生孩子會嚴重打擊女性的自尊心

Becoming a parent is full of contradictions: It’s a time in life when love and meaning and joy crash headlong into worry and exhaustion, so much so that some new parents struggle to maintain their own identity. A new study out of the Netherlands suggests that this is especially true for mothers.

成爲父母是一件充滿矛盾的事情：在生命的這一階段，來自愛、意義和喜悅以及憂慮和疲憊的互相沖擊，讓一些新晉父母必須非常努力才能維持自己的身份認同。荷蘭的一項新研究表明，這對媽媽來說尤其如此。

The researchers found a consistent pattern: Women experienced declines in self-esteem during their pregnancies, and then increases in the six months afterwards. But then their self-esteem declined once again, and continued falling. By three years into their child’s life, it was still lower than their original “baseline.”

研究人員發現了一個始終一貫的模式：女性的自尊心在孕期會下降，分娩六個月後有所回升。不過，緊接着她們的自尊心又會下降，並保持下降的趨勢。直至孩子長到三歲，仍低於原來的“基礎值”。

Because they didn’t keep collecting data, researchers don’t know if the dip lasted even longer, but they do know it wasn’t permanent: Women who completed the survey again for a subsequent child had returned to their baseline by the time the process began anew.

由於研究人員沒有繼續採集生育三年後的數據，他們無法得知女性自尊心下降的持續時間是否更長，不過他們知道不會一直下降，因爲那些生二胎並再度完成調查的女性在生育前便已恢復到基礎值水平。

The researchers noted several possible reasons for a decline in self-esteem during pregnancy, including physical changes to the body, rampant hormones, stress over the baby’s development, and concerns about the future.

研究人員指出了幾個可能導致女性孕期自尊心下降的原因，其中包括身體上的變化、激增的荷爾蒙、嬰兒發育的壓力以及對未來的擔憂。