是時(shí)候該注意到男性生物鐘啦！
Here’s a preview of what’s to come has Quirkyalone expands to become a group blog. This piece is written by my fantastic, quirkytogether poet friend Elline Lipkin. It’s cross-posted on girlwpen.com.
這篇文章是一篇文章的概述，該文章在Quirkyalone發(fā)展為一個(gè)博客圈。這個(gè)概述是由我在Quirky網(wǎng)上結(jié)識(shí)的一位非常了不起的詩人朋友Elline Lipkin所寫，被girlwpen.com網(wǎng)站轉(zhuǎn)載。
Lisa Belkin, ever on top of the nuances and foibles of dating, mating and family making in our time, points in a recent Sunday New York Times magazine piece to a new study that is sure to make (at least some) men squirm and women, as she puts it, “chortle” with delight; although the news is, for anyone who thinks about having kids, actually sobering.
Lisa Belkin是研究婚戀家庭方面的專家，她在《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》雜志周日刊發(fā)文說到了一項(xiàng)新研究。這個(gè)研究肯定會(huì)令（至少一些）男人不爽，而女人，照她所說，高興地“哈哈大笑”。盡管事實(shí)上這個(gè)消息對所有想要孩子的人來說，都是值得深思的。
Women often bear excruciating pressures around choosing when to have a child, from all angles, while men are told their biology is limitless, hence their chance at fatherhood is as well. Not so anymore. Throughout the past few years more and more evidence is coming to light linking a father’s age at conception to schizophrenia, autism, and bipolar disorder, as she points out (while the mother’s age at conception shows no such correlation). Two years ago the New York Times also ran a piece entitled “It Seems the Fertility Clock Ticks for Men, Too”. Now, Belkin highlights an Australian study that shows that children born to “older fathers have, on average, lower scores on tests of intelligence than those born to younger dads.
從各方面來講，女性在何時(shí)要小孩這個(gè)問題上通常承受著巨大的壓力，而男性，由于被告知他們的生理?xiàng)l件是沒有時(shí)間限制的，因此他們做父親的機(jī)會(huì)則一直良好。但現(xiàn)在看來不再是這樣子了。她指出，過去幾年里，越來越多的證據(jù)開始表明，父親生育的年齡和精神分裂癥、孤獨(dú)癥和躁郁癥之間存在著關(guān)聯(lián)（然而母親懷孕的年齡則沒有這樣的關(guān)聯(lián)）。兩年前《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》曾刊登一篇名為“生育能力的生物鐘對男性來說似乎也是在走動(dòng)的”的文章。如今，Belkin引用澳大利亞的一個(gè)研究，研究表明“父親年齡大的小孩，平均來講，在智商測試上得分比父親年齡小的小孩要低?！?b style="BACKGROUND: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%" class="label bg2" jquery1322702278656="37">
There are those who will take issue with the research, claim there’s no adjustment for environment, individual father’s IQ, parental involvement and more. But here are the two lines that made me want to sit up and shout “so there!”: “French researchers reported last year that the chance of a couple’s conceiving begins to fall when the man is older than 35 and falls sharply if he is older than 40.” Later in the article Belkin quotes Dr. Dolores Malaspina, a professor of psychiatry at New York University Medical Center who says, “It turns out the optimal age for being a mother is the same as the optimal age for being a father.” Ha! I wanted to shout at the screen as I was reading.
有人會(huì)對這項(xiàng)研究提出異議，聲稱沒有辦法調(diào)節(jié)環(huán)境、父親的智商、父母的照顧等因素的影響。但是有兩條線使我注意，并喊出“有的！”：“去年法國研究者匯報(bào)，一對夫婦懷孕的幾率在丈夫超過35歲時(shí)，就開始下降；而當(dāng)他超過40歲時(shí)，則急劇下降?！辈痪茫珺elkin引用Dolores Malaspina博士，紐約大學(xué)醫(yī)學(xué)中心的一位精神病學(xué)教授的話，他說，“事實(shí)證明，男人做父親的最佳年齡和女人做母親的最佳年齡事一樣的。”哈哈！我讀到這里的時(shí)候，當(dāng)時(shí)只想對著屏幕大笑！
Really, what I wanted was to do was shout this to all the 50something men who, when I was 35 and entering into the online dating world, contacted me, ignoring their agemates, specifically because they felt they were “finally ready” to get around to starting a family. Most were utterly unapologetic that part of what they were seeking was a woman they perceived to be still fertile enough to incubate their suddenly desired offspring. My response that being contacted in part so I could incubate a legacy child for them was insulting often fell on deaf ears.
事實(shí)上，我真正想做的事是對所有50歲左右的男性大喊。在我35歲的時(shí)候進(jìn)入交友網(wǎng)站，他們不顧自己的年齡來聯(lián)系我，主要因?yàn)樗麄冇X得他們“最終準(zhǔn)備好了”有足夠的時(shí)間來組成一個(gè)家庭了。大部分人供認(rèn)不諱地承認(rèn)，一定程度上他們是想找一個(gè)在他們突然想要孩子時(shí)，有能力給他們生兒育女的女人。在我看來，聯(lián)系我而只是想找一個(gè)生育的工具替他們生兒育女，這是一種極具侮辱性的做法，而通常我這樣的回應(yīng)從來都是對牛彈琴。
But what Belkin gets to at the end of her article –- and what I think bears far more exploration — is how scientific evidence that men too have a ticking biological clock could undermine what is a commonly socially accepted timeline. For women, shelf life and expiration date with fertility are fixed, while for men, well, they can always Tony Randall it, and procreate as he did in his 77th year. (Nevermind that in this New York Times article, “He’s Not My Grandpa. He’s My Dad,” Randall’s widow, left with two children under age 10, questions if her own long-range planning was all that wise and admits she’d tell her daughter not to marry an “older man.”
但是，Belkin在文章結(jié)尾卻提到——這也是我認(rèn)為值得再深入探索的地方——證明男人也有生育生物鐘的科學(xué)證據(jù)，如何能夠推翻社會(huì)上人們已接受的時(shí)間表呢？對于女人而言，生育能力的有效期是固定的，而對于男人而言，他們總能舉出Tony Randall在77歲還生子的例子。 （請留意在《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》的文章《他不是我爺爺，他是我父親》里，Randall的遺孀，被留下兩個(gè)不到十歲的孩子，質(zhì)疑自己長期的計(jì)劃是不是明智，并且承認(rèn)她會(huì)告訴女兒，不要嫁給“老男人”。）
While women have been tying themselves in knots over the message (given freely from everyone ranging from their OB/GYNs to their grandmothers) that they’d better not wait too long to have a child or their time will run out, most men seem to blithely assume there’s never an end point, an assumption social convention has largely supported.
不管是婦產(chǎn)科的醫(yī)生，還是她們的奶奶，每個(gè)人都在勸說女人最好不要太晚才要孩子，否則她們就沒時(shí)間了。當(dāng)女人們總是糾結(jié)著這樣的信息時(shí)，大部分男人則安之若素，認(rèn)為自己從來不會(huì)有終結(jié)點(diǎn)，而這樣的觀點(diǎn)也被社會(huì)普遍支持。
One past wannabe suitor even told me he thought it was great that his retirement would coincide neatly with his imagined child’s toddler years. When I asked him how much of his child’s life he expected to experience (did he think he’d ever be a grandfather if his child waited till his 50s to reproduce as well?) he admitted that just wasn’t something he had thought much about.
我過去的一個(gè)狂熱的追求者甚至告訴我，如果當(dāng)他退休時(shí)孩子剛蹣跚學(xué)步，他將會(huì)非常高興。我問他，你期望陪你的孩子走過他生命中的多少時(shí)間？（他有沒有想過，如果他的小孩也等到50多歲才要孩子，他還能不能做個(gè)爺爺？）他承認(rèn)，他從來沒有考慮過這個(gè)問題。
Beneath the social mating dance I experienced was the baseline assumption that male biology justified when men can start families – whenever they want – and their ageist attitudes toward women’s viability in this domain also went unquestioned, a mindset that smacks of patriarchal privilege. Belkin rightly points out how if this attitude was questioned, based on science, the mating priorities of both sexes could be upended, and changing that assumption is likely a good thing.
在社交相親舞會(huì)上，我接觸到了這樣的基本假設(shè)，認(rèn)為當(dāng)男人可以組成家庭時(shí)，男人的生理?xiàng)l件都是可以的——不管什么時(shí)候，只要他們想——他們在這個(gè)范圍內(nèi)對女性生育的年齡歧視也是毫無疑問的，一套典型的男性特權(quán)的思維模式。Belkin公正地指出，基于科學(xué)來質(zhì)疑這樣的態(tài)度，將會(huì)如何推翻兩性擇偶優(yōu)先考慮的條件，改變那樣的假設(shè)很可能是好事一樁。
What if, Belkin asks, the dynamic I found myself in was reversed, and women now saw men as “too old” to procreate with? Men might have to date women in their own age bracket, or, more shockingly be forced to admit that they too can be aged out of the window in which they can procreate, maybe not as much for biological reasons, as for social ones, if younger women refuse them, now using scientific evidence as to why they’re not good genetic material – a neat reversal to what men have been doing for years.
Belkin問道，如果我們置身其中的機(jī)制完全顛倒了，女人開始覺得男人“太老了”，不能生育了，會(huì)出現(xiàn)什么情況呢？男人可能不得不找年齡相當(dāng)?shù)呐藖砑s會(huì)，或者，更令人震驚地被迫承認(rèn)他們也可能因年齡而從生育的可能中出局，或許主要不是因?yàn)樯淼脑颍巧鐣?huì)原因，如果年輕的女性們用科學(xué)的證據(jù)來證明老男人不具備好基因，因此而拒絕和他們的話。
Larger than this, I think, is questioning how social structures could reform if 35-year-old men didn’t want to climb up the ladder singlemindedly anymore, because they knew their chances at fatherhood would decline if they waited – and then shear off a cliff at age 40. Would childcare finally be a priority in the workplace, or paternity leave? Some of this speaks to who’s still mainly responsible for childcare once a child is present – but if men and women were biologically on the same timetable, as science more and more strongly suggests they are – could there be a reach towards a more equitable view of balancing work and family, instead of mostly women spending many an angsty moment in their 30s wondering just how this is all going to work out.
我想，影響可能還不止于此。如果35歲的男人們不想再一心一意地在職場上不斷攀升，因?yàn)樗麄冎廊绻麄円恢钡认氯?，他們做父親的機(jī)會(huì)將會(huì)下降——而到40歲的時(shí)候急劇跌落——社會(huì)結(jié)構(gòu)將會(huì)發(fā)生怎樣的變化呢？在職場中有沒有可能把兒童保育作為一個(gè)優(yōu)先考慮的因素，或者產(chǎn)生父親假呢？這可能會(huì)牽涉到當(dāng)孩子來臨時(shí)，誰對兒童保育負(fù)主要責(zé)任的問題。但既然科學(xué)越來越強(qiáng)烈地證明，男人和女人在生理上的時(shí)間表是一致的，那么人們對于平衡工作和家庭會(huì)不會(huì)有一個(gè)更合理的觀念，而非大部分女人們在30多歲時(shí)不斷憂心忡忡地考慮怎樣處理這個(gè)問題。
If a new understanding of blending career trajectory with family hits a man at 27, rather than 47 (the magic number, I found when it seemed to dawn on unmarried men ‘hmmm better get on this wife and kids thing’), how could this change social expectations as they cross with biological imperatives? Yet, I take to heart Belkin’s comment that this might just be another thing that women will worry about – rather than men.
如果當(dāng)一個(gè)男人在27歲，而非在47歲（這個(gè)神奇的數(shù)字，是未婚男人開始考慮“最好還是娶個(gè)老婆養(yǎng)個(gè)孩子吧”的年齡）時(shí)才想到把事業(yè)的軌跡和家庭放在一塊兒，那么，當(dāng)他們達(dá)到了生理上的年齡期限時(shí)，社會(huì)期望將會(huì)怎樣改變呢？我也極其贊同Belkin的評論，這是女人們將會(huì)擔(dān)心的另一個(gè)問題，而非男人們。
And I’m sure the press will never blow up this story (lonely 50something man faces the fact he’ll never have kids!) the way this narrative comes around every few years as a cautionary tale meant for younger women not to wait too long or be too picky. Also galling is the propensity to hear humorous smirking at “l(fā)ate fatherhood” stories but the vilification of “older women,” who conceive using donor eggs, as ridiculously selfish in starting a late-in-life family. “But it would be a satisfying start if men had to pause and see age as part of their biological equation, too,” says Belkin.
我敢肯定，媒體不會(huì)宣傳這個(gè)消息的（50多歲的獨(dú)身男人面臨著永遠(yuǎn)沒有孩子的可能）。每過幾年這種警戒性的故事都是講述給年輕女性聽的，別等太久，別太挑剔了。而且，人們很少聽到戲謔地嘲笑晚做父親的人的聲音，卻總是聽到對“老女人”的誹謗，她們認(rèn)為為了晚一些才組成家庭而用捐贈(zèng)的卵子是極其可笑、自私的事情?！暗?，男人們不得不停下來考慮年齡的問題，這將是一個(gè)令人滿意的開始?！盉elkin說。
I couldn’t agree more.
我是再同意不過了。
聯(lián)系客服
