （ 尿布 ） were changed with efficiency and calmness." Four men came for the price of one babysitter so they could have enough people for a bridge . K．A 1940s New Yorker article reported that the Columbia University football coach——a former babysitter himself——created a sitting service for his players and was just as proud of their babysitting accomplishments as their hard work on the football field. The strong babysitters were able to maintaintheir manliness while caring for children. While tales of terrible babysitterexperiences with age girls who racked up phone bills and ignoredscreaming children in order to be with their boyfriends continued to populatethe media， so did accounts of capable， responsible male babysitters. L. When fathers were away at work in the 1950s， it was up to male sittersto instill manliness in young boys and turn boys into hardy men. A Lifemagazine cover story reported that 23 percent of the 7.9 million boys in theUnited States worked as babysitters in 1957， collectively earning an estimated$319 million. M．Even as gender differences began to blur in the 1970s， male babysitterswere still seen as an ideal， as is apparent in the children"s book George theBabysitter （1977）. Long-haired George would cook and clean each day forthe kids he babysat， and at the end of the day liked to sit and read a footballmagazine. The book made age boy babysitters seem both domestic andmasculine. Up until the end of the 20th century， popular culture and children"sbooks such as Arthur Babysits （1992） and Jerome the Babysitter （1995）boosted the reputation of age boys as smart， dependable babysitters. N．But today babysitting is most commonly viewed as a woman"s domain. A Red Cross Babysitter Training Course video shows two women， onewhite and one black， babysitting. But there are no male sitters in the video. According to a Wall Street Journal article published earlier， Sittercity.com，an online marketplace for babysitting， has 94 percent female sitters， whileSmartSitting.com， an agency that matches highly educated sitters with NewYork families reports that 87 percent of its sitters are female. O. Men have been so erased from the history of babysitting that the same WallStreet Journal article wrongly compares babysitting with cooking， saying，"Could childcare someday go the way of cooking? In the 1950s everyoneassumed that women were better in the kitchen...these days， of course，cooking is gender neutral." The writer imagines a time in the future whenbabysitting "is no longer considered a girl"s job." Little does she know that upuntil about 20 years ago， it wasn"t a girl"s job. During the 20th century， boys were actually more popular than girls asbabysitters. 查看材料