妈妈总有操不完的心

Mom: The Designated Worrier

妈妈总有操不完的心

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?”

我女儿很爱听我讲一个故事：带着她哥哥——也就是我的长子——从医院回到家次日，我一心认定自己即将死去。我啜泣着问丈夫：“谁会给他穿袜子呢?谁来保证他会穿着他的小袜子呢?”

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

“你没想过爸爸会给他穿上袜子吗?”我女儿大声说道，我的愚蠢让她乐不可支。

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

“我当时不确定他会记得，”我说，“也不确信他手边会有足够的袜子。”

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.

当然了，初为人母者的大脑会有些变化。但我还是从自己产后的反常行径中觉察到了什么。我得郑重声明，我丈夫非常擅长给孩子穿袜子。不过，对孩子的袜子格外上心的家长，会是确保家里备有足够袜子的人。而且一旦揽下一项任务，可能就意味着把孩子幼年时期的照管事宜统统揽上身了。当妈的人买了婴儿软底鞋之后一定会买洗瓶机，就如同她一旦参加孩子的班级旅行，就很有可能要由她物色保姆，备好铅笔一样。我的意思并不是每件事都要由她来做，而是她会确保有人把几乎所有事情都做好。

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.

社会学家有时会把打理家务称为“让人操心的工作”，把打理家务的人称为“被指定的操心人”，因为要搞定一切，你得有十足的精气神儿才行。

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亲和做母亲同样操心的结论。但事实并非如此。你那些夫妻双方都上班的朋友可能会谈及平摊家务的话题，但你无需理会他们的话。以来自所有社会阶层的异性恋夫妻为样本的各个社会学研究表明，总的来说，妈妈们会列出待办事项清单，爸爸们则会从中挑出他们想做的事情。不论一个女人喜欢还是讨厌让人操心的家务事，她都可能因为这些活计而无法全神贯于本职工作，在工作过程中受到干扰，甚至断送掉自己的职业生涯。这种日复一日的忧惧和安排让人分心，它或许是妨碍女性在职场上享有平等权利的所有因素中最难以改变的。

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.”

在打理家务事方面，性别责任的重构竟艰难到如此地步，这真是令人惊讶。现如今，一半以上的美国女性都是职业女性;而且40%美国女性是尚有需要抚养的未成年孩子的家庭中唯一或者主要的养家糊口者。此外，过去40年间，家务活儿的分配变得越来越平均了(尽管这更多是因为女人摆脱了某些家务活儿，而非男人多承担了家务活儿)。不过，“有些家务活的分配并非如此，照看孩子就是其中之一，女人得随时观察非常规的细节——以判断何时得带孩子去看医生，何时得帮他们写请假条，将心神专注于这一层面，”著有《对半分：如何均摊育儿负担》(Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works)一书的社会学家弗朗辛·多伊奇(Francine Deutsch)说。

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.

过去几十年里，必须在这类细节上耗费的精力也成倍增长。用社会学者安妮特·拉鲁(Annette Lareau)的话说，这是因为我们致力于子女的“深度培养”。我们把孩子送进舞蹈班、足球队、辅导课——往往是每周有三四项课外活动。显然这些事要花费力气，不过它们也会导致不那么显著的时间成本：在网上搜寻最佳课程、订购设备，打包零食等等。我们担心孩子的负担过重，却似乎没有意识到我们自己的负担也过重。

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.

这里的“我们”，大家知道我指的是哪些人。拉鲁博士和社会学者埃利奥特·B·魏宁格尔(Elliot B. Weininger)于2008年共同进行的一项研究发现，尽管父亲往往会做些辅导玩乐之类的事情，但母亲才是进行幕后工作的人，从而保障了子女在体育等方面的追求得以实现。正如这项研究中的一位母亲描述的那样：“文书工作全部都是我做的，字全部都是我签的……这是我们家的日程表，上面大部分是格雷丝的安排。比如上个星期，五点半的舞蹈，周二的才艺表演，她课后要进行这个表演，然后是童子军活动……周三她要跳舞。周四她本来要去粉丝俱乐部，但是活动取消了。”两位研究人员还指出，当子女的活动减少时，母亲的带薪工作时长会增多，而父亲在这方面的数据不受子女活动量的影响。

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.

当然，对家庭事务分工的大致概括总是会有无数的例外。总体而言，同性伴侣在分工上更平等。负责看护子女的男性比20来年前也多出了不少。至于多出的具体程度，就要取决于回答这个问题的是男是女：家庭与职场研究所(Families and Work Institute)在2008年进行的一项研究显示，半数回应调查的男性表示，自己不是育儿方面的主要负责人，就是与配偶平等分担，然而三分之二的女性表示，她们才是主要负责人。可以从中推断，不是男性高估了自己的贡献，就是女性对这项工作有不同的定义。

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).

然后还有居家爸爸的现象：美国在这方面的数据已从1989年的110万人上升到2012的200万人。不过，其中仅有大约五分之一的父亲待在家里是为了照顾孩子，其余五分之四是因为失业、病休、上学或退休。这些父亲中，有一部分是育儿方面的主要负责人。然而，平均而言，不工作的男性每天挤出的做家务加育儿的时间要稍逊于3小时——比职业女性还少(每天3.4小时)。

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.”

我们女性之所以困在琐碎的事上，一个原因在于，我们事先并没有意识到这一点。密歇根大学(University of Michigan)的社会学者帕梅拉·斯莫克(Pamela Smock)讲述过一个故事，主角是自己教授的“女性与职业”课程上的学生。他们大多为女性，花了一个学期研习家务方面的男女分工问题。然而，就连他们也会在做报告的时候说漏嘴，使用男性“帮忙”的字眼。“只要还在用‘他帮忙’这种说法，”博士说，“我们就知道还没有取得性别平等。”

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，“帮忙”不等于分担。每次丈夫企图因为完成我要他做的事情而得到表扬时，我就会感到隐隐的怒火。话又说回来，我又从未列出各种清单的汇总清单，坚持二人平分。我也没见到友人在这么做。有女性告诉研究人员，必须为完成家务负责的感觉，要比家庭生活中任何其他的方面更令她们心焦。不过，就连她们，我也怀疑并非总是乐意让出控制权。

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“掌门母亲”的角色——当丈夫在负责却又没有努力让孩子完成刷牙或犹太成年礼练习这些事情的时候，我会翻白眼，或者在一旁出言嘲讽。这让丈夫抓狂，因为他是个很棒的父亲，而且他知道我对这一点心知肚明。但我就是没法管住自己。我心里有一杆秤，尽管这杆秤可上可下。

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.

请允许我更进一步，提出一种或许颇具争议的理论，来解释女性为何在牢牢把控育儿的“人力资源”方面：因为女性就是会更操心子女的事。这在很大程度上源于社会现实。母亲身处的环境是，其他母亲——更别提教师和校长——会用我们的孩子来对我们评头论足。也说不定是，我们自认为他们在对我们评头论足。反正这两种情况会产生一样的效果。不过，这方面还有一个生物学上的解释：我们演化成了爱操心的样子。

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.

从人类及其他动物身上搜集的证据，表明了我们这个物种中的女性，仿佛经过编程一样，为了让后代茁壮成长，会给予比男性更多的帮助。神经系统和内分泌的变化，怀孕期间和分娩之后产生的激素，如催产素和雌激素，会对母亲的情绪产生深远的影响，进而调节她们对孩子的依恋的深浅。

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.

这并不是说关心后代的男性不会对这种感受做出回应。实际上，照看孩子的男性，也会在大脑中经历相似的变化，不过并不完全相同(照看孩子的女性似乎会更多地运用处理情绪的神经网络)。还需要注意，一些母亲的情绪中，也有在她们感到必要的时候，杀死幼子的冲动。人类学家莎拉·布拉弗·赫迪(Sarah Blaffer Hrdy)的研究显示，动物的母亲和人类的母亲都有能力舍弃她们没有资源抚养的病弱后代。她把这称为“健康取舍”。不过总的来说，我们宁愿把孩子留在身边，让他们健康成长，并让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.

于是我们就会担心。而担心时，就会开始协调各种事务，进而同时处理多重任务。我们要发短信确定比赛的日期，同时整理电子表格。我们在那些拿不到报酬的事情上花费的时间，总是会受到低估。智能手机在这个方面尤其危险，因为它会让同时处理各种事情显得根本不是在工作。

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.

但那又能怎么样呢?总得有人安排日程，好腾出一起吃饭的时间，毕竟如果不一起吃饭那还算什么一家人?总得有人执行家务安排表。把这些事让别人去做能起到一些帮助，但“总的来说并不能节省时间，”社会学家阿利·霍克希尔德(Arlie Hochschild)对我说。霍克希尔德著有《我们如何捍卫私人生活》(The Outsourced Self)一书，她告诉我，聘请专业人士能给你带来“这个任务仍然是自我认同的一部分的幻觉，但却会引发一些内疚。”所以我们会过度补偿，在孩子睡前花过多的时间给他朗读，尽管那天下午老板已经有了怨言。而且请来照顾孩子的人也需要照顾。需要与保姆做些有意义的交谈，尽管你其实应该马上出门。

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.

随着全球化、互联网及其他力量让我们的工作日越来越长，也越来越难以预测，男人和女人都开始感到恼火。皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)在2013年发布的一项研究显示，表示很想待在家里陪孩子，但却因为需要收入而不得不工作的父亲和母亲人数几乎一样多。受访者中有大致相同比例的父亲和母亲——均为大约一半——称很难平衡工作和家庭。的确，父亲表示希望自己能多花些时间陪孩子的比例，比母亲要高。

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.

随着年轻世代的成长，也带来了新的希望。家庭与工作研究所(Families and Work Institute)开展的研究显示，与比X世代(Gen X)相比，新千年世代(millennials)中有更多人愿意分担家务、分担家庭事务的管理。密歇根大学(University of Michigan)修读组织管理的21岁学生珍娜·费奥尔(Jenna Fiore)和她长期交往的男友，在卡拉马祖学院(Kalamazoo College)学计算机科学专业的乔安卡罗·阿尼莫尼(Giancarlo Anemone)讨论过在今年春天毕业建立家庭后，如何公平地分配劳动——费奥尔说，要具体到“收生日礼物、整理购物单都该怎么分配”。

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：“问题不仅包括实际做那些工作，也包括谁来组织安排，谁来记住该做哪些事儿。”费奥尔认为，他们这样做就会比父母那一代人更容易，因为他们会使用记录家务的应用。她告诉我，自己已经对这些应用做了许多研究，现在倾向于使用一款叫做Cozi的“家庭管理软件”，它可以让双方都在待办事项的清单上输入内容，查看对方的日程安排。