1999年：In some societies people want children for what might be called familial reasons: to extend the family line or the family name, to propitiate 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(一类) of family reasons shares a border（接壤、相近）with the following category, namely, having children in order to maintain or improve a marriage: to hold the husband or occupy（使…忙（有事干）the wife; to repair or rejuvenate the marriage; to increase the number of children on the assumption（设想、假设consumption 消费）that family happiness lies that way. The point is underlined（突出、显现）by its converse（反面、相反）: in some societies the failure to bear children（养孩子）(or males) is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for divorce.
Beyond all that（除了这些）is the profound（深刻的、深远的）significance of children to the very institution（结构）of the family itself. To many people, husband and wife alone do not seem a proper family（完整的）—they need children to enrich the circle（丰富家庭生活、拓宽生活圈子）, to validate（使…有效）its family character（家族的特征、风格）, to gather（增加、集合）the redemptive（赎回的, 用于补偿的）influence of offspring. Children need the family, but the family seems also to need children, as the social institution（社会结构）uniquely（唯一）available, at least in principle, for （获得）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 sustenance（生计）and in generational extension（家族的繁衍）.
【参考答案】另外，有一类家庭原因与下列类别不无共同之处，那就是：生儿育女要么是为了维系现有婚姻，提高婚姻质量，要么是为了拴住丈夫，使妻子有所事事，要么是为了修复婚姻，给婚姻注入新的活力，亦或是出于多子多福的观念而多生儿女。当然，我们也可以从问题的反面得到昭示：在某些社会，无法生育子嗣（或不能生育男孩）对婚姻而言是最大的威胁，也可作为夫妻分手的现成理由。
后代对家庭这一体制本身所具有的深远意义远非如此。在许多人看来，丁克家庭算不上真正的家庭。夫妻需要孩子来拓宽自己的生活圈子，实现家庭在传宗接代中的作用，并从子孙后代身上获取某种回报。在这个变幻莫测，常常不尽友善的世界上，家庭作为社会的基本单位，至少可在原则上，以其独特方式为家人提供安全保障，抚慰家人受伤的心灵，为家人指出生活方向，因此，孩子需要家庭，但与此同时，家庭也需要孩子。
