现在让我们赞美一下单亲妈妈

现在让我们赞美一下单亲妈妈

Roughly 24 million, or one-third of all American children under age 18. are living with an unmarried parent, according to a Pew Research Center analysis last year of US Census Bureau data. And 81% of those single parent homes are headed by a mom.

皮尤研究中心去年对美国人口普查局数据的分析显示，约2400万人(占美国18岁以下儿童总数的三分之一)与独身父母生活在一起。81%的单亲家庭是由一位母亲领导的。

This has been a growing trend since the late 1960s. The number of kids being raised by mostly single moms has more than doubled between 1968 and 2017.

自20世纪60年代末以来，这已成为一种日益增长的趋势。从1968年到2017年，由单身母亲抚养长大的孩子数量增加了一倍多。

For the majority of my 12 years of Catholic school, I was the only student who lived with one parent. And for that reason, I was also, demonstratively, the poorest kid in my school. We lived off one paycheck, or paychecks when my mom held multiple jobs at once. The modest child support went to school tuition.

在我12年天主教学校的大部分时间里，我是唯一一个与单亲父母同住的学生。因为这个原因，我也是学校里最穷的孩子。我们只靠一份薪水过活，而我妈妈同时又身兼数职。微薄的儿童资助用于交学费。

Like most kids, I didn't want to be different. I wanted to be "normal." "Why can't we just be normal?" I'd often lament to my mom.

像大多数孩子一样，我不想与众不同。我想做个“正常人”。“为什么我们不能做个正常人?”我经常会向我妈妈哭诉。

I was embarrassed by our car, which broke down; embarrassed that we didn't seem to go anywhere for vacation; that I didn't have brand-name clothes; or video games; or cable TV; or anything else that my classmates had. I was embarrassed that my dad, who lived in a neighboring state, never came to any school events.

我们的车坏了，我很尴尬。我们似乎没有去任何地方度假，这让我很尴尬;我没有名牌衣服;或视频游戏;或有线电视;或者我同学有的其他东西。我的父亲住在邻州，从来没有参加过学校的任何活动，这让我很尴尬。

And I was teased for it. "Why don't you get a new car?" "Your gym shoes are fake Nikes." "Do you even have a dad?" I was often angry. I got into a lot of fights.

所以我被取笑了。”你为什么不买一辆新车呢?”你的运动鞋是假耐克鞋。“你有爸爸吗?”我经常生气。我打过很多次架。

Of course, my mother, like all parents, only added to that embarrassment. She was, and still is, artistically inclined and health-conscious. We went to museums and art stores instead of amusement parks and toy stores. I went to a summer camp run by cloistered monks ... in heavy brown robes. My mom performed in community theater and sometimes roped me into bit parts. We went to clown school ... together.

当然，我的母亲，像所有的父母一样，只会增加这种尴尬。她过去，现在都有艺术倾向和健康意识。我们去了博物馆和艺术商店，而不是游乐园和玩具店。我参加了一个由隐居僧侣举办的夏令营。穿着厚重的棕色长袍。我妈妈在社区剧院表演，有时还把我分成几个小角色。我们一起去了去了小丑学校…。

There has been a lot of research over the decades that has shown children of single parents report more family distress and conflict and live at a lower socioeconomic status compared to those growing up in two-parent households.

在过去的几十年里，有很多研究表明，与双亲家庭的孩子相比，单亲家庭的孩子报告有更多的家庭压力和冲突，社会经济地位较低。

Two-parent families usually have more income and are generally able to provide more emotional resources to children, and that's also a reflection of how little the United States in general does to support working mothers with parental paid leaveand access to more health services and quality education.

双亲家庭通常有更多的收入，通常能够为孩子提供更多的情感资源，这也反映了美国在支持职业母亲获得父母带薪休假、获得更多的医疗服务和优质教育方面做得是多么少。

For many, a single mom can create a much safer or more stable environment than living with an abusive parent and spouse. Just growing up in an unhappy marriage has an effect on children.

对许多人来说，单亲妈妈可以创造一个比虐待(孩子)的父母和配偶更安全或更稳定的环境。在不幸的婚姻中成长对孩子有影响。

A recent study, however, looked at the long-term effects of single parenthood on kids and found that it had nearly no impact on their general life satisfaction.

然而，最近的一项研究观察了单亲家庭对孩子的长期影响，发现它对孩子的总体生活满意度几乎没有影响。

The authors also found no evidence "supporting the widely held notion from popular science that boys are more affected than girls by the absence of their fathers." What mattered most in terms of thriving, they concluded, was the quality and strength of the relationship between children and parents.

研究人员还发现，没有证据“支持流行科学中普遍存在的观点，即父亲不在身边对男孩的影响比女孩大”。他们的结论是，孩子和父母之间关系的质量和强度对孩子的成长影响最大。

A separate 10-year study on single parenting that collected data from 40.000 households in the UK came to a similar conclusion last year. "There is no evidence of a negative impact of living in a single parent household on children's wellbeing, with regard to self-reported life satisfaction, quality of peer relationships, or positivity about family life," the report states.

去年，另一项针对单亲家庭的10年研究收集了英国4万户家庭的数据，得出了类似的结论。报告指出:“没有证据表明生活在单亲家庭对孩子的健康有负面影响，包括自我报告的生活满意度、同伴关系的质量或对家庭生活的积极态度。”

"Children who are living or have lived in single parent families score as highly, or higher, against each measure of wellbeing than those who have always lived in two parent families"

“与生活在双亲家庭的孩子相比，生活在单亲家庭或曾经生活在单亲家庭的孩子在各项幸福指标上的得分都很高，甚至更高。”

Speaking for myself, I'd go further and say there were benefits to being raised by a single mother, that it was foundational to becoming the adult I am now.

就我自己而言，我还想说说，由单身母亲抚养长大是有好处的，这是我成为现在这样的成年人的基础。

Being raised by a single parent required an Emersonian amount of self-reliance. I got myself to school in the morning, figured out how to apply to college, paid my way through that education and embarked on a career with no shortcuts.

由单亲抚养长大需要有爱默生式的自力更生。早上我自己去上学，想好了如何申请大学，付了学费，开始了没有捷径的职业生涯。

Let us now praise single mothers. The driven ones who choose to parent alone. The brave ones who divorced for the well-being of their kids and/or themselves. They are all raising about 19 million children right now, and they need all the support they can get.

现在让我们赞美一下单身母亲。那些选择独自抚养孩子的人。那些为了孩子和/或自己的幸福而离婚的勇敢的人。她们现在养育了大约1900万儿童，她们需要所有她们能得到的支持。