I was addressing a small gathering in a suburban Virginia living room—a women’s group that had invited men to join them. Throughout the evening, one man had been particularly talkative, frequently offering ideas and anecdotes, while his wife sat silently beside him on the couch. Toward the end of the evening, I commented that women frequently complain that their husbands don’t talk to them. This man quickly nodded in agreement. He gestured toward his wife and said, “She’s the talker in our family.” The room burst into laughter; the man looked puzzled and hurt. “It’s true,” he explained. “When I come home from work, I have nothing to say. If she didn’t keep the conversation going, we’d spend the whole evening in silence.”

    This episode crystallizes the irony that although American men tend to talk more than women in public situations, they often talk less at home. And this pattern is wreaking havoc with marriage.

    The pattern was observed by political scientist Andrew Hacker in the late 1970s. Sociologist Catherine Kohler Riessman reports in her new book Divorce Talk that most of the women she interviewed—but only a few of the men—gave lack of communication as the reason for their divorces. Given the current divorce rate of nearly 50 percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the United States every year—a virtual epidemic of failed conversation.

    In my own research, complaints from women about their husbands most often focused not on tangible inequities such as having given up the chance for a career to accompany a husband to his, or doing far more than their share of daily life-support work like cleaning, cooking and social arrangements. Instead, they focused on communication: “He doesn’t listen to me.” “He doesn’t talk to me.” I found, as Hacker observed years before, that most wives want their husbands to be, first and foremost, conversational partners, but few husbands share this expectation of their wives.

    In short, the image that best represents the current crisis is the stereotypical cartoon scene of a man sitting at the breakfast table with a newspaper held up in front of his face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to talk.

答案精析：本题需要针对选项逐个定位到原文后选出答案。B项中的nearly 50 percent出现在原文第三段第三句，但该句说的是，目前美国的离婚率接近50%，相当于每年有几百万起离婚案发生，这实际上是失败沟通导致的流行病。原文指出了美国离婚率高达50%，但并没有说明这50%的离婚都是由于失败的谈话引起的，B项与原文不符，故正确答案为B。

错项排除：根据原文第二段首句，尽管美国男性在公共场合的讲话往往比女性多，但他们在家里讲的话却比女性少，由此可知男性在公共场合更健谈，而女性在家里更健谈，故A、D两项均符合文意。原文第四段提到，女性对丈夫的抱怨不在于自己对家庭付出的多少，而在于她们的丈夫在家是否能和她们进行沟通，可见女性非常重视夫妻间的交流，故C项符合文意。

长难句分析：Given the current divorce rate of nearly 50 percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the United States every year—a virtual epidemic of failed conversation.

本句主干为…that amounts to millions of cases…，主谓宾结构，that在这里是代词做主语，指代前面the current divorce rate of nearly 50 percent。句首的Given…为条件状语，用于说明当前的情况。破折号后面的内容为插入语，用于对主句进行补充说明。

句意为：鉴于目前美国的离婚率接近50%，这相当于美国每年有数百万起离婚案件——这实际上是失败沟通导致的流行病。