TED演讲｜ 为何越付出越焦虑？TED演讲者：为人父母是一场“危机”
今天推荐的演讲者是：Jennifer Senior，发布于2014年的TED演讲大会！
书店的育儿专区让人目不暇接，正如作家Jennifer所说，它是“我们集体恐慌的里程碑”。为什么为人父母会充满焦虑？听听这篇TED演讲！
When I was born, there was really only one book about how to raise your children, and it was written by Dr. Spock. (Laughter) Thank you for indulging me. I have always wanted to do that.
我出生那会儿，只有一本书是讲述育儿经的，它的作者是斯波克医生。谢谢大家配合。非常高兴看到你们的热情。
No, it was Benjamin Spock, and his book was called "The Common Sense Book of Baby And Child Care." It sold almost 50 million copies by the time he died. Today, I, as the mother of a six-year-old, walk into Barnes and Noble, and see this. And it is amazing the variety that one finds on those shelves.
事实上是本杰明•斯波克，他的著作叫《斯波克育儿经》。他离世时，该书已畅销接近5000万册。如今，作为一名6岁孩子的母亲，我走进巴诺书店时，看到了这个书架。书架上形形色色书籍多得令人惊讶。
There are guides to raising an eco-friendly kid, a gluten-free kid, a disease-proof kid, which, if you ask me, is a little bit creepy. There are guides to raising a bilingual kid even if you only speak one language at home.
有关于“环保地”养育小孩的，有关于养育“无麸质”小孩的，有关于养育“百病不侵”小孩的，这些书，在我看来，让人感觉有些不自在。还有关于如何让孩子学会两种语言的书籍，即使在家里你只会用一种语言跟孩子沟通。
There are guides to raising a financially savvy kid and a science-minded kid and a kid who is a whiz at yoga. Short of teaching your toddler how to defuse a nuclear bomb, there is pretty much a guide to everything.
有教你培养孩子金融思维的书，也有培养孩子科学头脑的书，还有培养孩子成为瑜伽大师的书。除了教小孩如何拆除核弹，其它似乎应有尽有。
All of these books are well-intentioned. I am sure that many of them are great. But taken together, I am sorry, I do not see help when I look at that shelf. I see anxiety. I see a giant candy-colored monument to our collective panic, and it makes me want to know, why is it that raising our children is associated with so much anguish and so much confusion?
所有这些书籍可谓用心良苦。我深信其中也有许多优秀作品。但把它们整合起来的话，非常遗憾，当我看着那一架子书时，我看到的不是它们会为我带来什么帮助，我看到的是焦虑。我看到了一座高耸的糖果色的碑，集聚着整个社会的恐慌，这不禁让我深思，为何养育子女会有如此多的苦恼，会如此让人困惑？
Why is it that we are at sixes and sevens about the one thing human beings have been doing successfully for millennia, long before parenting message boards and peer-reviewed studies came along? Why is it that so many mothers and fathers experience parenthood as a kind of crisis?
这可是一件人类薪火相传了上千年的事情，为何今天却让人摸不着头脑呢？那时，可没有育儿论坛，也没有专家特地来研究。为何有这么多人会把为人父母当作一种危机？
Crisis might seem like a strong word, but there is data suggesting it probably isn't. There was, in fact, a paper of just this very name, "Parenthood as Crisis," published in 1957, and in the 50-plus years since, there has been plenty of scholarship documenting a pretty clear pattern of parental anguish. Parents experience more stress than non-parents. Their marital satisfaction is lower. There have been a number of studies looking at how parents feel when they are spending time with their kids, and the answer often is, not so great.
说是危机，看似言重了，但有数据表明这么说并不为过。事实上，1957年就有文章以此命名，《视为人父母如危机来临》在此后的50多年里，诸多学术论文一五一十地反映了父母的苦恼。有孩子的夫妇的压力要高于那些没有孩子的夫妇，前者对婚姻的满意度更低。有很多课题研究父母与孩子共度时光时的感受，而结论往往并不理想。
Last year, I spoke with a researcher named Matthew Killingsworth who is doing a very, very imaginative project that tracks people's happiness, and here is what he told me he found: "Interacting with your friends is better than interacting with your spouse, which is better than interacting with other relatives, which is better than interacting with acquaintances, which is better than interacting with parents, which is better than interacting with children. Who are on par with strangers."
去年，我与专家马修•柯林沃斯有过一次交谈，他正在研究一个极富于想象力的追踪人们幸福感的项目，他与我分享了研究成果：“与朋友来往获得的快乐高于与配偶来往获得的，高于与其他亲属来往获得的，高于与点头之交来往获得的，高于与父母来往获得的，高于与子女来往获得的，与子女来往的快乐跟与陌生人的差不多。”
But here's the thing. I have been looking at what underlies these data for three years, and children are not the problem. Something about parenting right now at this moment is the problem. Specifically, I don't think we know what parenting is supposed to be. Parent, as a verb, only entered common usage in 1970. Our roles as mothers and fathers have changed. The roles of our children have changed. We are all now furiously improvising our way through a situation for which there is no script, and if you're an amazing jazz musician, then improv is great, but for the rest of us, it can kind of feel like a crisis.
事实是这样的。我对这些数据的前因后果做了为期3年的研究，我发现问题不在于孩子，而是在于如今养育孩子的理念和方法。具体说来，我认为我们没有理解育儿的真正意义。“育儿”这个动词，在20世纪70年代才开始流行。作为父母，我们的角色已经发生了变化。孩子们的角色也发生了变化。养育儿女，宛如一场即兴表演，但这场表演没有剧本。如果你是一名响当当的爵士音乐家，即兴演奏也会很棒，但对普通大众而言，说是危机也无可厚非。
So how did we get here? How is it that we are all now navigating a child-rearing universe without any norms to guide us? Well, for starters, there has been a major historical change. Until fairly recently, kids worked, on our farms primarily, but also in factories, mills, mines. Kids were considered economic assets. Sometime during the Progressive Era, we put an end to this arrangement.
我们为何会陷入这种状况？没有指引，我们如何在育儿的浩瀚世界中做到游刃有余？从头说起吧，育儿理念发生过一次历史性的转变。这个转变就发生不久，在这之前，孩子自小就劳作，主要在农场，也在工厂、车间、矿山。孩子被当作经济资产。到了“进步时代”，对孩子的这种看法终结了。
We recognized kids had rights, we banned child labor, we focused on education instead, and school became a child's new work. And thank God it did. But that only made a parent's role more confusing in a way. The old arrangement might not have been particularly ethical, but it was reciprocal. We provided food, clothing, shelter, and moral instruction to our kids, and they in return provided income.
我们认为小孩也有权力，明令禁止雇佣童工，我们将他们的教育放在首位，因而学习便成了孩子们的新任务。幸好如此。但是，这样会让父母更加迷茫于自己应该扮演的角色。曾经的观念也许不太符合伦理道德，但它是互惠的。我们提供给孩子衣、食、住，以及基本的道德教育，他们则提供经济收入作为回报。
Once kids stopped working, the economics of parenting changed. Kids became, in the words of one brilliant if totally ruthless sociologist, "economically worthless but emotionally priceless." Rather than them working for us, we began to work for them, because within only a matter of decades it became clear: if we wanted our kids to succeed, school was not enough. Today, extracurricular activities are a kid's new work, but that's work for us too, because we are the ones driving them to soccer practice. Massive piles of homework are a kid's new work, but that's also work for us, because we have to check it.
一旦孩子们不再自小就工作，从经济学角度来看，育儿的理念便发生了变化。引用一位非常有天分但又 “无情”的社会学家的话，孩子“经济上一文不值，感情上珍贵无比”。孩子们从此不为我们工作，我们便要开始为他们张罗。因为仅仅数十年一过，事实已经浮现在眼前：如果我们想让孩子成功，学校教育是不够的。如今，各种课外活动成了孩子们的新功课，更是我们的新功课，因为正是我们把他们拉入足球训练场。堆积如山的作业是孩子们的新任务。也是我们的任务，因为我们得检查作业。
About three years ago, a Texas woman told something to me that totally broke my heart. She said, almost casually, "Homework is the new dinner." The middle class now pours all of its time and energy and resources into its kids, even though the middle class has less and less of those things to give. Mothers now spend more time with their children than they did in 1965, when most women were not even in the workforce.
大约3年前，一位德州女士向我倾吐了一些事情，我听了后心都碎了。她不经意间地说到，“家庭作业是第二顿晚餐。”现在，中产阶级将所有的时间、精力和资源完全投入在小孩身上，哪怕他们能够给予的东西越来越少。而今，母亲们陪在孩子身边的时间多于1965年，那时大多数女士还都是不用工作的。
It would probably be easier for parents to do their new roles if they knew what they were preparing their kids for. This is yet another thing that makes modern parenting so very confounding. We have no clue what portion our wisdom, if any, is of use to our kids. The world is changing so rapidly, it's impossible to say. This was true even when I was young. When I was a kid, high school specifically, I was told that I would be at sea in the new global economy if I did not know Japanese.
假如知道该为孩子准备些什么，父母们适应这个新的角色或许会容易得多。这也是现代育儿令人困惑的另一原因。我们不知道究竟哪一种智慧，如果有的话，适用于自己的孩子。世界变化得如此日新月异，凡事难以预料。我年轻的时候也是一样。在我小的时候，特别是在高中时，有人告诉我要是不懂点日语的话，我将来会迷失在新的全球经济环境中。
And with all due respect to the Japanese, it didn't turn out that way. Now there is a certain kind of middle-class parent that is obsessed with teaching their kids Mandarin, and maybe they're onto something, but we cannot know for sure. So, absent being able to anticipate the future, what we all do, as good parents, is try and prepare our kids for every possible kind of future, hoping that just one of our efforts will pay off. We teach our kids chess, thinking maybe they will need analytical skills.
但日语，恕我冒昧，并没有显现出如此重要的作用。如今，又有一些中产阶级的父母，他们痴迷于让小孩学习中文，也许，他们是预料到了什么事情，但没人能确定。既然我们无法预知未来，想当称职的父母的话，我们就得尝试着为小孩准备一切，来应对将来的不时之需，希望总有一分努力会有用武之地。我们教小孩下棋，认为可以培养他们的问题分析能力。
We sign them up for team sports, thinking maybe they will need collaborative skills, you know, for when they go to Harvard Business School. We try and teach them to be financially savvy and science-minded and eco-friendly and gluten-free, though now is probably a good time to tell you that I was not eco-friendly and gluten-free as a child. I ate jars of pureed macaroni and beef. And you know what? I'm doing okay.
我们为他们报名参加团体运动，认为可以培养他们的团队合作能力，你懂的，当他们去哈佛商学院读书时就用到了。我们试着将他们培养成一名富有金融思维、科学思维、生态友好而且无麸质的小孩，那么，借此机会告诉大家，小时候，我不是生态友好或无麸质的孩子。我吃了一罐又一罐的通心面和牛肉。结果呢？一切正常。
I pay my taxes. I hold down a steady job. I was even invited to speak at TED. But the presumption now is that what was good enough for me, or for my folks for that matter, isn't good enough anymore. So we all make a mad dash to that bookshelf, because we feel like if we aren't trying everything, it's as if we're doing nothing and we're defaulting on our obligations to our kids.
我纳税，有稳定的工作。还被邀请来做TED演讲。但现在的前提是，对我和我那个时代的人而言足够好的东西，如今已不再足够了。所以，我们才一窝蜂地涌向那个书架，因为我们觉得，凡事不尝试一番，就相当于什么都没做，就是没有履行对孩子应尽的义务。
So it's hard enough to navigate our new roles as mothers and fathers. Now add to this problem something else: we are also navigating new roles as husbands and wives because most women today are in the workforce. This is another reason, I think, that parenthood feels like a crisis. We have no rules, no scripts, no norms for what to do when a child comes along now that both mom and dad are breadwinners.
所以我们就很难扮演好今天的父母的角色。让问题更为复杂的是，我们还扮演着丈夫和妻子的新角色，因为现在大多数女士们已进入职场。我想，这可能是另一个人们把做父母视如危机的原因。爸爸、妈妈忙于养家糊口，又没有标准、剧本、或指引，小孩降生后可该怎么办。
The writer Michael Lewis once put this very, very well. He said that the surest way for a couple to start fighting is for them to go out to dinner with another couple whose division of labor is ever so slightly different from theirs, because the conversation in the car on the way home goes something like this: "So, did you catch that Dave is the one who walks them to school every morning?" Without scripts telling us who does what in this brave new world, couples fight, and both mothers and fathers each have their legitimate gripes.
作家迈克尔·刘易斯曾经一语中的。他说最能引起夫妻争吵的方法，是与另一对夫妇共进晚餐，而且他们的职业行业还与自己的略有不同。晚餐过后，驱车回家途中的对话一般会是：“喂，难道你没有发现是大卫每天早晨送小孩上学吗？” 在这样一个崭新的社会，没有成文规定谁该做什么，夫妇便争吵起来了，而且双方各自的抱怨都合乎情理。
Mothers are much more likely to be multi-tasking when they are at home, and fathers, when they are at home, are much more likely to be mono-tasking. Find a guy at home, and odds are he is doing just one thing at a time. In fact, UCLA recently did a study looking at the most common configuration of family members in middle-class homes. Guess what it was? Dad in a room by himself. According to the American Time Use Survey, mothers still do twice as much childcare as fathers, which is better than it was in Erma Bombeck's day, but I still think that something she wrote is highly relevant: "I have not been alone in the bathroom since October."
母亲在家时，往往承担多项家务，而父亲在家时，同一时间做的事情通常是一件。随便看看哪户人家，有意思的是爸爸通常每次只做一件事情。事实上，加州大学洛杉矶分校最近就中产阶级家庭里最常见的景象做了一项调查。猜猜结果如何？父亲独自一人在一个房间里。《美国人的时间安排调查》表明，母亲在照顾小孩上花费的时间是父亲的两倍，这一比例虽然低于艾尔玛•邦贝克的描述，但我认为这跟她写的一些东西还是很相关的：“10月份以来，卫生间里就不再只有我一个人了。”
But here is the thing: Men are doing plenty. They spend more time with their kids than their fathers ever spent with them. They work more paid hours, on average, than their wives, and they genuinely want to be good, involved dads. Today, it is fathers, not mothers, who report the most work-life conflict.
但事实是：男士们的付出也不少。他们陪伴孩子度过的时间多于父亲陪伴自己的时光。他们的平均工作时间要多于妻子，而且他们不仅想要把工作做好，在家也想做一个好父亲。如今，是父亲，而不是母亲，更多地抱怨工作生活失衡问题。
Either way, by the way, if you think it's hard for traditional families to sort out these new roles, just imagine what it's like now for non-traditional families: families with two dads, families with two moms, single-parent households. They are truly improvising as they go.
不管怎样，顺便说一下，如果传统家庭适应这些新角色都较难的话，试想一下，非传统家庭将会怎样？两个父亲的家庭，两个母亲的家庭，单亲家庭。他们真的是走一步，看一步。
Now, in a more progressive country, and forgive me here for capitulating to cliché and invoking, yes, Sweden, parents could rely on the state for support. There are countries that acknowledge the anxieties and the changing roles of mothers and fathers. Unfortunately, the United States is not one of them, so in case you were wondering what the U.S. has in common with Papua New Guinea and Liberia, it's this: We too have no paid maternity leave policy. We are one of eight known countries that does not.
如今，在一个制度更先进的国度，不好意思，又提到老生常谈的问题了，是的，要说到瑞典，在那里，父母可以依靠国家的福利。很多国家已经认识到了父母的担忧，以及他们不断变化的角色。不幸的是，美国不在其中，因此，如果要问美国与巴布亚新几内亚和利比里亚有何共性的话，答案是：我们都没有带薪产假政策。已知的奉行无薪产假的国家有8个，我们赫然在列。
In this age of intense confusion, there is just one goal upon which all parents can agree, and that is whether they are tiger moms or hippie moms, helicopters or drones, our kids' happiness is paramount. That is what it means to raise kids in an age when they are economically worthless but emotionally priceless. We are all the custodians of their self-esteem. The one mantra no parent ever questions is, "All I want is for my children to be happy."
在这样一个困惑丛生的年代，只有一个目标是所有父母一致同意的，无论母亲是虎妈还是嬉皮妈妈，是直升机父母的还是无人机父母，孩子们的幸福是首要的。这也就是在一个把孩子看作“经济上一文不值，感情上珍贵无比”的时代里，养育孩子的意义所在。我们是孩子的自尊的守护者，有这样一句父母都不会质疑的祈祷，“保佑我的子女们幸福快乐。”
And don't get me wrong: I think happiness is a wonderful goal for a child. But it is a very elusive one. Happiness and self-confidence, teaching children that is not like teaching them how to plow a field. It's not like teaching them how to ride a bike. There's no curriculum for it. Happiness and self-confidence can be the byproducts of other things, but they cannot really be goals unto themselves. A child's happiness is a very unfair burden to place on a parent. And happiness is an even more unfair burden to place on a kid.
不要误会我的意思：我认为幸福对孩子们是一个再好不过的目标。但事情没这么简单。让孩子幸福与自信，不同于教他们如何犁地。也不同于教他们如何去骑车。没有教程告诉我们如何实现它。幸福与自信是随着其他事物而生的，而不是作为一种目标，强加到他们身上。孩子的幸福，让父母来承担是不公平。但如果让孩子来承担的话，更不公平。
And I have to tell you, I think it leads to some very strange excesses. We are now so anxious to protect our kids from the world's ugliness that we now shield them from "Sesame Street." I wish I could say I was kidding about this, but if you go out and you buy the first few episodes of "Sesame Street" on DVD, as I did out of nostalgia, you will find a warning at the beginning saying that the content is not suitable for children. (Laughter) Can I just repeat that? The content of the original "Sesame Street" is not suitable for children.
我必须要告诉你们，为了让孩子幸福，我们有时会反应过度。我们现在总是急于让小孩远离社会上的是非之物，甚至不让他们观看《芝麻街》。我希望我是在开玩笑，但是，如果你去买几张 《芝麻街》最初几集的DVD光盘，我之前是出于怀旧目的而买的。你会发现片头的的警告语，提示说本片少儿不宜。是真的，昔日的《芝麻街》居然是少儿不宜的节目。
When asked about this by The New York Times, a producer for the show gave a variety of explanations. One was that Cookie Monster smoked a pipe in one skit and then swallowed it. Bad modeling. I don't know. But the thing that stuck with me is she said that she didn't know whether Oscar the Grouch could be invented today because he was too depressive. I cannot tell you how much this distresses me. (Laughter) You are looking at a woman who has a periodic table of the Muppets hanging from her cubicle wall. The offending muppet, right there.
《纽约时报》就此事进行采访时，该节目的制片人给出了种种解释。原因之一是饼干怪兽在剧中抽过烟斗，然后把烟斗吃掉了。这是个负面形象。我不太明白。但是让我印象深刻的是，她说她不知道Oscar the Grouch（《芝麻街》中的角色）放到今天是否能被创作，因为它性格太悲观了。我简直无法形容这句话让我多伤心。你现在看到的是一位将经典布偶主题的元素周期表挂在墙上的女士。这个心情不愉快的布偶，就在这儿。
That's my son the day he was born. I was high as a kite on morphine. I had had an unexpected C-section. But even in my opiate haze, I managed to have one very clear thought the first time I held him. I whispered it into his ear. I said, "I will try so hard not to hurt you." It was the Hippocratic Oath, and I didn't even know I was saying it. But it occurs to me now that the Hippocratic Oath is a much more realistic aim than happiness. In fact, as any parent will tell you, it's awfully hard.
这是我儿子出生那天拍的照片。当注射吗啡后，我感觉就像高高飞翔的风筝一样。我做了个意料之外的剖腹产手术。在还没有醒麻的时候，我第一次抱着他，就有了个清晰的想法。我靠近他耳边，轻轻说，“我会非常努力地去做到不伤害你。”这是希波克拉底的誓言，我浑然不觉地说了这句话，但是现在，在我看来这句誓言是比幸福更容易实现的一个目标。事实上，每位父母们都知道，这是相当难的。
All of us have said or done hurtful things that we wish to God we could take back. I think in another era we did not expect quite so much from ourselves, and it is important that we all remember that the next time we are staring with our hearts racing at those bookshelves. I'm not really sure how to create new norms for this world, but I do think that in our desperate quest to create happy kids, we may be assuming the wrong moral burden.
我们都说过或做过一些让人伤心的事情，我们恳请上帝让我们将其收回。我想，未来有一天，我们不再对自己的期望那么高，更重要是，我们都要提醒自己，当我们看着那些满满的书架时我们内心的焦虑。虽然我确实不知道该如何去为世界制定新的标准，但我确实认为，当我们竭力追求培养幸福快乐的小孩时，我们或许承担着错误的思想负担。
It strikes me as a better goal, and, dare I say, a more virtuous one, to focus on making productive kids and moral kids, and to simply hope that happiness will come to them by virtue of the good that they do and their accomplishments and the love that they feel from us. That, anyway, is one response to having no script. Absent having new scripts, we just follow the oldest ones in the book -- decency, a work ethic, love — and let happiness and self-esteem take care of themselves. I think if we all did that, the kids would still be all right, and so would their parents, possibly in both cases even better.Thank you.
我觉得更好的目标，容我说，也是更有效的目标，那就是注重培养富有创造力和品德高尚的孩子，然后只要祝福他们幸福，通过他们的德行善举、他们的才能成就以及感受到我们对他们的爱。总之，这也是一种对现实的答复。没有新的剧本，那么就沿用书中最古老的箴言吧——保持礼貌，职业道德，爱——幸福与自尊将自然成长。我想如果我们都做到了这一点，孩子们就会幸福成长，父母也不用说了，可能对双方都更好。谢谢大家。
