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Are Fathers ecessary?

沒有父親又如何？

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

——父輩的奉獻也許并非像我們想的那樣必不可少

By Pamela Paul

帕梅拉·保羅（Pamela Paul） 撰文 海瑞兩千 譯

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.”

即便是在經濟衰退中遭創最重，因而其他方面亦顏面盡失的男人，也會因其身為人父這個不可或缺的角色而自感岸然。巴拉克·奧巴馬在2008年父親節演講中慷慨陳詞：父親，對每個家庭的基礎來說，是“至關重要的”。“他們既是教師又是輔導員。他們既是賢明的顧問，又是楷模。他們是成功的樣板，又是不斷鞭策我們朝著成功邁進的人。”

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.

這些似乎都沒什么特別值得爭議的。同樣，對于奧巴馬朗朗讀出的那些一連串不良統計數字也是如此：與有爸爸的小孩子相比，沒有爸爸而成年的小孩子在貧困與犯罪中度過的可能性是5倍、更容易輟學的是9倍、更容易坐牢的是20倍。當時奧巴馬引證的是一份人們通常可接受的且會被不斷更新的研究數據。這位實際上沒有父親的奧巴馬，無疑是無父者中的一個特例。至于無父者其它方面的表現則是：母乳喂養不足、易于出現注意力不足多動癥、不能形成穩固可靠的親和力、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.

自由派女性主義的媽媽們不遺余力地支持上述數據，也迫切要求我們那些感情投入、滿心熱忱地手提尿布、菜籃子在撫養雙職工子女的怪圈中精疲力竭的伙伴兒們的參與。我們告訴我們的丈夫說：爸爸，對子女有著本質上的影響，是唯一的收益來源。

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.

這里只有一個問題 ：以下所述沒有一個被證明。在二月號的《婚姻與家庭》雜志上，紐約大學的社會學教授朱迪思·史黛絲（Judith Stacey)和來自南加利福尼亞大學的人口統計學家蒂莫西·比布拉茲（Timothy Biblarz），匯總了現有的有關子女撫養中性別角色的數據。史黛絲和比布拉茲做了這樣的說明：我們關于“爸爸”的所作所為及所付撫養的概念，主要是建立在已婚雙親家長和單親女性家長相比對的基礎上的：一次蘋果-柑橘式比較的演習，它把性別、性傾向、婚姻狀況、生物遺傳關系放在一起以多種方法進行比較，而不是一種真正“家長性別背景”——已婚男性同性戀力偶或已婚女性同性戀儷偶與已婚異性伉儷相比、或者單身父親與單身母親相比——意義上的比較。多數研究數據，往往把父親與父親所供給的收益作等量觀，也不分別在世的“父親”和在世的 “父母中的第二家長”（second parent），即對后者不做性別上的區分。

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.

對比以下那些可靠的比較研究，你就不難斷定：比之單身爸爸，單身媽媽對她的孩子往往投入的更多、設定的規矩也更多、交流更好，感情也更親密。她們幾乎不用費力即可覺察到孩子的行蹤、交友以及學業上的進步。她們的孩子考試成績往往較好，畢業成績等級也較高，實際上，單身媽媽的十幾歲的孩子，比之單身爸爸的，幾乎沒有什么不良行為或不良嗜好。好樣的，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.

比布拉茲和史黛絲說：父母對子女的養育質量是問題的真正所在，而不是性別。不過，對我們“不可或缺的”父親這個概念的真正挑戰很可能就是同性戀媽媽。一般說來，女同性戀家長與孩子在一起的時間多于父親與孩子在一起的時間。他們認為女同性戀家長與孩子吵嘴也不像異性戀夫婦那樣頻繁，并對“共同監護子女”作了更為恰當和頗令人滿意的描述。與異性戀的小孩子感覺不同的是，同性戀“父母”的孩子感覺他們的“父母”更能適應他們、更可信賴。他們幾乎沒有行為上的問題，而且表現出更多的興趣且一心努力向學。

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.”

據史黛絲和比布拉茲說，“兩個決定一起做‘父母’的女人，大概能夠貢獻出雙倍于一個中產階級的‘女性的溫柔’來養育孩子。”而且他們還得出結論說：“只要嚴格從已經發布的科學的立場出發，就可以證明：一般來說，兩個女人做家長要比一個女人和一個男人做家長更好，至少強于與傳統上分擔家務的男人和女人。

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.

噯，問題就在這里。雖然嘴巴上都嚷嚷著反對，但大多數異性戀男女還是喜歡這種傳統的家庭分工。對“依照性別分配”家長角色這種習慣的依附，成就了一種頗具魅力的行為定勢。父親，對你所要的一切，只是大略的把握。可剩下來的事情，就都是由我們這些作家政秘書的媽媽們來掌管了。我們可以給你們當爹的發號明細的指令，可你們還未必能做得好。當代家庭研究會研究部主任斯蒂芬妮·科恩茨（Stephanie Coontz）說：“即便是那些想讓丈夫幫襯一把帶帶孩子的婦女，也都不想放棄她們的這個傳統權威。” 除了我們實用主義地皈依這種角色之外，我們依然還是生活在一種帶有根深蒂固的父權觀念——父親無所不在，不僅僅是另外一雙手——的文化之中，就連男人、女人、甚至孩子們也都依附于它。

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.

對爸爸來說，壞消息是：不管一般看法如何，爸爸的貢獻，在客觀上決不是不可或缺的東西。好消息是：我們對他已經習慣了。

譯者注：

⑴墨菲·布朗（Murphy Brown） 是美國哥倫比亞廣播公司從1988年11月14日至1998年5月18日播出的一部共247集的情景喜劇。在美國非常受歡迎。女主角 Murphy Brown 是一個采訪記者，故事就圍繞著她的工作和生活展開。有一段情節說的是她在其男友向她表示不想結婚后，依然決定生下他們的孩子，所以她也是一個 single mother。由于這個電視劇極受歡迎，這一情節也就成了美國自由派的“一面旗幟”。92年總統大選時，當時的共和黨副總統 Dan Quale （老布什當時是總統）還專門指名道姓批評這個劇歌頌 單身媽媽 、違背傳統的家庭價值觀、阻礙社會發展，等等，在當時引起轟動。由于 Dan Quale 是典型的“小 K”、富家公子，對窮人、普通人的事情一無所知，不說胸無點墨的話反正也沒幾滴，是媒體最喜歡的取笑對象，他的抨擊反而給“墨菲·布朗” 壯了聲勢，于是，墨菲·布朗便成了“單身母親”的代名詞。

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