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Several years ago, while observing a parenting group in Minnesota, I was struck by a confession one of the women made to her peers: She didn't really care that her husband did the dishes after dinner. Sure, it was swell of him, and she had friends whose husbands did less. But what she really wanted, at that point in her day, was for her husband to volunteer to put the kids to bed. She would have been glad to sit in the kitchen on her own for a few minutes with the water running and her mind wandering. Another woman chimed in: 'Totally. The dishes don't talk back to you.'
幾年前，我在明尼蘇達州觀摩過一個育兒組織的討論會，一位女士對其他成員坦陳心跡對我觸動頗深。她說，她丈夫晚飯后刷盤子，但她一點也不覺得高興。當(dāng)然，他能刷盤子很了不起，她有一些朋友的丈夫家務(wù)做得更少。但晚飯之后她真正希望丈夫去做的事情是主動哄孩子睡覺。如果能一個人在廚房里坐幾分鐘，在水流聲中發(fā)發(fā)呆，她會感到很高興。另一位女士接過話頭：“完全正確。盤子不會跟你頂嘴。”
According to the American Time Use Survey-which asks thousands of Americans annually to chronicle how they spend their days-men and women now work roughly the same number of hours a week (though men work more paid hours, and women more unpaid). Given this balanced ledger, one might guess that all would finally be quiet on the domestic front-that women would finally have stopped wondering how they, rather than their husbands, got suckered into such a heavy load. But they haven't. The question is: Why?
《美國人時間使用調(diào)查》(American Time Use Survey)（這項一年一度的調(diào)查讓數(shù)千名美國人按時間順序記錄他們?nèi)绾味冗^一天的時間）顯示，如今男性和女性一周的工作時間基本相同（不過男性的有酬工作時間較長，女性的無酬工作時間較長）。既然這本時間賬是平衡的，我們也許會猜測，夫妻雙方在家務(wù)方面的所有矛盾最終都會平息――女性應(yīng)該終于不再疑惑為什么是她們而不是丈夫被如此沉重的負擔(dān)所糾纏。但她們的疑問并沒有消除。這是為什么呢？
Part of the problem is that averages treat all data as if they're the same and therefore combinable, which often results in a kind of absurdity. On average, human beings have half an Adam's apple, but no one thinks to lump men and women together this way. Similarly, we should not assume that men and women's working hours are the same in kind. The fact is, men and women experience their time very differently.
問題的部分原因在于，我們求平均數(shù)時會把所有數(shù)據(jù)都視為同質(zhì)的，因此認為它們可以合并，這通常會帶來一種荒唐的結(jié)果。比如說，平均而言，每個人有半個喉結(jié)，但實際上沒有人會這樣把男女合并計算。同樣，我們也不能以為男性和女性工作時間的性質(zhì)相同。事實是，男性和女性對時間的感知大相徑庭。
For starters, not all work is created equal. An hour spent on one kind of task is not necessarily the equivalent of an hour spent on another. Take child care, a task to which mothers devote far more hours than dads. It creates much more stress in women than other forms of housework. In 'Alone Together' (2007), a comprehensive look at the state of American marriage, the authors found that if women believe child care is unevenly divided in their homes, this imbalance is much more likely to affect their marital happiness than a perceived imbalance in, say, vacuuming.
首先，并非所有工作都“生而平等”。花在一種任務(wù)上的一小時不一定能與花在另一種任務(wù)上的一小時劃等號。就拿照顧孩子來說，母親在這項任務(wù)中花費的時間要比父親多得多。照顧孩子為女性帶來的壓力要比其他家務(wù)勞動大得多。2007年出版的《在一起獨處》(Alone Together)一書作者發(fā)現(xiàn)，如果女性覺得在照料孩子這件事上兩人職責(zé)分攤不均，這種不平衡會比她們在吸塵等其他家務(wù)上感受到的不平衡更易影響婚姻幸福。《在一起獨處》這本書對美國人的婚姻狀態(tài)進行了全面審視。
Or consider night duty. Sustained sleep deprivation, as we know, consigns people to their own special league of misery. But it's generally mothers, rather than fathers, who are halfway down the loonytown freeway to hysterical exhaustion, at least in the early years of parenting. According to the American Time Use Survey, women in dual-earner couples are three times more likely to report interrupted sleep if they have a child under the age of 1, and stay-at-home mothers are six times as likely to get up with their children as are stay-at-home fathers.
再來看看夜間照料。我們知道，持續(xù)的睡眠剝奪會讓人淪入一種特殊的悲慘境地，在通向歇斯底里和筋疲力盡的瘋狂高速公路上行程已經(jīng)過半。但駕車的幾乎總是母親，而不是父親，至少在有孩子的頭幾年是這樣。《美國人時間使用調(diào)查》顯示，在有一歲以下孩子的雙職工家庭里，女性睡眠被打斷的幾率是男性的三倍；而全職媽媽起床照看孩子的幾率是全職爸爸的六倍。
Funny: I once sat on a panel with Adam Mansbach, the author of the best-selling parody 'Go the F- to Sleep.' At one point in the discussion, he conceded that his partner put his child to bed most nights. He may have written a book about the tyranny of toddlers at bedtime, but in his house, it was mainly Mom's problem.
有件很有意思的事情：我曾與暢銷戲仿作品《快給我睡覺》(Go the F- to Sleep)一書作者亞當(dāng)・曼斯巴赫(Adam Mansbach)一同參加討論會。他在討論中承認，大多數(shù)晚上都是他的伴侶哄孩子睡覺。他是寫了本講述幼童睡前暴行的書，但在他家里，這個難題主要扔給了孩子的媽媽。
Complicating matters, mothers assume a disproportionate number of time-sensitive domestic tasks, whether it's getting their toddlers dressed for school or their 12-year-olds off to swim practice. Their daily routine is speckled with what sociologists Annette Lareau and Elliot Weininger call 'pressure points,' or nonnegotiable demands that make their lives, as the authors put it, 'more frenetic.'
讓情況更加復(fù)雜的是，母親承擔(dān)了過多的時間敏感型家務(wù)，不論是給幼童穿衣上學(xué)還是帶12歲的孩子去練游泳。她們每天的日程安排中布滿了社會學(xué)家安妮特・拉羅(Annette Lareau)和艾略特・魏因?qū)幐?Elliot Weininger)所說的“壓力點”，或者按照兩位作者的話說就是，讓她們生活變得“更抓狂”、毫無商量余地的要求。
These deadlines have unintended consequences. They force women to search for wormholes in the time-space continuum simply to accomplish all the things that they need to do. In 2011, the sociologists Shira Offer and Barbara Schneider found that mothers spend, on average, 10 extra hours a week multitasking than do fathers 'and that these additional hours are mainly related to time spent on housework and child care.'
這些最后期限會造成一些意外后果。它們迫使女性為完成她們需要做的所有事情而在連續(xù)的時空中尋找蟲洞。2011年，社會學(xué)家希拉・奧費爾(Shira Offer)和芭芭拉・施奈德(Barbara Schneider)發(fā)現(xiàn)，母親一周比父親平均多花10小時來處理多重任務(wù)，“這些額外的時間主要花在家務(wù)和育兒方面”。
When fathers spend time at home, on the other hand, it reduces their odds of multitasking by over 30%. Which may explain why, a few years ago, researchers from UCLA found that a father in a room by himself was the 'person-space configuration observed most frequently' in their close study of 32 families at home. It may also explain why many fathers manage to finish the Sunday paper while their wives do not-they're not constantly getting up to refill bowls of Cheerios.
而對父親們來說，呆在家里會將他們處理多重任務(wù)的可能性減少逾30%。這也許可以解釋，為什么幾年前加州大學(xué)洛杉磯分校(UCLA)的研究人員在針對32個家庭展開的細致入戶研究中發(fā)現(xiàn)，父親獨自呆在房間里是“最常見的個人―空間格局”。這也許還可以解釋為什么許多父親都能看完星期天的報紙，而他們的妻子則無法看完――因為父親不需要不斷起身往碗里加麥圈。
Being compelled to divide and subdivide your time doesn't just compromise your productivity and lead to garden-variety discombobulation. It also creates a feeling of urgency-a sense that no matter how tranquil the moment, no matter how unpressured the circumstances, there's always a pot somewhere that's about to boil over.
被迫把你的時間一分再分不僅會影響工作效率，而且常常會讓人頭暈?zāi)X脹。它還會帶來一種緊迫感――也就是不管當(dāng)下有多平靜，也不管環(huán)境有多輕松，你也總覺得某個地方有一罐即將沸騰的水。
'My husband says I cause some of the worry unnecessarily,' another Minnesota mother, who was part of the same parenting program, told me when I spent some time in her home.
參加上述育兒活動的另一位媽媽在我到她家拜訪時對我說：“我丈夫說，是我造成了一些不必要的擔(dān)憂。”
It's something that I hear a lot from parents. One of them-usually the mother-is more alive to the emotional undercurrents of the household. As a result, this more intuitive parent feels that the other parent-usually the father-is not doing his fair share, while the father feels that his wife is excessively emotional and wretchedly inefficient. But what really may be going on is that the couple is experiencing time differently, because each person is paying attention to different things.
我經(jīng)常聽父母們說這句話。父母中的一方（通常是母親）對家庭的情緒潛流更敏感。于是，直覺更敏銳的這一方會感覺另一方（通常是父親）沒有盡到應(yīng)盡的義務(wù)，而父親則感覺自己的妻子太過情緒化而且做事效率低得可憐。但真相也許是夫婦雙方對時間的感知不同，因為他們在關(guān)注不同的東西。
It's important to remember that fairness isn't just about absolute equality. It's about the perception of equality. Women may work fewer paid hours than men, but because they devote nearly twice as much time to family care (housework, child care, shopping), it doesn't look to women like their husbands are sharing the load evenly when they're all home together. It looks instead like their husbands are watching 'SportsCenter.'
我們必須牢記，公平不僅僅是絕對的平等，而是對平等的感知。女性的有酬工作時間可能比男性短，但她們用于照顧家庭（家務(wù)、照顧孩子、購物）的時間幾乎相當(dāng)于男性的兩倍，因此在女性看來，當(dāng)雙方都在家時，她們的丈夫并沒有均等地分擔(dān)家務(wù)。她們感覺丈夫總是在看體育新聞。
It's hard to overstate how stressful these perceived imbalances can be. At one point, the UCLA researchers took saliva samples from most of the subjects of their study to measure levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. They found that while leisure time went a long way toward relaxing fathers, it did far less to subdue anxiety in mothers. So what, you may ask, did calm the mothers?
這些感受到的不平衡帶來的壓力之大怎么形容都不過分。加州大學(xué)洛杉磯分校的的研究人員在研究中提取了多數(shù)對象的唾液樣本，以測量壓力荷爾蒙皮質(zhì)醇的水平。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，盡管閑暇時間能很好地幫助父親放松，但對減輕母親焦慮情緒的效果卻要差得多。那么你也許會問，什么才能讓媽媽們恢復(fù)平靜呢？
Simple: Seeing their husbands make a bigger effort to reduce the pandemonium in the house.
答案很簡單：看到丈夫能更加努力地減輕家里的亂局。
