媽媽總有操不完的心

Mom: The Designated Worrier

媽媽總有操不完的心

THERE’S a story my daughter loves to hear me tell: The day after I came home from the hospital with her big brother, my first child, I was seized by the certainty that I was about to die. I sobbed; I asked my husband: “But who will keep him in socks? Who’ll make sure he’s wearing his little socks?”

我女兒很愛聽我講一個(gè)故事：帶著她哥哥——也就是我的長子——從醫(yī)院回到家次日，我一心認(rèn)定自己即將死去。我啜泣著問丈夫：“誰會(huì)給他穿襪子呢?誰來保證他會(huì)穿著他的小襪子呢?”

“Didn’t you think Daddy could put the socks on?” my daughter exclaims, delighted that I’d been so ridiculous.

“你沒想過爸爸會(huì)給他穿上襪子嗎?”我女兒大聲說道，我的愚蠢讓她樂不可支。

“I wasn’t sure he’d remember,” I say, “or have enough on hand.”

“我當(dāng)時(shí)不確定他會(huì)記得，”我說，“也不確信他手邊會(huì)有足夠的襪子。”

New parenthood, of course, does things to your brain. But I was on to something, in my deranged, postpartum way. I should state for the record that my husband is perfectly handy with socks. Still, the parent more obsessed with the children’s hosiery is the one who’ll make sure it’s in stock. And the shouldering of that one task can cascade into responsibility for the whole assembly line of childhood. She who buys the bootees will surely buy the bottle washer, just as she’ll probably find the babysitter and pencil in the class trips. I don’t mean to say that she’ll be the one to do everything, just that she’ll make sure that most everything gets done.

當(dāng)然了，初為人母者的大腦會(huì)有些變化。但我還是從自己產(chǎn)后的反常行徑中覺察到了什么。我得鄭重聲明，我丈夫非常擅長給孩子穿襪子。不過，對(duì)孩子的襪子格外上心的家長，會(huì)是確保家里備有足夠襪子的人。而且一旦攬下一項(xiàng)任務(wù)，可能就意味著把孩子幼年時(shí)期的照管事宜統(tǒng)統(tǒng)攬上身了。當(dāng)媽的人買了嬰兒軟底鞋之后一定會(huì)買洗瓶機(jī)，就如同她一旦參加孩子的班級(jí)旅行，就很有可能要由她物色保姆，備好鉛筆一樣。我的意思并不是每件事都要由她來做，而是她會(huì)確保有人把幾乎所有事情都做好。

Sociologists sometimes call the management of familial duties “worry work,” and the person who does it the “designated worrier,” because you need large reserves of emotional energy to stay on top of it all.

社會(huì)學(xué)家有時(shí)會(huì)把打理家務(wù)稱為“讓人操心的工作”，把打理家務(wù)的人稱為“被指定的操心人”，因?yàn)橐愣ㄒ磺校愕糜惺愕木珰馍駜翰判小?/p>

I wish I could say that fathers and mothers worry in equal measure. But they don’t. Disregard what your two-career couple friends say about going 50-50. Sociological studies of heterosexual couples from all strata of society confirm that, by and large, mothers draft the to-do lists while fathers pick and choose among the items. And whether a woman loves or hates worry work, it can scatter her focus on what she does for pay and knock her partway or clean off a career path. This distracting grind of apprehension and organization may be one of the least movable obstacles to women’s equality in the workplace.

我真希望自己可以得出做父親和做母親同樣操心的結(jié)論。但事實(shí)并非如此。你那些夫妻雙方都上班的朋友可能會(huì)談及平攤家務(wù)的話題，但你無需理會(huì)他們的話。以來自所有社會(huì)階層的異性戀夫妻為樣本的各個(gè)社會(huì)學(xué)研究表明，總的來說，媽媽們會(huì)列出待辦事項(xiàng)清單，爸爸們則會(huì)從中挑出他們想做的事情。不論一個(gè)女人喜歡還是討厭讓人操心的家務(wù)事，她都可能因?yàn)檫@些活計(jì)而無法全神貫于本職工作，在工作過程中受到干擾，甚至斷送掉自己的職業(yè)生涯。這種日復(fù)一日的憂懼和安排讓人分心，它或許是妨礙女性在職場上享有平等權(quán)利的所有因素中最難以改變的。

IT’S surprising that household supervision resists gender reassignment to the degree that it does. In the United States today, more than half of all women work, and women are 40 percent of the sole or primary breadwinners in households with children under 18. The apportionment of the acts required to keep home and family together has also been evening out during the past 40 years (though, for housework, this is more because women have sloughed it off than because men have taken it on). Nonetheless, “one of the last things to go is women keeping track of the kind of nonroutine details of taking care of children — when they have to go to the doctor, when they need a permission slip for school, paying attention at that level,” says the social psychologist Francine Deutsch, author of “Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works.”

在打理家務(wù)事方面，性別責(zé)任的重構(gòu)竟艱難到如此地步，這真是令人驚訝?，F(xiàn)如今，一半以上的美國女性都是職業(yè)女性;而且40%美國女性是尚有需要撫養(yǎng)的未成年孩子的家庭中唯一或者主要的養(yǎng)家糊口者。此外，過去40年間，家務(wù)活兒的分配變得越來越平均了(盡管這更多是因?yàn)榕藬[脫了某些家務(wù)活兒，而非男人多承擔(dān)了家務(wù)活兒)。不過，“有些家務(wù)活的分配并非如此，照看孩子就是其中之一，女人得隨時(shí)觀察非常規(guī)的細(xì)節(jié)——以判斷何時(shí)得帶孩子去看醫(yī)生，何時(shí)得幫他們寫請(qǐng)假條，將心神專注于這一層面，”著有《對(duì)半分：如何均攤育兒負(fù)擔(dān)》(Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works)一書的社會(huì)學(xué)家弗朗辛·多伊奇(Francine Deutsch)說。

The amount of attention that must be paid to such details has also ballooned in the past few decades. This is because of our commitment to what the sociologist Annette Lareau calls “concerted cultivation.” We enroll children in dance classes, soccer, tutoring — often three or four extracurricular activities a week. These demand schlepping, obviously, but also have less visible time costs: searching the web for the best program, ordering equipment, packing snacks and so on. We fret that we’re overscheduling the children, but don’t seem to realize that we’re also overscheduling ourselves.

過去幾十年里，必須在這類細(xì)節(jié)上耗費(fèi)的精力也成倍增長。用社會(huì)學(xué)者安妮特·拉魯(Annette Lareau)的話說，這是因?yàn)槲覀冎铝τ谧优?ldquo;深度培養(yǎng)”。我們把孩子送進(jìn)舞蹈班、足球隊(duì)、輔導(dǎo)課——往往是每周有三四項(xiàng)課外活動(dòng)。顯然這些事要花費(fèi)力氣，不過它們也會(huì)導(dǎo)致不那么顯著的時(shí)間成本：在網(wǎng)上搜尋最佳課程、訂購設(shè)備，打包零食等等。我們擔(dān)心孩子的負(fù)擔(dān)過重，卻似乎沒有意識(shí)到我們自己的負(fù)擔(dān)也過重。

And when I say “we,” you know who I mean. A 2008 study by Dr. Lareau and the sociologist Elliot B. Weininger found that while fathers often, say, coach games, it’s mothers who perform the behind-the-scenes labor that makes kids’ sports and other pursuits possible. As one of the mothers in the study put it: “I do all the paper work. I do all the sign ups. ... This is the calendar and most of the stuff on the calendar is Grace’s. Like last week, 5:30 dance, Tuesday talent show, she had a talent show after school and then she had Scouts. ... Wednesday she had dance. Thursday she was supposed to have her fan club but it was canceled.” The researchers also noted that mothers’ paid work hours go up when children’s activities go down, whereas fathers’ paid hours are not affected by how much their children do.

這里的“我們”，大家知道我指的是哪些人。拉魯博士和社會(huì)學(xué)者埃利奧特·B·魏寧格爾(Elliot B. Weininger)于2008年共同進(jìn)行的一項(xiàng)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，盡管父親往往會(huì)做些輔導(dǎo)玩樂之類的事情，但母親才是進(jìn)行幕后工作的人，從而保障了子女在體育等方面的追求得以實(shí)現(xiàn)。正如這項(xiàng)研究中的一位母親描述的那樣：“文書工作全部都是我做的，字全部都是我簽的……這是我們家的日程表，上面大部分是格雷絲的安排。比如上個(gè)星期，五點(diǎn)半的舞蹈，周二的才藝表演，她課后要進(jìn)行這個(gè)表演，然后是童子軍活動(dòng)……周三她要跳舞。周四她本來要去粉絲俱樂部，但是活動(dòng)取消了。”兩位研究人員還指出，當(dāng)子女的活動(dòng)減少時(shí)，母親的帶薪工作時(shí)長會(huì)增多，而父親在這方面的數(shù)據(jù)不受子女活動(dòng)量的影響。

Of course, sweeping generalizations about who does what always have a near-infinite number of exceptions. Gay couples, on the whole, are more egalitarian in their division of labor. There are many more men in charge of child care than there were 20-odd years ago. How many more depends on whether you ask men or women: Half of the men surveyed in a Families and Work Institute study from 2008 said they were either the responsible parent or shared the role equally with their spouse, while two-thirds of the women said they were the one in charge. This suggests that either men overestimate their contribution or women define the work differently.

當(dāng)然，對(duì)家庭事務(wù)分工的大致概括總是會(huì)有無數(shù)的例外?？傮w而言，同性伴侶在分工上更平等。負(fù)責(zé)看護(hù)子女的男性比20來年前也多出了不少。至于多出的具體程度，就要取決于回答這個(gè)問題的是男是女：家庭與職場研究所(Families and Work Institute)在2008年進(jìn)行的一項(xiàng)研究顯示，半數(shù)回應(yīng)調(diào)查的男性表示，自己不是育兒方面的主要負(fù)責(zé)人，就是與配偶平等分擔(dān)，然而三分之二的女性表示，她們才是主要負(fù)責(zé)人。可以從中推斷，不是男性高估了自己的貢獻(xiàn)，就是女性對(duì)這項(xiàng)工作有不同的定義。

And then there are the stay-at-home dads: two million of them in 2012, up from 1.1 million in 1989, although only around a fifth of those fathers stay home for the children. The other four-fifths are unemployed, ill, in school or retired. Some of these fathers serve as primary caregivers. On average, however, men who are out of work eke out slightly under three hours a day of housework and child care combined — less than working women do (3.4 hours a day).

然后還有居家爸爸的現(xiàn)象：美國在這方面的數(shù)據(jù)已從1989年的110萬人上升到2012的200萬人。不過，其中僅有大約五分之一的父親待在家里是為了照顧孩子，其余五分之四是因?yàn)槭I(yè)、病休、上學(xué)或退休。這些父親中，有一部分是育兒方面的主要負(fù)責(zé)人。然而，平均而言，不工作的男性每天擠出的做家務(wù)加育兒的時(shí)間要稍遜于3小時(shí)——比職業(yè)女性還少(每天3.4小時(shí))。

One reason women like me get stuck with the micromanagement is that we don’t see it coming, not at first. Pamela Smock, a sociologist at the University of Michigan, tells a story about the students in her “Women and Work” class. Mostly women, they spend a semester reading about the gendered division of domestic labor. And yet in their presentations, even they slip up and talk about men “helping out.” “As long as the phrase ‘he helped’ is used,” says Dr. Smock, “we know we have not attained gender equality.”

我們女性之所以困在瑣碎的事上，一個(gè)原因在于，我們事先并沒有意識(shí)到這一點(diǎn)。密歇根大學(xué)(University of Michigan)的社會(huì)學(xué)者帕梅拉·斯莫克(Pamela Smock)講述過一個(gè)故事，主角是自己教授的“女性與職業(yè)”課程上的學(xué)生。他們大多為女性，花了一個(gè)學(xué)期研習(xí)家務(wù)方面的男女分工問題。然而，就連他們也會(huì)在做報(bào)告的時(shí)候說漏嘴，使用男性“幫忙”的字眼。“只要還在用‘他幫忙’這種說法，”博士說，“我們就知道還沒有取得性別平等。”

No matter how generous, “helping out” isn’t sharing. I feel pinpricks of rage every time my husband fishes for praise for something I’ve asked him to do. On the other hand, I’ve never gotten around to drawing up the List of Lists and insisting that we split it. I don’t see my friends doing that either. Even though women tell researchers that having to answer for the completion of domestic tasks stresses them out more than any other aspect of family life, I suspect they’re not always willing to cede control.

不管多么慷慨，“幫忙”不等于分擔(dān)。每次丈夫企圖因?yàn)橥瓿晌乙龅氖虑槎玫奖頁P(yáng)時(shí)，我就會(huì)感到隱隱的怒火。話又說回來，我又從未列出各種清單的匯總清單，堅(jiān)持二人平分。我也沒見到友人在這么做。有女性告訴研究人員，必須為完成家務(wù)負(fù)責(zé)的感覺，要比家庭生活中任何其他的方面更令她們心焦。不過，就連她們，我也懷疑并非總是樂意讓出控制權(quán)。

I’ve definitely been guilty of “maternal gatekeeping” — rolling my eyes or making sardonic asides when my husband has been in charge but hasn’t pushed hard enough to get teeth brushed or bar mitzvah practice done. This drives my husband insane, because he’s a really good father and he knows that I know it. But I can’t help myself. I have my standards, helicopter-ish though they may be.

我本人肯定一直在扮演“掌門母親”的角色——當(dāng)丈夫在負(fù)責(zé)卻又沒有努力讓孩子完成刷牙或猶太成年禮練習(xí)這些事情的時(shí)候，我會(huì)翻白眼，或者在一旁出言嘲諷。這讓丈夫抓狂，因?yàn)樗莻€(gè)很棒的父親，而且他知道我對(duì)這一點(diǎn)心知肚明。但我就是沒法管住自己。我心里有一桿秤，盡管這桿秤可上可下。

ALLOW me to advance one more, perhaps controversial, theory about why women are on the hook for what you might call the human-resources side of child care: Women simply worry more about their children. This is largely a social fact. Mothers live in a world of other mothers, not to mention teachers and principals, who judge us by our children. Or maybe we just think they’re judging us. It amounts to the same thing. But there is also a biological explanation: We have evolved to worry.

請(qǐng)?jiān)试S我更進(jìn)一步，提出一種或許頗具爭議的理論，來解釋女性為何在牢牢把控育兒的“人力資源”方面：因?yàn)榕跃褪菚?huì)更操心子女的事。這在很大程度上源于社會(huì)現(xiàn)實(shí)。母親身處的環(huán)境是，其他母親——更別提教師和校長——會(huì)用我們的孩子來對(duì)我們?cè)u(píng)頭論足。也說不定是，我們自認(rèn)為他們?cè)趯?duì)我們?cè)u(píng)頭論足。反正這兩種情況會(huì)產(chǎn)生一樣的效果。不過，這方面還有一個(gè)生物學(xué)上的解釋：我們演化成了愛操心的樣子。

Evidence from other animals as well as humans makes the case that the female of the species is programmed to do more than the male to help their offspring thrive. Neurological and endocrinological changes, the production of hormones such as oxytocin and estrogen during pregnancy and after birth, exert a profound influence over mothers’ moods and regulate the depth of their attachment to their children.

從人類及其他動(dòng)物身上搜集的證據(jù)，表明了我們這個(gè)物種中的女性，仿佛經(jīng)過編程一樣，為了讓后代茁壯成長，會(huì)給予比男性更多的幫助。神經(jīng)系統(tǒng)和內(nèi)分泌的變化，懷孕期間和分娩之后產(chǎn)生的激素，如催產(chǎn)素和雌激素，會(huì)對(duì)母親的情緒產(chǎn)生深遠(yuǎn)的影響，進(jìn)而調(diào)節(jié)她們對(duì)孩子的依戀的深淺。

This is not to say that men who care for their offspring don’t respond to the experience, too. In fact, male caregivers experience similar, though not identical, changes in their brains (female caregivers appear to use their emotion-processing networks more). It should also be noted that some mothers have it in them to kill their young, if they feel they have to. The anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has demonstrated that both animal and human mothers have the capacity to cast off sickly offspring they lack the resources to rear. She calls this a “fitness trade-off.” But on the whole, we’d rather keep them around. And have them do well. And reflect well on us.

這并不是說關(guān)心后代的男性不會(huì)對(duì)這種感受做出回應(yīng)。實(shí)際上，照看孩子的男性，也會(huì)在大腦中經(jīng)歷相似的變化，不過并不完全相同(照看孩子的女性似乎會(huì)更多地運(yùn)用處理情緒的神經(jīng)網(wǎng)絡(luò))。還需要注意，一些母親的情緒中，也有在她們感到必要的時(shí)候，殺死幼子的沖動(dòng)。人類學(xué)家莎拉·布拉弗·赫迪(Sarah Blaffer Hrdy)的研究顯示，動(dòng)物的母親和人類的母親都有能力舍棄她們沒有資源撫養(yǎng)的病弱后代。她把這稱為“健康取舍”。不過總的來說，我們寧愿把孩子留在身邊，讓他們健康成長，并讓自己得到他人的肯定。

So we worry. When we worry, we coordinate. When we coordinate, we multitask. We text about a play date while tending to a spreadsheet. And we underestimate how many minutes we rack up on stuff we’re not being paid to do. Smartphones are particularly dangerous in this regard, because they make multitasking seem like no work at all.

于是我們就會(huì)擔(dān)心。而擔(dān)心時(shí)，就會(huì)開始協(xié)調(diào)各種事務(wù)，進(jìn)而同時(shí)處理多重任務(wù)。我們要發(fā)短信確定比賽的日期，同時(shí)整理電子表格。我們?cè)谀切┠貌坏綀?bào)酬的事情上花費(fèi)的時(shí)間，總是會(huì)受到低估。智能手機(jī)在這個(gè)方面尤其危險(xiǎn)，因?yàn)樗鼤?huì)讓同時(shí)處理各種事情顯得根本不是在工作。

But what is to be done? Someone has to arrange the schedules so as to make dinner possible, because what’s a family without family dinner? Someone has to enforce the chore chart. Outsourcing can help, but it’s “not altogether a time saver,” Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist and author of “The Outsourced Self,” told me. Hiring a professional can give you “the illusion that the task is still part of your identity, but it induces pockets of guilt.” So we overcompensate by spending more time reading to a child before bed than we ought to, given the remark the boss made that afternoon. And care providers have to be cared for, too. You need to have those meaningful conversations with the babysitter even when you should be running out the door.

但那又能怎么樣呢?總得有人安排日程，好騰出一起吃飯的時(shí)間，畢竟如果不一起吃飯那還算什么一家人?總得有人執(zhí)行家務(wù)安排表。把這些事讓別人去做能起到一些幫助，但“總的來說并不能節(jié)省時(shí)間，”社會(huì)學(xué)家阿利·霍克希爾德(Arlie Hochschild)對(duì)我說?；艨讼柕轮小段覀?nèi)绾魏葱l(wèi)私人生活》(The Outsourced Self)一書，她告訴我，聘請(qǐng)專業(yè)人士能給你帶來“這個(gè)任務(wù)仍然是自我認(rèn)同的一部分的幻覺，但卻會(huì)引發(fā)一些內(nèi)疚。”所以我們會(huì)過度補(bǔ)償，在孩子睡前花過多的時(shí)間給他朗讀，盡管那天下午老板已經(jīng)有了怨言。而且請(qǐng)來照顧孩子的人也需要照顧。需要與保姆做些有意義的交談，盡管你其實(shí)應(yīng)該馬上出門。

All this may change as men as well as women chafe against the lengthening and increasingly unpredictable workday foisted upon us by globalization and the Internet, among other forces. The Pew Research Center released a study in 2013 showing that almost as many working fathers as mothers say they’d like to stay home with their children but have to work because they need the income. Roughly the same number of fathers as mothers surveyed — about half of each — report that they have a hard time balancing work and family. Indeed, dads are more likely than moms to say that they wish they could spend more time with their children.

隨著全球化、互聯(lián)網(wǎng)及其他力量讓我們的工作日越來越長，也越來越難以預(yù)測，男人和女人都開始感到惱火。皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)在2013年發(fā)布的一項(xiàng)研究顯示，表示很想待在家里陪孩子，但卻因?yàn)樾枰杖攵坏貌还ぷ鞯母赣H和母親人數(shù)幾乎一樣多。受訪者中有大致相同比例的父親和母親——均為大約一半——稱很難平衡工作和家庭。的確，父親表示希望自己能多花些時(shí)間陪孩子的比例，比母親要高。

With new generations come new hopes. According to research done by the Families and Work Institute, more millennials share domestic labor — and the management of it — than Gen Xers did. Jenna Fiore, a 21-year-old major in organizational studies at the University of Michigan, told me that she and her longtime boyfriend, Giancarlo Anemone, 21, a computer-science major at Kalamazoo College, have discussed how to allocate labor fairly in the household they’re planning to set up after they graduate this spring — down to “how we would divide getting birthday presents or keeping grocery lists,” Ms. Fiore says.

隨著年輕世代的成長，也帶來了新的希望。家庭與工作研究所(Families and Work Institute)開展的研究顯示，與比X世代(Gen X)相比，新千年世代(millennials)中有更多人愿意分擔(dān)家務(wù)、分擔(dān)家庭事務(wù)的管理。密歇根大學(xué)(University of Michigan)修讀組織管理的21歲學(xué)生珍娜·費(fèi)奧爾(Jenna Fiore)和她長期交往的男友，在卡拉馬祖學(xué)院(Kalamazoo College)學(xué)計(jì)算機(jī)科學(xué)專業(yè)的喬安卡羅·阿尼莫尼(Giancarlo Anemone)討論過在今年春天畢業(yè)建立家庭后，如何公平地分配勞動(dòng)——費(fèi)奧爾說，要具體到“收生日禮物、整理購物單都該怎么分配”。

Mr. Anemone agreed: “It’s more than doing the actual work, it’s who is going to organize it and remembering the things that have to be done.” Ms. Fiore thinks this will be easier for them than it was for their parents because they’ll use chore-tracking apps. She has done extensive research on these, she told me, and is leaning toward a “family organizer” called Cozi, which lets both partners type items on to-do lists and keep tabs on each other’s schedules.

阿尼莫尼表示同意：“問題不僅包括實(shí)際做那些工作，也包括誰來組織安排，誰來記住該做哪些事兒。”費(fèi)奧爾認(rèn)為，他們這樣做就會(huì)比父母那一代人更容易，因?yàn)樗麄儠?huì)使用記錄家務(wù)的應(yīng)用。她告訴我，自己已經(jīng)對(duì)這些應(yīng)用做了許多研究，現(xiàn)在傾向于使用一款叫做Cozi的“家庭管理軟件”，它可以讓雙方都在待辦事項(xiàng)的清單上輸入內(nèi)容，查看對(duì)方的日程安排。