A new employment analysis has revealed that within the last decade

A new employment analysis has revealed that within the last decade, more women had chosen child care programs rather than quit their jobs or take extended time off work after having a child.

(A) had chosen child care programs rather than quit

(B) had chosen to use child care programs instead of quitting

(C) have chosen using child care programs instead of quitting

(D) had chosen to use child care programs rather than quitting

(E) have chosen to use child care programs rather than quit

Ok, let's delve.

A decade is a period of ten years. The important point in the context is that the period of ten years is ended and is a thing of past. The chosen programs were a specific phenomenon that featured in the cited decade. Therefore, there is no need for a present perfect tense as if the event is continuing even today or the impact of that practice is spilling over in the present.

Therefore it is difficult to accept the present perfect "have chosen". Choices C and E flout verb tense format.

Not that the past perfect 'had chosen' is correct either. When one uses a past perfect, it is done to mainly indicate that it is earlier action than an another past action. The all important past tense required to legalize a past perfect is fatally missing in all the other choices A, B, and D. Parallelism issue is irrelevant without resolving the verb tense malady.

No choice seems to licit enough. Any choice with a simple past namely 'chose' would have been better.

Can an expert please explain why had is wrong and have is correct ?

Hi Priyanka, within the past decade would mean something that has happened from a time until the past, until now.

In such cases, present perfect (have chosen) is correct; past perfect (had chosen) is not.

Past perfect is when there are two events that happened in the past, and in such cases, the earlier of the two events is expressed as past perfect. For example:

When teacher asked John about homework, he said that he had already finished it.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Past perfect tense, its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

Hey ：
1. This question should use the present perfect tense. A,B,D OUT
2. "Chose to do sth" idiom
3. chose E

How E is maintaining parallelism ?

"have chosen to use child care programs rather than to quit" might be better version.

Kindly share your views.

The compound preposition "Instead of" can only take a noun as its object. For that reason, (B) and (C) have been eliminated.

When we try to explain a purpose for an action, we need to use the infinitive form (to + verb). (A) does not use the infinitive form and hence can be eliminated.

In (D), the past perfect tense (had chosen) is used which means that the activity/behavior being described (choosing to use the child care program) had started in the past and is already complete. This contradicts the actual purpose of the prompt.

Hence, (E) is the right choice

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