又一篇好文来啦，请阁下细细品尝。为什么有些父母做事体贴又周到，却在养育孩子这件事上如此失败？在决定生孩子之前治愈你的童年创伤是很重要的，因为这些问题可能会冒出来，对一些人来说，不生孩子更好，这并没有什么错。如果经历了太多的创伤，会让我们没有更多的情感能力去给予孩子，而如果想要成为合格的父母，不仅需要回忆自己的童年经历，还要能够接受自己曾遭受的缺失，不把自己的痛苦发泄在更无助的孩子身上。Given how important it is to be properly loved by one’s parents in order to have an emotionally sane grown-up life, one may wonder with some urgency why the process can go so wrong in cases that range from the regrettable to the truly tragic. Why do some parents, who might in other areas be decent and thoughtful characters, fail so badly at being able to love the small people they have brought into the world? Among the many possibilities, two stand out in particular.鉴于父母恰当的爱对于一个人成年后能有正常的情感生活是多么重要，人们可能会很想知道，为什么在一桩桩从令人遗憾到真正的悲剧的各类事件中，养育孩子会出现如此多的问题。为什么有些父母，他们可能在其他方面做事体贴又周到，却在爱他们带到这个世界的小孩子这件事上如此失败？在众多的可能性中，有两点特别突出。The first stems from one of the most obvious and unavoidable features of early childhood: an infant arrives on earth in an entirely and almost shockingly vulnerable state. It cannot move its own head; it is utterly reliant on others. It has no understanding of any of its organs; it is in a penumbra of chaos and mystery. In such helpless circumstances, it must look up to others and beseech them for their mercy: it must ask them to bring it nourishment, to stroke its head, to bathe its limbs, to comfort it after a feed, to make sense of its fury and sadness.第一点源于幼儿期最明显同时不可避免的特征之一：一个婴儿初来到世上时，脆弱得难以想象，一切都要依靠其他人。它对自己的一切也都不了解，处于一种难以理解又混乱的混沌状态。在这种无助的情况下，它只能仰望着其他人，恳求获得他们的怜悯：请求他们给予它营养，抚摸它的头，清洗他的身体，在进食后安抚它，理解它的生气与难过。To most people, all this is just extremely sweet, but in order to take care of a very small person, an adult is forced to undertake a very particular kind of emotional manoeuvre—one which happens so intuitively and speedily in most of us that we tend not even to notice it unfolding: we are required to access our own memories of ourselves at whatever age our young and tender child happens to be in order that we can then more precisely deliver to it the care and attention it needs.对大多数人来说，所有这些都是甜蜜的负担。但为了照顾这样一个小人，一个成年人必须要进行一种非常特殊的情感调动，这种调动在我们大多数人身上发生得非常直觉且迅速，我们甚至注意不到它的发生：在我们年幼孩子成长的每一个阶段，我们都需要调动自己的记忆，以使我们能够更准确地提供给它所需要的照顾和关注。Most adults have no problem connecting with the child version of themselves, but this ability is far from natural or spontaneous: it is a function of health and a consequence of a degree of emotional privilege. For a more disadvantaged sort of parent, however, the task of care-via-identification is overwhelmingly challenging. Somewhere in themselves, a wall has been built many metres thick and topped with razor wire between their adult and child selves. Something in their childhoods was so difficult that they do not—and cannot—return there imaginatively.大多数成年人可以正常联系儿童版的自己，但这种能力并不是天生的或自发的：它首先需要健康的身心，并且是一定程度在情感上得到满足的结果。然而对于那些自身处境就很糟糕的父母来说，他们自己都不知道，通过参考自身经历来照顾孩子对他们来说是一件尤为困难的事。他们的内心有一堵墙，厚达数米、顶端装有刀片刺网，就树立在童年与成年的自我之间。在他们的童年中，经历过很多不堪，他们不能，也无法再回头想象。Perhaps there was a parent who died or who touched them in a way they shouldn’t, or who left them bereft and humiliated. Things in their childhoods were uncomfortable to such an extent that their whole adult identities have been founded on a thorough refusal ever to re-encounter the helplessness and vulnerability of their early years. They won’t be able to be patient with the little person’s clumsiness and confusion; they will have no interest in playing with teddies. They will think it pathetic how tearful their child has become because a four leaf clover got crumpled or a favourite book has a tear in it. They may—despite themselves—end up saying ‘Don’t be so silly’ or even ‘Stop being so childish’.也许父母有一方离世，或者以糟糕的方式对待他们，或不在他们身边，让他们受了委屈。他们的童年有着太多难以释怀的经历，以至于他们的整个成人身份都建立在彻底拒绝再次见到他们曾经的无助和脆弱之上。他们没有耐心去应对小孩子的笨拙与混乱，他们也没兴趣陪孩子玩玩具，他们会认为自己的孩子因为四叶草被揉皱或最喜欢的书被撕破就哭是很可悲的，他们最终也许只会说“别这么傻”甚至“别这么孩子气”。There can follow a second characteristic and associated failing in a parent: unresolved envy. However peculiar it can sound, a parent may envy its own child for the possibility that it might have a better childhood than they had and will unconsciously ensure it won’t. Though ostensibly committed to the care of the child, the parent will struggle against an impulse to inflict against it some of the very same obstacles they faced: the same neglect, the same uncaring school, the same lack of help with their development…第二个导致在为人父母这件事上失败的突出原因：未抚平的嫉妒心。尽管听起来很离谱，但父母的确可能因为孩子有机会拥有一个比自己曾经更好的童年而感到嫉妒，并会无意识地确保扼杀这种机会。尽管表面上还是在尽力地照顾孩子，但这些父母会需要抵抗对孩子施加自己曾经面临的困难的冲动：同样的被忽视、同样冷漠无情的学校、同样在成长的过程中孤立无援......The outward details may have changed, but the emotional impact will be the same. A new generation will suffer afresh. In order to parent properly, we not only need to access our memories of our own childhoods, we need to be able to come to terms with our deprivations so as not to feel jealous of those who might have a chance not to endure comparable ones in turn. But a certain kind of traumatised parent remains, at some level, identified in their minds as a needy disappointed child and would find it unbearable that another child had more than they did.外在的细节可能不尽相同，但情感上造成的影响将是一样的。新一代人将再次遭受痛苦。想要成为合格的父母，我们不仅需要回忆自己的童年经历，我们还要能够接受自己曾遭受的缺失，才能够做到不去嫉妒我们那些有机会避免遭受同样缺失的孩子。但某些经历过创伤的父母内心某种程度上仍然会把自己定义为一个缺爱的孩子，会无法忍受其他孩子比他们拥有的更多。They are like a tormented and tormenting sibling in a disadvantaged household, taking out their pain on someone more helpless, scrupulously making sure that the other child is as sad and lacking as they are. We cannot help having had the childhoods we had, but if we are planning to have a child, we have a supreme responsibility to ensure that we have a sane relationship to our own pasts: able to access them for reserves of tenderness and empathy and able not to feel envious of those who do not have to partake in their sufferings. We will be properly grown up when we are in a position to give our offspring the childhood we deserved, not the childhood we had.他们就像条件差的家庭中一个饱受折磨的孩子，把自己的痛苦发泄在更无助的人身上，想方设法地确保其他孩子过得与他们一样悲惨。对已经发生的童年我们无力改变，但如果我们准备有一个孩子，我们有不可推辞的责任确保我们与我们自己的过去有一个理智的关系：能够通过回忆从前获取温柔和同情，并能够做到不嫉妒任何不必分享他们痛苦遭遇的人。当我们能够做到给我们的后代提供一个我们应得的童年而不是曾经拥有的童年，才算真正的成人。By The School of Life译：Ahnam Law、良哥