Only Children: Lonely and Selfish?
June 10, 2013
观点
独生子女就一定孤独自私吗？
2013年06月10日
CALL me a terrible mother. I have an only child. For now at least, I’m planning to keep it that way, for my happiness and for hers. But the notion that an only child might be a happy one contradicts strong cultural beliefs. According to these, children like mine will end up rotten with selfishness and beset by loneliness.
就当我是个糟糕的母亲吧。我只有一个孩子。至少现在是这样的，而且我计划保持现状，为我自己的幸福，也为女儿的幸福。但独生子女可能很幸福这种观点有悖于我们强大的文化观念。根据这些观念，像我的女儿这样的孩子最终会被自私所蚀，为孤独所袭。
And negative assumptions about parents who deprive their child of siblings strengthen the general opprobrium against only children. If a child doesn’t have siblings, it’s generally assumed that there’s a hush-hush reason for it: we don’t like being parents (because we are selfish), we care more about our status — work, money, materialism — than our child (because we are selfish), or we waited too long (because we are selfish). When have you heard someone say an only child is better off?
一些父母被认为剥夺了其子女有兄弟姐妹的权利，对于这类父母的负面看法强化了人们对独生子女普遍不看好的态度。如果一个孩子没有兄弟姐妹，人们通常认为父母这样做是有难以示人的原因的：我们不愿意为人父母（因为我们是自私的），我们更关心自己的处境——工作、金钱、物质——而不是我们的孩子（因为我们是自私的），或是我们等了太久才要孩子（因为我们是自私的）。你听到有谁说独生子女比非独生子女更好？
A general picture emerges that only children are loners, misfits and always, always selfish. I don’t buy it. As an only child, with one of my own, and as someone who has just spent three years writing about the subject, I’m convinced that if, by dint of will or biology, you have an only child, you can stop worrying about it.
人们有这样一种普遍看法，即独生子女是我行我素者，格格不入者，而且经常相当自私自利。我不这样认为。我作为家中独女，自己也只有一个女儿，而且我花了三年时间来研究这个主题，因此我确信，不管你是有意为之还是因为身体原因而只有一个孩子，你不必为此担忧。
Don’t take my word for it. Consider the data: in hundreds of studies during the past decades exploring 16 character traits — including leadership, maturity, extroversion, social participation, popularity, generosity, cooperativeness, flexibility, emotional stability, contentment — only children scored just as well as children with siblings. And endless research shows that only children are, in fact, no more self-involved than anyone else. It turns out brutal sibling rivalry isn’t necessary to beat the ego out of us; peers and classmates do the job.
不要听信我的一面之词，考虑一下这些数据：在过去几十年中，有数百个研究深入探究了16种性格特征——包括领导力、成熟度、外向性、社会参与度、受欢迎度、慷慨度、合作性、灵活性、情绪稳定度、满足度等——独生子女的得分和非独子女的得分一样高。有无数研究表明，实际上独生子女不比其他孩子更以自我为中心。事实表明，残酷的手足之争对击败自我中心意识不是必须的；伙伴和同学也能做到这一点。
Nor are only children lonelier. Toni Falbo at the University of Texas and her colleague Denise Polit are among the many researchers who have explored the question of whether only children are lonelier than those who have siblings. Their findings suggest that solitude is not synonymous with loneliness and often strengthens character. As one psychotherapist explained to me, only children tend to have stronger primary relationships with themselves. And nothing provides better armor against loneliness.
独生子女也不比其他孩子更孤独。和很多研究者一样，德克萨斯大学(University of Texas)的托尼·法尔博(Toni Falbo)及其同事丹尼丝·波利特(Denise Polit)也探究了这个问题，即独生子女是否比非独子女更孤独。他们的发现表明，独处并不意味着孤独，而独处通常会增强性格。正如一个精神治疗师向我解释的，独生子女更倾向于和自己建立更强的首属关系，这是抵御孤独最强大的武器。
An Ohio State survey of more than 13,000 children found that only children had as many friends as anyone else; many of the only children I interviewed had cherished and nurtured friendships that they often regarded with a familial sense of permanence and loyalty.
俄亥俄州在对1.3万名儿童进行调查后发现，独生子女的朋友和其他非独子女一样多；我采访的很多独生子女都珍惜和培养友谊，他们经常认为这些友谊具备家庭般的永久性和忠诚度。
The differences between only children and those raised with siblings tend to be positive ones. Ms. Falbo and Ms. Polit examined hundreds of studies in the 1980s and found that only children had demonstrably higher intelligence and achievement; only children have also been found to have more self-esteem. These findings, which have been confirmed repeatedly in recent years, hold true regardless of whether parents of only children stayed together and regardless of economic class.
独生子女和非独子女的差异更多是积极的。法尔博和波利特在20世纪80年代考察了数百项研究后发现，独生子女的才智和成就明显更高；其自尊心也更强。这些发现在最近几年多次得到证实，且不管独生子女的父母在一起还是没在一起，也不管他们的经济阶层如何，这些发现都是真实有效的。
Researchers like the sociologist Judith Blake believe these qualities result from the fact that parents who have just one child are able to devote more resources — time, money and attention — to them than parents who have to divide resources among more children.
社会学家朱迪丝·布莱克(Judith Blake)等研究者相信，这些素质源于独生子女家庭的父母，他们能够给孩子投入更多资源，包括时间、金钱和注意力，而多子女家庭的父母必须把这些资源进行分割。
The idea that only children are precocious persists and may, as Ms. Blake suggests, be connected with the fact that only children are often raised in richer verbal environments and share meals and other activities with adults. (I love it that an artist friend still brags that my daughter was 2 when she insisted that a crayon was “magenta, not pink.”)
布莱克的看法是，认为独生子女早熟的观点仍然盛行，这种观点或许是因为独生子女通常在一个更加丰富的语言环境内成长，并与成人一起进餐和参加其他活动。（让我欣喜的是，我的一个艺术家朋友仍在夸奖我女儿，说她两岁的时候曾坚称一只蜡笔“是洋红色，而不是粉色”。）
My research suggests that only children experience more intensely emotional family lives. The parental gaze is more focused; the love more concentrated. This intensity can be enriching, and also suffocating. Many adult only children told me that they wanted their first child to have a sibling precisely because this kind of intensity was too much for them.
我的研究显示出，独生子女经历了情感更强烈的家庭生活。父母的目光更加集中；爱也更加集中。这种强烈程度可以带来充实感，也令人窒息。许多成年的独生子女告诉我，他们希望自己的第一个孩子能有个兄弟姐妹，恰恰是因为他们受不了这种强烈的爱。
At the end of their parents’ lives, only children are sometimes said to be burdened in ways that children with siblings aren’t. Data from the National Alliance for Caregiving show that, in fact, the closest living sibling most often shoulders responsibility for elder caretaking. Still there is something existentially troubling about the idea of facing one’s parents’ mortality alone; in my interviews with hundreds of only children, I found that this was the issue people felt most viscerally about when deciding whether they wanted to have one or more children.
在他们父母的晚年，据说有些独生子女所承受的负担是那些非独子女所没有的。美国全国看护联盟(National Alliance for Caregiving)的数据显示，实际上，与父母关系最近的子女通常肩负着照顾老人的责任。然而，独自面对父母的死亡还是让人极度不安，在我对数以百计的独生子女的采访中，我发现当他们在决定是要一个还是更多孩子时，他们感到这是最根本的问题。
Given that about one in five American families now have just one child, this seems like a good time to question the misconceptions about only children and the dangers of raising a child without siblings. For one thing, one-child families make obvious sense in a time of diminishing resources. This may explain recent studies showing that parents who have one child tend to be happier. (In a recent study at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, Hans-Peter Kohler surveyed 35,000 sets of twins and found that of those women who had children, the happiest ones were those who had just one child.) Call me selfish but, as the mother of one child, I enjoy more time, energy and resources than I would if I had more children. And it is hard to imagine that this isn’t better for my family as well as for me.
考虑到目前大约五分之一的美国家庭是独生子女家庭，这似乎正是探讨对独生子女的误解和单独养大一个孩子的危险的最佳时刻。首先，独生子女家庭明显更适合这个资源减少的时代。这或许能解释，为什么最近的研究显示，拥有一个孩子的父母显得更愉快。例如，在宾夕法尼亚大学(University of Pennsylvania)最近的一次研究中，汉斯-彼得·科勒(Hans-Peter Kohler)调查了3.5万对双胞胎，并发现在那些拥有孩子的母亲之中，最快乐的是只有一个孩子的。你可以说我自私，但作为一个孩子的母亲，我很高兴我会比有更多孩子时拥有更多的时间、能量和资源。这对我的家庭和个人来说，很明显都是更好的选择。
Most people say they have their first child for themselves and the second to benefit their first. But if children aren’t inherently worse off without siblings, who is best served by this kind of thinking? Instead of making family choices to fulfill breeding assignments we imagine we’ve been given, we might ensure that our most profound choice is a purely independent, personal one. To do so might even feel like something people rarely associate with parenting: it might feel like freedom.
大多数人说，他们生第一个孩子是为了他们自己，第二个则是为了第一个。但如果孩子没有兄弟姐妹也不一定是坏事，那么谁才是这种思维的受益者呢？与其去为满足我们想象中自己被赋予的传宗接代责任而作出家庭决定，我们不如先确保自己最重大的选择是作为一个纯粹独立的个人而作出的。这样做，或许能让人们感到某些很少与做父母相联系的感觉：自由。
