Are Fathers ecessary?

没有父亲又如何？

A paternal contribution may not be as essential as we think.

——父辈的奉献也许并非像我们想的那样必不可少

By Pamela Paul

帕梅拉·保罗（Pamela Paul） 撰文 海瑞两千 译

Even the most recession-walloped and otherwise diminished man can take pride in his essential role as father. Fathers, Barack Obama intoned in a 2008 Father’s Day speech, are “critical” to the foundation of each family. “They are teachers and coaches. They are mentors and role models. They are examples of success and the men who constantly push us toward it.”

即便是在经济衰退中遭创最重，因而其他方面亦颜面尽失的男人，也会因其身为人父这个不可或缺的角色而自感岸然。巴拉克·奥巴马在2008年父亲节演讲中慷慨陈词：父亲，对每个家庭的基础来说，是“至关重要的”。“他们既是教师又是辅导员。他们既是贤明的顾问，又是楷模。他们是成功的样板，又是不断鞭策我们朝着成功迈进的人。”

None of this would seem particularly controversial. Nor would the ominous statistics Obama reeled off about kids who grow up without Dad: five times as likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times as likely to drop out of school, and 20 times as likely to wind up in prison. Obama was citing a commonly accepted and constantly updated body of research. The effectively fatherless Obama is clearly a freakish outlier. As for the rest of the fatherless: insufficiently breast-fed, apt to develop attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, unable to form secure bonds, lacking self-esteem, accident prone, asthmatic, and fat.

这些似乎都没什么特别值得争议的。同样，对于奥巴马朗朗读出的那些一连串不良统计数字也是如此：与有爸爸的小孩子相比，没有爸爸而成年的小孩子在贫困与犯罪中度过的可能性是5倍、更容易辍学的是9倍、更容易坐牢的是20倍。当时奥巴马引证的是一份人们通常可接受的且会被不断更新的研究数据。这位实际上没有父亲的奥巴马，无疑是无父者中的一个特例。至于无父者其它方面的表现则是：母乳喂养不足、易于出现注意力不足多动症、不能形成稳固可靠的亲和力、缺乏自尊、易出事故、哮喘、以及肥胖。

Liberal feminist moms—eager for the participation of our emotionally evolved, enthusiastically diaper-bag-toting mates in the grueling round of dual-career child rearing—are keen to back the data. Dads, we tell our husbands, are essential influences on children, the source of unique benefits.

自由派女性主义的妈妈们不遗余力地支持上述数据，也迫切要求我们那些感情投入、满心热忱地手提尿布、菜篮子在抚养双职工子女的怪圈中精疲力竭的伙伴儿们的参与。我们告诉我们的丈夫说：爸爸，对子女有着本质上的影响，是唯一的收益来源。

There’s only one problem: none of this is proven. In the February issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, Judith Stacey, a professor of sociology at New York University, and Timothy Biblarz, a demographer from the University of Southern California, consolidated the available data on the role of gender in child rearing. As Stacey and Biblarz point out, our ideas of what dads do and provide are based primarily on contrasts between married-couple parents and single-female parents: an apples-to-oranges exercise that conflates gender, sexual orientation, marital status, and biogenetic relationships in ways that a true comparison of parent gender—one that compared married gay-male couples or married lesbian couples to married heterosexuals, or single fathers to single mothers—would not. Most of the data fail to distinguish between a father and the income a father provides, or between the presence of a father and the presence of a second parent, regardless of gender.

这里只有一个问题 ：以下所述没有一个被证明。在二月号的《婚姻与家庭》杂志上，纽约大学的社会学教授朱迪思·史黛丝（Judith Stacey)和来自南加利福尼亚大学的人口统计学家蒂莫西·比布拉兹（Timothy Biblarz），汇总了现有的有关子女抚养中性别角色的数据。史黛丝和比布拉兹做了这样的说明：我们关于“爸爸”的所作所为及所付抚养的概念，主要是建立在已婚双亲家长和单亲女性家长相比对的基础上的：一次苹果-柑橘式比较的演习，它把性别、性倾向、婚姻状况、生物遗传关系放在一起以多种方法进行比较，而不是一种真正“家长性别背景”——已婚男性同性恋力偶或已婚女性同性恋俪偶与已婚异性伉俪相比、或者单身父亲与单身母亲相比——意义上的比较。多数研究数据，往往把父亲与父亲所供给的收益作等量观，也不分别在世的“父亲”和在世的 “父母中的第二家长”（second parent），即对后者不做性别上的区分。

Drawing on reliable comparative studies, you could say this: single moms tend to be more involved, set more rules, communicate better, and feel closer to their children than single dads. They have less difficulty monitoring their children’s whereabouts, friendships, and school progress. Their children do better on standardized tests and have higher grades, and teenagers of single moms are actually less likely to engage in delinquent behavior or substance abuse than those of single dads. Go, Murphy Brown.

对比以下那些可靠的比较研究，你就不难断定：比之单身爸爸，单身妈妈对她的孩子往往投入的更多、设定的规矩也更多、交流更好，感情也更亲密。她们几乎不用费力即可觉察到孩子的行踪、交友以及学业上的进步。她们的孩子考试成绩往往较好，毕业成绩等级也较高，实际上，单身妈妈的十几岁的孩子，比之单身爸爸的，几乎没有什么不良行为或不良嗜好。好样的，墨菲·布朗（Go, Murphy Brown. ）⑴

The quality of parenting, Biblarz and Stacey say, is what really matters, not gender. But the real challenge to our notion of the “essential” father might well be the lesbian mom. On average, lesbian parents spend more time with their children than fathers do. They rate disputes with their children as less frequent than do hetero couples, and describe co-parenting more compatibly and with greater satisfaction. Their kids perceive their parents to be more available and dependable than do the children of heteros. They also discuss more emotional issues with their parents. They have fewer behavioral problems, and show more interest in and try harder at school.

比布拉兹和史黛丝说：父母对子女的养育质量是问题的真正所在，而不是性别。不过，对我们“不可或缺的”父亲这个概念的真正挑战很可能就是同性恋妈妈。一般说来，女同性恋家长与孩子在一起的时间多于父亲与孩子在一起的时间。他们认为女同性恋家长与孩子吵嘴也不像异性恋夫妇那样频繁，并对“共同监护子女”作了更为恰当和颇令人满意的描述。与异性恋的小孩子感觉不同的是，同性恋“父母”的孩子感觉他们的“父母”更能适应他们、更可信赖。他们几乎没有行为上的问题，而且表现出更多的兴趣且一心努力向学。

According to Stacey and Biblarz, “Two women who chose to become parents together seemed to provide a double dose of a middle-class ‘feminine’ approach to parenting.” And, they conclude, “based strictly on the published science, one could argue that two women parent better on average than a woman and a man, or at least than a woman and man with a traditional division of family labor.”

据史黛丝和比布拉兹说，“两个决定一起做‘父母’的女人，大概能够贡献出双倍于一个中产阶级的‘女性的温柔’来养育孩子。”而且他们还得出结论说：“只要严格从已经发布的科学的立场出发，就可以证明：一般来说，两个女人做家长要比一个女人和一个男人做家长更好，至少强于与传统上分担家务的男人和女人。

Ah, there’s the rub. All howling to the contrary, most heterosexual men and women like that traditional division. Sticking to “gendered” parenting roles offers a seductive affirmation. Fathers, roughhouse all you want. But we, gatekeeper moms, are in charge of the rest. We could give you detailed instruction, and you still couldn’t possibly do it as well. “Even women who want their husbands to help more with the kids don’t want to give up their traditional authority,” says Stephanie Coontz, director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families. In addition to our pragmatic embrace of these roles, we still live in a culture with a deeply embedded notion of what a father is, beyond just another set of hands, and men, women, and children cling to it.

嗳，问题就在这里。虽然嘴巴上都嚷嚷着反对，但大多数异性恋男女还是喜欢这种传统的家庭分工。对“依照性别分配”家长角色这种习惯的依附，成就了一种颇具魅力的行为定势。父亲，对你所要的一切，只是大略的把握。可剩下来的事情，就都是由我们这些作家政秘书的妈妈们来掌管了。我们可以给你们当爹的发号明细的指令，可你们还未必能做得好。当代家庭研究会研究部主任斯蒂芬妮·科恩茨（Stephanie Coontz）说：“即便是那些想让丈夫帮衬一把带带孩子的妇女，也都不想放弃她们的这个传统权威。” 除了我们实用主义地皈依这种角色之外，我们依然还是生活在一种带有根深蒂固的父权观念——父亲无所不在，不仅仅是另外一双手——的文化之中，就连男人、女人、甚至孩子们也都依附于它。

The bad news for Dad is that despite common perception, there’s nothing objectively essential about his contribution. The good news is, we’ve gotten used to him.

对爸爸来说，坏消息是：不管一般看法如何，爸爸的贡献，在客观上决不是不可或缺的东西。好消息是：我们对他已经习惯了。

译者注：

⑴墨菲·布朗（Murphy Brown） 是美国哥伦比亚广播公司从1988年11月14日至1998年5月18日播出的一部共247集的情景喜剧。在美国非常受欢迎。女主角 Murphy Brown 是一个采访记者，故事就围绕着她的工作和生活展开。有一段情节说的是她在其男友向她表示不想结婚后，依然决定生下他们的孩子，所以她也是一个 single mother。由于这个电视剧极受欢迎，这一情节也就成了美国自由派的“一面旗帜”。92年总统大选时，当时的共和党副总统 Dan Quale （老布什当时是总统）还专门指名道姓批评这个剧歌颂 单身妈妈 、违背传统的家庭价值观、阻碍社会发展，等等，在当时引起轰动。由于 Dan Quale 是典型的“小 K”、富家公子，对穷人、普通人的事情一无所知，不说胸无点墨的话反正也没几滴，是媒体最喜欢的取笑对象，他的抨击反而给“墨菲·布朗” 壮了声势，于是，墨菲·布朗便成了“单身母亲”的代名词。

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