美帝的極端個人自由主義

首先帖篇文章

          It’s no surprise that Jennifer Senior’s insightful, provocative magazine cover story, 「I love My Children, I Hate My Life,」 is arousing much chatter – nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that 「the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight.」
　　　The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive – and newly single – mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual 「Jennifer Aniston is pregnant」 news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands.
　　　In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation, is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing ? It doesn』t seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the children. Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn』t have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.
　　　Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like Us Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents are the least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is to raise a kid without a partner to lean on; yet to hear Sandra and Britney tell it, raising a kid on their 「own」 (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake.
　　　It’s hard to imagine that many people are dumb enough to want children just because Reese and Angelina make it look so glamorous: most adults understand that a baby is not a haircut. But it’s interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing parenthood aren』t in some small, subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way that a small part of us hoped getting 「 the Rachel」 might make us look just a little bit like Jennifer Aniston.


譯文：
      毫無疑問，作為有煸動性的雜誌封面故事，詹尼弗西尼爾的深刻見解——「我愛我的孩子們，我討厭我目前的生活狀況」——可以喚起人們的談興。可是，人們不會想到，養孩子可不是一件完全令人愉悅、生活充實的事情。西尼爾並沒有簡單地說，孩子使得父母既快樂又痛苦。她建議，我們需要重新定義幸福：幸福不應該像過去那樣被定義為由一個個瞬間的快樂組合而成的東西；我們應該把幸福視為一種過去的狀態。儘管撫養孩子的日子漫長難熬，令人筋疲力盡，但是西尼爾認為，正是那些心緒沉重的時刻，日後卻給我們帶來由衷的欣喜。
　　雜誌封面上一位有魅力的母親抱著一個可愛的嬰兒，這種聖母與聖子的圖畫這周在報攤上可不止西尼爾這一起。例如雜誌上講到最近剛收養孩子的母親——有時是剛變成單身母親的人——桑德拉布魯克，以及那種很常見的「詹尼弗阿尼斯頓懷孕了」的新聞。實際上，每週都有至少一位名流母親、或者准母親在雜誌上笑迎讀者。
　　在一個堅持不懈地倡導生育的社會中，承認自己後悔生育孩子就相當於承認自己贊同謀殺寵物貓，這難道不值得反思嗎？把父母親的後悔與孩子的後悔相提並論（可能指把作為孩子家長的那種辛苦產生的悔恨理解為根源出在孩子身上，從而產生關於生下孩子的後悔），這顯然並不合理。（因此）不情願養孩子的父母很少會反思自己是否應該養育孩子。但是那不幸福的無孩子的人卻為類似「孩子是世上唯一最可珍惜的東西」這樣的資訊所煩惱。顯然，他們的不幸必須通過生兒育女才能得以消除。
　　當然，在美國週刊與人這樣的雜誌上所提供的「社會名流父母親」現像是不切實際的。特別是當「父母親」是布魯克這樣的單身母親時更是如此。多項研究表明，有孩子的父母很少比沒有孩子的夫婦更快樂，而單親家庭中的家長煩愁尤甚。這並不奇怪，因為一個人養一個孩子實在太麻煩了。然而，你看看桑德拉和布列尼說的話：自己「一個人」養孩子，其實非常簡單。（她們當然覺得簡單了，因為她們是在周圍人全天候的幫助下養著孩子的。）
　　當然，要說很多人傻頭傻腦地生育孩子，只是因為里斯和安格麗娜這種名流使這種行為看上去顯得誘人，這也是不可能的——多數成年人其實理解：養孩子可不是像做個髮型那麼簡單。但是這確實是一件很有趣的值得反思的事情：我們每週看的「輕鬆快樂做父母」的雜誌封面，並不是通過潛意識的方式里讓我們對（沒有孩子的）現實經歷不滿，而是這些圖片在潛意識中讓我們有那種想成為雷切爾的心理，但實際上卻使得我們看上去有點像詹尼弗亞尼斯頓。（大約指雷切爾養孩子顯得瀟灑，而詹尼弗生養孩子顯得狼狽。）




    知道嗎，孩子，「養孩子可不是像做個髮型那麼簡單」。這部可惡的電影就是像上文中的雜誌那樣，給整個社會的青少年帶來一種——「嗨，去做愛吧，去生孩子吧，是如此快樂和簡單」——的誤導。別再對青春叛逆期的孩子火上澆油了好嗎？我想我們應該告訴他們的是：嗨，寶貝，你不是一個人，你是這個家庭的一份子。

    最後，Fucking 美帝的極端個人自由主義。