In some societies people want children for what might be called familial reasons: to extend the family line or the family name, to propitiate1 the ancestors; to enable the proper functioning of religious rituals involving the family. Such reasons may seem thin in the modern, secularized society but they have been and are powerful indeed in other places.
In addition, one class of family reasons shares a border with the following category, namely, having children in order to maintain or improve a marriage: to hold the husband or occupy the wife; to repair or rejuvenate2 the marriage; to increase the number of children on the assumption that family happiness lies that way. The point is underlined by its converse3: in some societies the failure to bear children is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for porce.
Beyond all that is the profound significance of children to the very institution of the family itself. To many people, husband and wife alone do not seem a proper family they need children to enrich the circle, to validate4 its family character, to gather the redemptive influence of offspring. Children need the family, but the family seems also to need children, as the social institution uniquely available, at least in principle, for security, comfort, assurance, and direction in a changing, often hostile, world. To most people, such a home base, in the literal sense, needs more than one person for sustenance5 and in generational extension.
答案：Part B 参考译文
在某些社会中，大家期望拥有孩子是出于所谓的家庭缘由：传宗接代，光宗耀祖，讨好祖辈，使那些涉及到家庭的宗教仪式得以正常进行。此类缘由在现代世俗化的社会中似显苍白，但它们在其他地方曾一度构成并确实仍在构成强有力的原因。
除此之外，有一类家庭缘由与下列类别不无共通之处，这便是：生儿育女是为了维系或改变婚姻：能拴住老公或者使老婆不致于什么事都不干；修复或重振婚姻；多子多孙，以为家庭幸福惟有此法。这一点更可以由其反 面得到昭示：在某些社会中，没办法生儿育女（或没办法生育男生）对婚姻而言是一种威胁，还可作为离婚的现成借口。
后代对于家庭这一体制本身所具备的深远意义远非这样。对很多人来讲，夫妻两人尚不足以构成一个真的意义上的家庭夫妻需要孩子来丰富其两人小天地，赋予该小天地以真的意义上的家庭性质，并从子孙后代身上获得某种回报。
孩子需要家庭，但家庭好像也需要孩子。家庭作为一种社会机构，以其特有些方法，至少从原则上说，可在一个变幻莫测、常常是充满敌意的世界中叫人从中获得某种安全、慰藉、保障，与价值取向。
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