湖女小紅
我愛小紅
Only Children: Lonely and Selfish?
June 10, 2013
觀點
獨生子女就一定孤獨自私嗎？
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.
就當我是個糟糕的母親吧。我隻有一個孩子。至少現在是這樣的，而且我計劃保持現狀，為我自己的幸福，也為女兒的幸福。但獨生子女可能很幸福這種觀點有悖於我們強大的文化觀念。根據這些觀念，像我的女兒這樣的孩子最終會被自私所蝕，為孤獨所襲。
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?
一些父母被認為剝奪了其子女有兄弟姐妹的權利，對於這類父母的負麵看法強化了人們對獨生子女普遍不看好的態度。如果一個孩子沒有兄弟姐妹，人們通常認為父母這樣做是有難以示人的原因的：我們不願意為人父母（因為我們是自私的），我們更關心自己的處境——工作、金錢、物質——而不是我們的孩子（因為我們是自私的），或是我們等了太久才要孩子（因為我們是自私的）。你聽到有誰說獨生子女比非獨生子女更好？
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.
人們有這樣一種普遍看法，即獨生子女是我行我素者，格格不入者，而且經常相當自私自利。我不這樣認為。我作為家中獨女，自己也隻有一個女兒，而且我花了三年時間來研究這個主題，因此我確信，不管你是有意為之還是因為身體原因而隻有一個孩子，你不必為此擔憂。
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.
不要聽信我的一麵之詞，考慮一下這些數據：在過去幾十年中，有數百個研究深入探究了16種性格特征——包括領導力、成熟度、外向性、社會參與度、受歡迎度、慷慨度、合作性、靈活性、情緒穩定度、滿足度等——獨生子女的得分和非獨子女的得分一樣高。有無數研究表明，實際上獨生子女不比其他孩子更以自我為中心。事實表明，殘酷的手足之爭對擊敗自我中心意識不是必須的；夥伴和同學也能做到這一點。
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.
獨生子女也不比其他孩子更孤獨。和很多研究者一樣，德克薩斯大學(University of Texas)的托尼·法爾博(Toni Falbo)及其同事丹尼絲·波利特(Denise Polit)也探究了這個問題，即獨生子女是否比非獨子女更孤獨。他們的發現表明，獨處並不意味著孤獨，而獨處通常會增強性格。正如一個精神治療師向我解釋的，獨生子女更傾向於和自己建立更強的首屬關係，這是抵禦孤獨最強大的武器。
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.
俄亥俄州在對1.3萬名兒童進行調查後發現，獨生子女的朋友和其他非獨子女一樣多；我采訪的很多獨生子女都珍惜和培養友誼，他們經常認為這些友誼具備家庭般的永久性和忠誠度。
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.
獨生子女和非獨子女的差異更多是積極的。法爾博和波利特在20世紀80年代考察了數百項研究後發現，獨生子女的才智和成就明顯更高；其自尊心也更強。這些發現在最近幾年多次得到證實，且不管獨生子女的父母在一起還是沒在一起，也不管他們的經濟階層如何，這些發現都是真實有效的。
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.
社會學家朱迪絲·布萊克(Judith Blake)等研究者相信，這些素質源於獨生子女家庭的父母，他們能夠給孩子投入更多資源，包括時間、金錢和注意力，而多子女家庭的父母必須把這些資源進行分割。
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.”)
布萊克的看法是，認為獨生子女早熟的觀點仍然盛行，這種觀點或許是因為獨生子女通常在一個更加豐富的語言環境內成長，並與成人一起進餐和參加其他活動。（讓我欣喜的是，我的一個藝術家朋友仍在誇獎我女兒，說她兩歲的時候曾堅稱一隻蠟筆“是洋紅色，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.
我的研究顯示出，獨生子女經曆了情感更強烈的家庭生活。父母的目光更加集中；愛也更加集中。這種強烈程度可以帶來充實感，也令人窒息。許多成年的獨生子女告訴我，他們希望自己的第一個孩子能有個兄弟姐妹，恰恰是因為他們受不了這種強烈的愛。
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.
在他們父母的晚年，據說有些獨生子女所承受的負擔是那些非獨子女所沒有的。美國全國看護聯盟(National Alliance for Caregiving)的數據顯示，實際上，與父母關係最近的子女通常肩負著照顧老人的責任。然而，獨自麵對父母的死亡還是讓人極度不安，在我對數以百計的獨生子女的采訪中，我發現當他們在決定是要一個還是更多孩子時，他們感到這是最根本的問題。
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.
考慮到目前大約五分之一的美國家庭是獨生子女家庭，這似乎正是探討對獨生子女的誤解和單獨養大一個孩子的危險的最佳時刻。首先，獨生子女家庭明顯更適合這個資源減少的時代。這或許能解釋，為什麽最近的研究顯示，擁有一個孩子的父母顯得更愉快。例如，在賓夕法尼亞大學(University of Pennsylvania)最近的一次研究中，漢斯-彼得·科勒(Hans-Peter Kohler)調查了3.5萬對雙胞胎，並發現在那些擁有孩子的母親之中，最快樂的是隻有一個孩子的。你可以說我自私，但作為一個孩子的母親，我很高興我會比有更多孩子時擁有更多的時間、能量和資源。這對我的家庭和個人來說，很明顯都是更好的選擇。
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.
大多數人說，他們生第一個孩子是為了他們自己，第二個則是為了第一個。但如果孩子沒有兄弟姐妹也不一定是壞事，那麽誰才是這種思維的受益者呢？與其去為滿足我們想象中自己被賦予的傳宗接代責任而作出家庭決定，我們不如先確保自己最重大的選擇是作為一個純粹獨立的個人而作出的。這樣做，或許能讓人們感到某些很少與做父母相聯係的感覺：自由。
再有不知道是不是因為獨生的原因，他愛跟同學交朋友，話也多。如果是按遺傳來講，好像他不應該是這樣的性格。
看他自己一個人家在，也玩的很開心，我們大人都忙，在家從小就很少陪他玩。雖然是獨生子，也很少嬌慣他，感覺他挺容易高興和滿足的。
從來沒有覺得無趣，自己玩兒得很開心。
非常地不自私，不自私到了不會保護自己的程度，因為從來沒有和別人爭搶過，因此不知道如何爭搶，也不怕失去，因此不自私。
但是，也不會假模假式地謙讓，因為不用裝懂事兒來博得大人的讚揚。從來都是無論有什麽東西，都要和周圍的人平分，因此不謙讓，而是直接就給了。
我父母，祖父母，外祖父母，沒有一個是家裏的老大。如果他們父母中任何一個選擇了要獨生子女，我就不會在這個世界上享受生活。基因的延續和擴大是自己未來的利益。選擇擴大還是縮小自己未來的基因，就看你自己是否適應在這個世界上生存。你覺得生活累，生活沒勁，養孩子累，不想多要，隻能證明你不適應在這個社會生存，未來社會你的基因越來越少。你熱愛生活，熱愛家庭孩子，多要孩子，你就適應這個社會的生活，未來世界就是你的基因的天下。