用新的兒童發展科學來講述親子關係
The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children, by Alison Gopnik, The Bodley Head, RRP￡18.99/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, RRP$26, 320 pages
《園丁與木匠：用新的兒童發展科學來講述親子關係》(The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children)，艾莉森•戈普尼克(Alison Gopnik)著，Bodley Head出版社/建議零售價18.99英鎊，法勒、斯特勞斯和吉魯出版社(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)/建議零售價26美元，320頁
The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child, by Paula Fass, Princeton University Press, RRP$29.95, 352 pages
《美國童年終結：從不干涉到管制的親子教育史》（The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child），葆拉•法斯(Paula Fass)著，普林斯頓大學出版社 (Princeton University Press)，建議零售價29.95英鎊，352頁
Parents are struggling, it seems.
家長們似乎正面臨困境。
We are obsessed with the job of parenting, trying to mould our children so that they are happy, garlanded with top grades and achievements, and ready to take on the future — even though that future is unknowable to us.
我們沉迷於家長這份工作，試圖塑造我們的孩子，讓他們快樂、頂着高分和成就的光環、準備好迎接未來——儘管他們的未來是我們無從知曉的。
Meanwhile, the frightening wider world lurks, chaotically, beyond our control.
與此同時，混亂、可怕的外部世界潛伏在四周，我們無法控制。
And to minimise our own fear and worry, we try to protect our young people so that a middle-class childhood now lasts until college, and often beyond.
爲了最大限度地減少我們自己的恐懼和擔憂，我們努力保護我們的孩子，以至於如今一名中產階級子弟的童年一直持續到上大學，甚至更久。
There is an impossible mismatch between modern micromanagement inside the home and the unknowables outside.
現代家長事無鉅細的管理與不可知的外部世界極不匹配。
To assuage this crisis, parents (meaning, in my experience, anxiety-prone middle-class mothers) lap up advice from books telling us how to fix our family life so as to engineer more successful futures for our kids.
爲了平息這種危機，父母（以我的經驗來看，這往往意味着容易焦慮的中產階級母親）積極地從那些講述如何修復家庭生活、爲孩子設計更成功未來的書籍中吸取建議。
The standout among these manuals in capturing the parenting zeitgeist was Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011).
《虎媽戰歌》(Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,2011年)從這些緊隨親子教育思潮的手冊中脫穎而出。
This memoir by a Chinese-American mother of bringing up two high-achieving girls details how a traditional Asian regime can work wonders.
這部回憶錄的作者是一名美籍華裔母親，她培養出了兩個成就非凡的女兒，書中詳述了一套傳統的亞洲生活計劃是如何創造奇蹟的。
Its key mantras include: be very strict, enforce music practice, don’t allow free expression through drama, sport — or sleepovers.
關鍵原則包括：非常嚴格、強制音樂訓練、不允許擅自參加戲劇、體育活動或在外留宿。
Overnight, tiger mother became shorthand for a woman who turns parenting into a high-stakes management career.
一夜間，虎媽成爲了把管孩子變成一份重要管理事業的女性的代名詞。
Two new books, however, suggest that over-scheduling and controlling our children when they are young — including snowplough parenting where every obstacle to the child’s success is cleared from their path; then being a helicopter parent hovering over college-age adults — may be a waste of time.
然而，上述兩本新書表明，在孩子小時候，給他們安排太多計劃、把他們的生活控制得太死——包括幫孩子掃清成功路上的一切障礙的剷雪機式家長，在孩子進入大學後仍然在他們頭頂徘徊不去的直升機式的父母——可能是浪費時間。
It may even be downright damaging for our children’s future and society’s economic prosperity.
這甚至可能會完全毀掉孩子的未來和整個社會的經濟繁榮。
Alison Gopnik’s The Gardener and the Carpenter should be required reading for anyone who is, or is thinking of becoming, a parent.
所有父母或者想要成爲父母的人都應該閱讀艾莉森•戈普尼克所著的《園丁與木匠》。
It might also offer comfort to any adult who feels that their life has been blighted by their own parents.
任何覺得自己的人生被父母禍害了的成年人，或許也能從這本書中獲得些許慰藉。
(And at ￡20, it is cheaper than therapy.)
（只需要20英鎊，比心理治療費便宜。）
From an empirical perspective, parenting is a mug’s game, is one of Gopnik’s startling early assertions.
從經驗主義的角度來看，管孩子是費力不討好的事，是戈普尼克驚人的初步論斷之一。
Instead of using parenting as a verb, she argues for a far more flexible way of being a parent, with caring for children at its heart: Love doesn’t have goals or benchmarks or blueprints, but it does have a purpose.
她主張不要管孩子，而是用一種靈活得多的方式做父母，核心是照顧孩子：愛沒有目標、標準和藍圖，但是愛有目的。
The purpose is not to change the people we love, but to give them what they need to thrive.
愛的目的不是改變我們所愛的人，而是爲他們提供他們蓬勃發展所需的條件。
It is essentially a nurturing role, rather than shaping and constructing: the parent as Gardener, rather than Carpenter.
父母的角色在本質上是撫育，而不是塑造或者構建：父母是園丁，而不是木匠。
And as Gopnik goes on to show, attempting to shape children’s outcomes is useless as well as time-consuming and potentially damaging.
戈普尼克接下來表明，努力讓孩子有出息的做法既無用又耗時、還可能造成傷害。
Gopnik is a professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where she runs a cognitive science laboratory.
戈普尼克是美國加州大學伯克利分校(University of California, Berkeley)的心理學和哲學教授，管理着該校一間認知科學實驗室。
Hers is a rare erudition: scholarly, yes, but accessible and rooted in her experience as a mother and grandmother.
罕見的是，她的書雖然的確很學術，但並不難懂，並且依託於她作母親和祖母的經歷。
Her toddler grandson Augie, in particular, makes frequent appearances.
尤其是她蹣跚學步的孫子奧吉(Augie)在書中頻頻出現。
As Gopnik notes, Grandmother scientists and philosophers have been rather thin on the ground in the past.
戈普尼克寫道，當了奶奶的科學家和哲學家在過去寥寥無幾。
It is, of course, only since more women have become involved in science that we’ve learned that gathering is as important as hunting, and the complexities of childcare are as interesting as the politics of competition and deception.
當然，直到越來越多的女人蔘與到科學研究中以後，我們才知道採集和狩獵同樣重要，育兒的複雜性像競爭和欺騙的策略一樣有意思。
It is all very cheering and puts women’s work in its proper place: utterly central to humanity’s continued success.
這些論述令人欣慰，對女人的工作給予了公允的評價：它是人類持續成功的最核心要素。
And we do need to consider the future our children will inhabit.
我們需要考慮我們的孩子將生活在什麼樣的未來中。
It is not one we can control, or even imagine.
這個未來不是我們所能控制的，甚至不是我們所能想象的。
Parents are not designed to shape their children’s lives.
父母的天職不是決定子女生活的面貌。
Instead, parents and other caregivers are designed to provide the next generation with a protected space in which they can provide new ways of thinking and acting that, for better or worse, are entirely unlike any that we would have anticipated beforehand.
相反，父母和其他監護人的天職是提供保護下一代成長的空間，孩子可以在其中發展出我們完全預料不到的、新的思維和行爲方式——無論是好是壞。
This is the picture that comes from evolutionary biology, and . . . from empirical studies of child development.
這是演化生物學以及……兒童發展實證研究描繪的畫面。
One of the most striking aspects of Gopnik’s book is the way she guides readers into an understanding that love and security, rather than control and a narrow educationally focused approach, is the best foundation children need to flourish.
戈普尼克的書中最引人注目的一點是，她如何引導讀者瞭解，兒童茁壯成長所需的最佳土壤是愛和安全感，而不是控制和着重於教化的狹隘撫育方式。
Hardest, perhaps, for the goal-oriented parent to accept is that we have to allow children to make their own mistakes.
或許，目標導向型父母最難接受的一點是我們必須讓孩子自己去犯錯。
You come to make better decisions by making not-so-good decisions and then correcting them.
你現在之所以能夠做出更好的決定，是因爲你做過不那麼好的決定、然後糾正了這些決定。
While we may have been told this before, Gopnik’s science-based assertion is a welcome corrective to the prevailing culture of coaching and tutoring children — often at great expense — to avoid failure.
儘管我們之前或許聽過這話，但戈普尼克依據科學做出的論斷是對目前主流氛圍——指導和輔導子女（往往以巨大代價）避免失敗——的糾正。
Where though, does this leave parents who know that a talented child should, for example, persevere with a musical instrument, which, although often a slog for all concerned, will one day surely give them pleasure? Gopnik is not prescriptive about this.
但是，如果父母明知一個有天賦的孩子應該比如說學一種樂器（儘管學藝過程對所有相關人等往往都很辛苦，但是有一天肯定會爲他們帶來快樂），該怎麼做？戈普尼克沒有說明這點。
Children, after all, have always learned by repeating what they see adults doing over and over.
畢竟，孩子總是通過一遍遍模仿成年人的行爲來學習。
Music and sports are both learned this way, and as we know, repetition can eventually lead to mastery.
音樂和運動都是以這種方式學習，衆所周知，熟能生巧。
She does, however, highlight that the way we educate children in the west is often not best suited to how young brains learn.
然而，她的確指出了一點：西方父母教育子女的方式，往往不是特別適合孩子的大腦接受。
A one size fits all approach isn’t going to suit everyone.
一刀切的模式無法適用於所有人。
In the classroom children are expected to learn by being taught, often a passive experience, and one which requires a very narrow focus and close attention.
大人期望孩子在課堂裏通過老師的教授來學東西，這種學習往往是被動的體驗，要求全神貫注於一個非常狹窄的區域。
We are used to this classroom-based system but Gopnik encourages us to step back from it.
我們都很熟悉這種基於課堂的體系，但是戈普尼克鼓勵我們退出這種體系。
It’s natural for [children] to imitate and practice the activities that are most important to the adults around them.
（孩子們）天生會模仿和練習對周圍的成年人來說最重要的活動。
In school, intentionally or not, that means paying attention, taking tests, and getting grades.
在學校裏，無論有意還是無心的，這都意味着集中注意力、考試和分數。
The results are seen in Gopnik’s lab a few years later, when the most successful of those master exam-takers arrive at their prestigious university and are resentfully surprised when they have to begin again and become apprentice scientists and scholars.
數年後，課堂體系的結果出現在戈普尼克的實驗室——那些最成功的高分學生進入一所知名的大學，憤怒又意外地發現他們不得不從頭開始、成爲學徒科學家和學者。
Being the best test-taker in the world isn’t much help for either discovering new truths about that world, or new ways of thriving in it.
成爲全世界分數最高的人，對探索有關世界的新真相和新的成功方式沒多少幫助。
Gopnik is articulating something that many of us have struggled with all our adult lives, perhaps without fully realising our problem: we were brought up to believe that success comes from good exam results.
戈普尼克闡述了一件困擾我們中許多人整個成年生涯的事情（原因或許是我們沒有沒有完全認識到自己的問題）：我們從小接受的教育讓我們相信，成功源自好的考試成績。
As an expert exam-taker, it worked for me, career-wise.
我擅長考試，這件事在事業方面對我有利。
Outside the office, though, I have struggled with the practical skills and risk-taking that should be part of my human heritage.
然而，在辦公室之外，那些作爲人類原本應該具備的實用技能和承擔風險的能力，卻讓我覺得困難重重。
It looks like I didn’t do enough discovery or apprenticeship learning — and certainly did not take risks.
看起來似乎我沒有進行足夠多的探索式或模仿式學習——當然也沒怎麼冒險。
We need, Gopnik says, to avoid making the same mistakes with our own children.
戈普尼克表示，我們需要避免在自己的孩子身上犯下同樣錯誤。
While Gopnik is dealing mainly with the individual child and his or her development, another Berkeley professor, historian Paula Fass, has written a complementary and enlightening book that covers the societal picture — a sweeping history of childhood in America since that country’s revolution and how successive generations have been raised.
戈普尼克的話題主要涵蓋兒童個體及其發展，而另一位加州大學伯克利分校的教授、歷史學家葆拉•法斯(Paula Fass)則寫了一本與她的書互補併發人深省的著作。該書涵蓋了社會方面的圖景——囊括了自美國革命以來的童年、以及一代代兒童如何被撫養長大的全面歷史。
Her introduction points out that a child is not raised in isolation: Historians are only now catching up to what theater, opera and daily news have known for some time, as we begin to understand just how important the relations between generations are to who we are as nations and societies.
她在該書序言中指出，兒童並不是在與世隔絕的狀態下被養大的。戲院、歌劇和日常新聞已知曉了一段時間的東西，歷史學家眼下才剛剛知曉。正如我們剛開始明白，代際關係對於塑造我們的民族和社會有多麼重要。
Our individual histories take place in the small theaters of our personal lives, but these are deeply entwined in a larger world of politics and culture.
我們的個人歷史發生在我們個人生活的小舞臺上，然而這些都與更大範圍的政治和文化世界深深纏繞在了一起。
In that context, the book’s rather doom-laden title, The End of American Childhood, is a reference to Fass’s conclusion that modern American parents, in micromanaging their children, are breaking with a long tradition of independence of thought and action that differentiated children in the New World from their European counterparts.
在這個背景下，該書充滿悲觀色彩的標題《美國童年的終結》指向了法斯的結論，即事無鉅細地管孩子的現代美國父母，是在拋棄美國的一項長期傳統——思想和行爲獨立，而正是這個長期傳統讓新世界（the New World，指美洲大陸——譯者注）的兒童與歐洲兒童不同。
The American boys of the early republic grew early into independence.
合衆國早期的美國兒童很早就學着獨立。
They were neither indulged nor coddled.
他們既沒有被縱容，也沒有被嬌慣。
They were given some say in the objects of their labor and, when possible, free time to play.
他們對自己的勞動對象有一定發言權，在情況允許的時候也有自由時間去玩耍。
But the children were also seen as ‘little citizens’ — persons with capacity as well as potential.
不過，這些兒童也被視爲‘小公民’——有能力也有潛力的人。
Children, even the children of wealthy parents, had to work in the home or on the land in early America, something that did not happen in the more developed European nations, where well-off homes had servants and children were considered in need of protection.
在早期美國，兒童——即使是富裕家庭的孩子——得在家裏或田間幹活，在更發達的歐洲國家則沒有這回事。在這些歐洲國家，富裕家庭裏有僕人，兒童被視爲需要保護。
Meanwhile, many young Americans needed entrepreneurial spirit — they had to make a living from an early age.
此外，許多年輕的美國人需要具備開創精神——他們很早就要自己謀生。
Expectations of children were simply more fluid in 19th-century America, Fass says.
法斯表示，在19世紀的美國，人們對兒童的期望更靈活一些。
That fluidity, as she shows, created the dynamism and independence of thought that powered America’s nascent democracy and economic growth.
正如她所證明的，這種靈活性催生了思想的活力和獨立性，而這種活力和獨立性爲美國初生的民主制度和經濟增長提供了動力。
Thomas Jefferson, for example, was vehement in rejecting primogeniture and entail, two aspects of British property law that put land in permanent and deeply undemocratic patterns of family descent.
比如，托馬斯•傑斐遜(Thomas Jefferson)強烈反對長子繼承和限嗣繼承，正是英國物權法的這兩點將土地置於永久的、極不民主的家庭傳承模式之下。
By 1800, sons and daughters in the US inherited equally.
到1800年，在美國，女兒有了與兒子同等的繼承權。
(Meanwhile, in the UK, primogeniture still happens in the aristocracy — although it was abolished for the monarchy in 2013).
（與此同時，在英國，貴族中仍存在長子繼承現象——不過英國於2013年廢除了王室的長子繼承製。）
With mass 19th-century immigration, American society changed again, and Fass expertly traces the tensions and shifts this created.
隨着19世紀移民的大量涌入，美國社會再次發生了改變。法斯則嫺熟地跟蹤研究了這一局面導致的種種緊張關係和變動。
These immigrants believed they had crossed the ocean to survive and, if possible, to succeed, but not necessarily to change.
這些移民認爲，他們橫穿大洋是爲了生存和爭取成功，卻未必是爲了改變。
But their children, outside the home, were exposed to the freedom of America, often becoming the only family members who could speak English — a powerful position.
然而，他們的子女在家庭以外接觸了美國的自由，也往往成爲家族成員中唯一會說英語的——這讓他們取得了強有力的地位。
Fathers often felt that their authority as head of the traditionally patriarchal European household was under threat.
父親們往往會感覺到，他們作爲傳統父權制歐洲家庭一家之主的權威面臨威脅。
After the second world war, child-rearing in Europe grew closer to that of the US, as middle classes across the continent reduced their emphasis on family hierarchy.
二戰以後，歐洲養育子女的方式變得更像美國——整個歐洲的中產階級都不那麼強調家庭中的等級關係了。
The post-cold war spread of democracy, along with the rise of western youth culture, accelerated that change.
冷戰後民主的擴散以及西方青年文化的崛起加速了這一轉變。
But Fass believes that something has happened in the past couple of decades to break American families’ link with their free-spirited pioneer past.
不過，法斯認爲，過去幾十年發生了一些事情，切斷了美國家庭與其自由派先鋒傳統的聯繫。
It’s a shift that resonates in Europe, too, as it is a response to global power shifts.
歐洲也在同樣發生這一變化，因爲這一變化是對全球力量重心轉移的反應。
Fass suggests that in the 21st century the real concern may be about how the commitment to independence can be maintained in a highly competitive world.
法斯暗示，21世紀真正讓人擔憂的問題也許是，在競爭非常激烈的世界中，如何能維持對獨立的執著。
The stakes are higher than ever.
關係前所未有地重大。
As a result, modern parents have somehow lost the will to allow independence; parents are giving children, even older children, only half of the traditional formula for success . . . they are giving what they believe is autonomy without a real sense of responsibility.
導致的結果就是，現代父母不那麼願意讓子女獨立了。父母正在給予孩子的（甚至是較大的孩子），只是傳統成功祕方的一半……他們正在給予孩子他們心目中的自治，卻沒有給孩子真正的責任感。
Our caution is understandable.
我們的謹慎是可以理解的。
The international geopolitical outlook is shaky and, as Fass points out, cultural trends include personal memoirs [that] are often exposés of abusive parents and difficult childhoods, and child rearing advice comes more and more frequently in response to fear and anxiety.
國際地緣政治前景動盪不安，而且正如法斯指出的，包括在（文化潮流中的）自傳時常暴露各種虐待子女的父母和艱難的童年，越來越多育兒建議是爲了迴應擔憂和焦慮。
Our instincts tell us to do more, not less, to protect our children from the cruel 21st-century world.
我們的直覺告訴我們，應該做更多（而不是更少）的努力，去保護我們的子女免遭殘酷的21世紀世界的傷害。
The End of American Childhood is a corrective to that outlook.
《美國童年的終結》是對這一前景的糾正。
In reconnecting us to the past, Fass reassures us of the universal truth that parents have always loved and worried about their children.
通過將我們與過去重新聯繫起來，法斯向我們再次確認一條普遍適用的真理：父母始終是疼愛和擔憂子女的。
And, as Gopnik points out, To be a parent, as opposed to parenting, is to be a bridge between the past and the future.
而且，正如戈普尼克指出的：做父母（相對於‘管孩子’而言），而擔當過去與未來之間的橋樑。
Fass’s and Gopnik’s work shows us that both neuroscience and history teach us that children would benefit from a little more worldly discovery and less parental cosseting.
法斯和戈普尼克的作品向我們證明，神經科學和歷史都告訴我們，多一點現實的探索、少一點父母的嬌慣會讓子女受益。
It may not be possible for most children to work in the fields, but they might take a job in their teens, or be left alone to manage their exam revision — a test of application, and of resilience if they fail.
也許多數兒童不可能下地幹活，但他們也許可以在少年時代打份工，或者讓他們自己搞定考試複習——這考驗他們的勤奮，如果他們不及格，則考驗他們的承受能力。
The gift we can give our children is to stop worrying, take a long view, and allow the next generation to develop its own path.
我們能給予子女的禮物是停止擔心，把眼光放長遠，讓下一代開闢自己的道路。
It means, heartbreakingly, that we must let go.
這意味着一個令人心碎的事實：我們必須放手。
If we fail to do that, their future may not be so bright.
如果我們做不到這一點，他們的未來可能會不那麼光明。
As Gopnik warns, Shaping [children] in our own image, or in the image of our current ideals, might actually keep them from adapting to changes in the future.
正如戈普尼克所警告的：按照我們自身形象、或我們目前的理想形象塑造（子女），實際上也許會讓他們無法適應未來的變化。
