当妈不是工作

当妈不是工作

Motherhood is tough and intense but it is not a job

Around the time I returned to work after the birth of my first child I went to visit a

lawyer friend who had also just had a baby and had decided to stay at home to look after him. 我生完第一个孩子回到工作岗位时去拜访了一位律师朋友，她也刚生完孩子，而且决定留在家里照顾他。

The lunch was going fine until I said that I envied her not having a job: it must be nice to be with her son all day. She looked at me with something close to loathing. She did have a job, she snapped. Bringing up her child was most definitely a job, and a much more worthwhile one than anything to do with corporate law. 我们的午餐本来进行得很顺利，直到我说我羡慕她不用工作——整天陪儿子肯定棒极了。她白了我一眼，气恼地说，她有工作，抚养孩子绝对是工作，而且这份工作比与公司法打交道有意义多了。

But was she right? Is motherhood a job? Margaret Thatcher thought it was — according to her, bringing up children was a management job. The Queen apparently thinks so too and told Kate Winslet that it was “the best job” there was. 她说得对吗？做母亲是份工作吗？玛格丽特 撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)生前认为是的，用她的话来说，抚养孩子相当于一份管理工作。女王显然也这么认为，她告诉凯特·温丝莱特 (Kate Winslet)，抚养孩子是世上“最棒的工作”。

Yet it now seems that middle-class mothers have changed their minds. The same sort of women who used to get furious with anyone who implied that raising children was not a job, are now equally indignant with those who say it is one. Last week Mumsnet, the social network for parents, put out a press release laying down the new law: “Motherhood is an emotional journey, not a job.” 然而现在看来，中产阶层的妈妈们已经改变了观念。过去只要有人暗示养孩子不是份工作就会生气的那些人，现在同样愤怒于有人说养孩子是份工作。育婴网站Mumsnet不久前发布了一条新闻，制定了新的金科玉律：“为人母是一次情感之旅，不是一份工作。”

This is the right answer, but for the wrong reason. Bringing up children is not a job, and never was one. Parenting is work — sometimes extremely hard work — but is not a job, as you do not get paid. The deal with a job is that you opt to do it and can resign whenever you like, but while you are doing it you must toe the line. 这句话后半句是对的，但前半句是错的。养孩子不是工作，而且从来就不是。养育孩子是一份天职（有时还是份极难完成的天职），但它不是工作，因为它是无薪的。工作的定义是，你选择做这份工作，不想干了还可以随时辞职，但只要你在做这份工作，你就必须履行职责。

As a columnist, I have to write this column because it is my job. As a parent, I can decide that I can’t be bothered to cook and order takeaway instead. At home in extremis I can shout and throw things; if I did that at work I would probably get fired. No matter how much my children think I am making a poor fist of bringing them up, they can’t get rid of me. Parenting is for life. Jobs are not. 作为一名专栏作家，我必须写这个专栏，因为这是我的工作。作为一名家长，如果我懒得做饭我可以决定叫外卖。在家的时候，极端情况下我可以大声喊叫和丢东西，如果上班时我这么干，多半会被炒掉。不论我的孩子们认为我对他们的抚养有多么失败，他们无法解雇我。养育是一辈子的事，工作不是。

Yet motherhood is not an “emotional journey” either. A journey is something that involves travelling from A to B, whereas mothering tends to be pretty static, in my case,

happening almost entirely in the kitchen. Neither is it a journey in any cheesy metaphorical sense. Motherhood starts at full emotional throttle and proceeds in the same vein forever. 但为人母也不是一次“情感之旅”。旅行的定义包含从A地前往B地，然而养育孩子往往是原地不动的，以我为例，我的养育时间几乎全都花在厨房里。当母亲也绝不是任何俗气的比喻意义上的旅行。为人母一开始就要付出百分之一百的情感，并且要永远保持这种状态。

The worst thing about describing raising children like this is not that it is brainless, but that it is exceedingly off-putting. If someone had told me at the outset that what I was embarking on was an “emotional journey” I would have gone off the idea altogether. 这类关于养孩子的比喻最糟糕的地方不在于它的愚蠢，而在于它让人望而生畏。如果一开始就有人告诉我，我将踏上一场“情感之旅”，我可能早就彻底打消了这个念头。

So why have mothers changed their minds about the job question? I suspect it is because we no longer think of jobs in the way we used to. 那么，为什么妈妈们会对养育孩子是不是工作的问题改变看法呢？我猜想这是因为我们对工作的看法与过去不同了。 Twenty years ago a job was a sign of status; now it is seen as drudgery and suggests a lack of imagination. Anyone who likes theirs has to pretend that they don’t view it as a job at all, but as an outlet for their passion and creativity. 二十年前，工作是身份地位的标志，现在则被视为苦差事，而且有乏味之嫌。那些喜欢自己工作的人，还得假装他们完全不将它看作一份工作，而是将它视为释放他们激情和创造力的一个出口。

Mothers used to insist on calling what they did a job because it made them feel better; now it does the reverse. Yet both reactions are daft. Jobs and parenting are equally vital to the survival of the human race, but the two activities exist on different planes and moral comparisons ought not to come into it. 妈妈们过去坚称养孩子是份工作，因为这会令她们感觉好点，现在却正相反。不过这两种反应都很傻。工作和养育子女对人类的生存同样重要，但这两种活动处于不同的层面，不该对其进行道德比较。

Saatchi & Saatchi has just done some research for Mumsnet on what the non-job of bringing up children is all about. It has concluded that mothers play eight different emotional roles, five of which I more or less agree with — carer, fan, friend, hero, safe house — while the remaining three — partner in crime, coach and rule breaker — make me feel very worried indeed. 盛世长城(Saatchi & Saatchi)刚刚为Mumsnet做了一项关于养孩子都包含哪些非专职工作的研究，其结论是：妈妈们扮演着八种不同的情感角色，我基本赞成其中五种——保姆、崇拜者、朋友、英雄、避难所，但我对其余三种深感担忧，它们是——共犯、教练和规矩破坏者。

Rule breaker? Partner in crime? What happened to nag or rule enforcer? What am I meant to say to my teenage son when he comes home from school with a bag full of

trigonometry homework? Sod that, here is some fake ID — why not go to the pub instead? 规矩破坏者？共犯？难道不应该是唠唠叨叨的人或规矩执行者？当我十几岁的儿子从学校背回家满满一书包的三角学家庭作业，我该说什么？难道我应该说：别管功课了，我这儿有些假身份证，干嘛不去酒吧呢？

This soppy list of roles tells us that there is one thing modern parenting has in common with modern jobs. Both have gone so far from the Theory X view of motivation — that everyone is basically lazy and so a little authoritarianism is called for — that they now shy away from ever saying: I am in charge. 这份肉麻的情感角色名单告诉我们，现代育儿与现代工作确有一个共同之处。“X理论”认为，每个人本质上都是懒惰的，因此一点点独裁是必要的。现代育儿和现代工作都对这一理论进行了如此大的发扬，以至于它们现在都避免说：我是负

责人。

Managers have to pretend that their greatest skill is as a coach; parents have to do the same. It’s all for show: very little coaching goes on in most companies; even less happens at home. Coaches have to have distance, patience and objectivity — hard to feel any of that towards your maddening, beloved child. 经理人必须假装自己最大的本事就是当教练，家长也一样。这都是做样子而已，多数企业里很少有上司为下属当“教练”，为子女当“教练”的家长就更少了。教练必须要有距离感、有耐心和客观，而对于令你恼火、让你深爱的孩子，你很难做到上述任何一点。

The pretence that motherhood is one long, democratic, emotional, jolly jape is a far worse lie than the one that says motherhood is a job. In the end, I am with Margaret Thatcher — who insisted that being a mother was a management job. She was wrong about the job; right about management. 虚伪地说做母亲是一次快乐民主的漫长情感“旅行”，是个比说做母亲是份工作更拙劣的谎言。归根到底，我还是同意玛格丽特 撒切尔的观点，她认为母亲是一份管理工作。关于工作这点她说错了，但关于管理她是对的。