While traveling for various speaking engagements, I frequently stay overnight in the home of a family and am assigned to one of the children’s bedrooms. In it, I often find so many playthings that there’s almost no room — for my small toilet kit. And the closet is usually so tightly packed with clothes that I can barely squeeze in my jacket. The tendency to give children an overabundance of toys and clothes is quite common in American families, and in far too many families not only do children come to take their parents’ generosity for granted, but also the effects of this can actually be somewhat harmful to children. In addition to the material possessions children are given, children can also be overindulged with too many privileges — for example, when parents send a child to an expensive summer camp that the parents can’really afford. why? One fairly common reason is that parents overindulge their children out of a sense of guilt. Parents who both hold down full-time jobs may feel guilty about the amount of time they spend away from their children and may attempt to compensate by showering them with material possessions. Overindulgence of a child also happens when parents are unable to stand up to their children’s unreasonable demands. Such parents vacillate between saying no and giving in — but neither response seems satisfactory to them. If they refuse a request, they immediately feel a wave of remorse for having been so strict o rungenerous. If they give in, they feel regret and resentment over having been a pushover. This kind of vacillation not only impairs the parent’s ability to set limits, it also sours the parent-child relationship to some degree, robbing parents and their children of some of the happiness and mutual respect that should be present in healthy families. But overindulging children with material things does little to lessen parental guilty (since parents never feel that they’ve given enough) , nor does it make children feel more loved (for what children really crave is parents’ time and attention). Instead, the effects of overindulgence can be harmful. Children may, to some degree, become greedy, self-centered, ungratefil and insensitive to the needs and feeling of others, beginning with their parents. When children are given too much, it undermines their respect for their parents. Parents overindulge their children out of a sense of guilt because the parents ______.（ ）
What are the most effective tools for creating economic growth? It’s a question that drives and plagues government officials and researchers alike, as an endless quest for increased growth dictates policies that touch all of our lives. From tax reform to trade policy, decisions on immigration, infrastruicture and education, growth is what lies beneath it all. But there is another powerful driver of economic growth that has long gone largely unrecognized:women’s economic empowerment.Commonly framed as a human right or social issue, the conversation around women in the global workforce is now shifing towards the potentially explosive financial impact that increased gender equality could bring to both developed and emerging economies. While women make up just over half the worldwide population, a recent study determined that they account for only 37% of measured global GDP. But make no mistake, today’s women are working-just not as consistently as men in the type of work that factors into GDP. In addition to formal jobs, women do 60% of the unpaid work, such as child and elderly care, shopping, and household tasks that allow society to run smoothly. In the U.s., if household production were properly accounted for in national income accounts, this work alone would amount to 26% of GDP. The Citi Gps report tells the story of women as a powerful, often untapped driver of economic growth. The research has far-reaching potential to raise awareness of the issues and ultimately shift public policy. The numbers are, in fact, staggering: Countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) could see as much as a 20% leap in GDP if female involvement in the economy was raised to that of men. To put that number into context, today’s estimates set the total potential growth for OECD countries at about 1.5 percent per year from 2016-18, According to Ebrahim Rahbari, and one of the report’s lead authors, the potential for growth through women’s economic empowerment far outweighs other options to boost growth such as monetary or fiscal stimulus packages. “The 20% number is an ambitious, best-case scenario because it relies on female participation levels, average working hours and average productivity levels matching that of men. More conservative, perhaps more realistic estimates for the near-to-medium term put the potential at 6%, if we create the conditions to increase female participation in the economy," Rahbari says. “But even at 6%, it far surpasses what you would expect as a gain from alternative options to boost growth such as the proposed tax reform in the Us, which might boost GDP by around 1-1.5% over a few years. The size of the opportunity is just huge.” One fact that women contribute greatly to society is ________.( )