女性一定要爲人母嗎

有的女性認爲女人一定要做了母親纔算完整，這個社會似乎也是以這種觀點爲主流。但是，有的女性就是對做母親有種排斥心理，有的人已經做了母親還有把孩子丟掉的衝動。她們有自己的理由，我們來看看她們最內心的想法。接下來，小編給大家準備了女性一定要爲人母嗎,歡迎大家參考與借鑑。

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off at a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

The Nebraska state government, realizing the tremendous mistake it had made, held a special session of the legislature to rewrite the law in order to add an age limitation. Governor Dave Heineman said the change would "put the focus back on the original intent of these laws, which is saving newborn babies and exempting a parent from prosecution for child abandonment. It should also prevent those outside the state from bringing their children to Nebraska in an attempt to secure services."

One father dropped off his entire family.

On November 21, 2008, the last day that the safe haven law was in effect for children of all ages, a mother from Yolo County, California, drove over 1,200 miles to the Kimball County Hospital in Nebraska where she left her 14-year-old son.

What happened in Nebraska raises the question: If there were no consequences, how many of us would give up our kids? After all, child abandonment is nothing new and it's certainly not rare in the United States. Over 400,000 children are in the foster care system waiting to be placed in homes, thousands of parents relinquish their children every year. One woman even sent her adopted child back to his home country with an apology letter pinned like a grocery list to his chest. Whether it's because of hardship or not, many Americans are giving up on parenthood.

In February 2009, someone calling herself Ann logged onto the website Secret Confessions and wrote three sentences: "I am depressed. I hate being a mom. I also hate being a stay at home mom too!" Over three years later, the thread of comments is still going strong with thousands of responses -- the site usually garners only 10 or so comments for every "confession." Our anonymous Ann had hit a nerve.

One woman who got pregnant at 42 wrote, "I hate being a mother too. Every day is the same. And to think I won't be free of it until I am like 60 and then my life will be over." Another, identifying herself only as k'smom, said, "I feel so trapped, anxious, and overwhelmed. I love my daughter and she's well taken care of but this is not the path I would have taken given a second chance."

Gianna wrote, "I love my son, but I hate being a mother. It has been a thankless, monotonous, exhausting, irritating and oppressive job. Motherhood feels like a prison sentence. I can't wait until I am paroled when my son turns 18 and hopefully goes far away to college." One D.C.-based mom even said that although she was against abortion before having her son, now she would "run to the abortion clinic" if she got pregnant again.

The responses -- largely from women who identify themselves as financially stable -- spell out something less explicit than well-worn reasons for parental unhappiness such as poverty and a lack of support. These women simply don't feel that motherhood is all it's cracked up to be, and if given a second chance, they wouldn't do it again.

Some cited the boredom of stay-at-home momism. Many complained of partners who didn't shoulder their share of child care responsibilities. "Like most men, my husband doesn't do much -- if anything -- for baby care. I have to do and plan for everything," one mother wrote. A few got pregnant accidentally and were pressured by their husbands and boyfriends to carry through with the pregnancy, or knew they never wanted children but felt it was something they "should" do.

The overwhelming sentiment, however was the feeling of a loss of self, the terrifying reality that their lives had been subsumed into the needs of their child. DS wrote, "I feel like I have completely lost any thing that was me. I never imagined having children and putting myself aside would make me feel this bad." The expectation of total motherhood is bad enough, having to live it out every day is soul crushing. Everything that made us an individual, that made us unique, no longer matters. It's our role as a mother that defines us. Not much has changed.

"The feminine mystique permits, even encourages, women to ignore the question of their identity," wrote Betty Friedan. "The mystique says they can answer the question 'Who am I?' by saying 'Tom's wife ... Mary's mother.' The truth is -- and how long it's been true, I'm not sure, but it was true in my generation and it's true of girls growing up today -- an American woman no longer has a private image to tell her who she is, or can be, or wants to be."

At the time she published The Feminine Mystique, Friedan argued that the public image of women was largely one of domesticity -- "washing machines, cake mixes ... detergents," all sold through commercials and magazine. Today, American women have more public images of themselves than that of a housewife. We see ourselves depicted in television, ads, movies, and magazines (not to mention relief!) as politicians, business owners, intellectuals, soldiers, and more. But that's what makes the public images of total motherhood so insidious. We see these diverse images of ourselves and believe that the oppressive standard Friedan wrote about is dead, when in fact it has simply shifted. Because no matter how many different kinds of public images women see of themselves, they're still limited. They're still largely white, straight upper-middle-class depictions, and they all still identify women as mothers or non-mothers.

American culture can't accept the reality of a woman who does not want to be a mother. It goes against everything we've been taught to think about women and how desperately they want babies. If we're to believe the media and pop culture, women -- even teen girls -- are forever desperate for a baby. It's our greatest desire.

The truth is, most women spend the majority of their lives trying not to get pregnant. According to the Guttmacher Institute, by the time a woman with two children is in her mid-40s she will have spent only five years trying to become pregnant, being pregnant, and not being at risk for getting pregnant following a birth. But to avoid getting pregnant before or after those two births, she would had had to refrain from sex or use contraception for an average of 25 years. Almost all American women (99 percent), ages 15-44, who have had sexual intercourse use some form of birth control. The second most popular form of birth control after the Pill? Sterilization. And now, more than ever, women are increasingly choosing forms of contraception that are for long-term use. Since 2005, for example, IUD use has increased by a whopping 161 percent. That's a long part of life and a lot of effort to avoid parenthood!

Now, it may be that these statistics simply indicate that modern women are just exerting more control over when and under what circumstances they become mothers. To a large degree that's true. But it doesn't jibe with an even more shocking reality: that half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended. Once you factor in the abortion rate and pregnancies that end in miscarriage, we're left with the rather surprising fact that one-third of babies born in the United States were unplanned. Not so surprising, however, is that the intention to have children definitively impacts how parents feel about their children, and how those children are treated -- sometimes to terrifying results.

American culture can't accept the reality of a woman who does not want to be a mother.

Jennifer Barber, a population researcher at the University of Michigan, studied more than 3,000 mothers and their close to 6,000 children from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Barber and her colleagues asked women who had recently given birth, "Just before you became pregnant, did you want to become pregnant when you did?" Those who answered yes were categorized as "intended"; those who answered no were then asked, "Did you want a baby but not at that time, or did you want none at all?" Depending on their answer, they were classified as "mistimed" or "unwanted." Over 60 percent of the children studied were reported as planned, almost 30 per center were unplanned ("mistimed"), and 10 percent were unequivocally "unwanted."

The results of Barber's research showed that the children who were unintended -- both those who were mistimed and those who were unwanted -- got fewer parental resources than those children who were intended. Basically, children who were unplanned didn't get as much emotional and cognitive support as children who were planned -- as reported both by the researchers and the mothers themselves. Barber's research looked at things like the number of children's books in the home, and how often a parent read to a child or taught them skills like counting or the alphabet for the "cognitive" aspect. For the "emotional" support rating, they developed a scale measuring the "warmth" and "responsiveness" of the mother, how much time the family spent together, and how much time the father spent with the child. Across the board, children who were wanted got more from their parents than children who weren't. Children who were unplanned were also subject to harsher parenting and more punitive measures than a sibling who was intended.

Barber pointed out that this kind of pattern could be due to parental stress and a lack of patience that's "directed explicitly toward an unwanted child," and that a mistimed or unwanted birth could raise stress levels in the parents' interactions with their other children as well. She also says that in addition to benign emotional neglect, parenting unintended children is also associated with infant health problems and mortality, maternal depression, and sometimes child abuse.

[...]

When Torry Hansen of Shelbyville, Tennessee, sent her seven-year-old adopted son by himself on a plane back to his home country of Russia with nothing more than a note explaining she didn't want to parent him, she became one of the most reviled women in America. Russian officials were so incensed that they temporarily halted all adoption to the United States. We sometimes expect fathers to shirk their responsibility; but when mothers do it, it shakes the core of what we've been taught to believe about women and maternal instinct.

Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy argued in a 2001 Utah lecture, for example, that being female is seen as synonymous with having and nurturing as many children as possible. So when mothers abandon their children, it's seen as unnatural. This simplistic, emotional response to parents -- mothers, in particular -- who give up their kids is part of the reason Americans have such a difficult time dealing with the issue. As Hrdy says, "No amount of legislation can ensure that mothers will love their babies."

That's why programs like safe haven laws -- age limitations or not -- will never truly get to the heart of the matter. As Mary Lee Allen, director of the Children's Defense Fund's child welfare and mental health division, has has, "These laws help women to drop their babies off but do nothing to provide supports to women and children before this happens."

Unfortunately, discussing the structural issues has never been an American strong suit. Hrdy notes that legislators are too afraid to focus on sensible solutions. "Talking about the source of the problem would require policymakers to discuss sex education and contraception, not to mention abortion, and they view even nonsensical social policies as preferable to the prospect of political suicide."

If policymakers and people who care about children want to reduce the number of abandoned kids, they need to address the systemic issues: poverty, maternity leave, access to resources, and health care. We need to encourage women to demand more help from their partners, if they have them. In a way, that's the easier fix, because we know what we have to do there; the issues have been the same for years. The less-obvious hurdle is that of preparing parents emotionally and putting forward realistic images of parenthood and motherhood. There also needs to be some sort of acknowledgement that not everyone should parent -- when parenting is a given, it's not fully considered or thought out, and it gives way too easily to parental ambivalence and unhappiness.

Take Trinity, one of the mothers who commented on the Secret Confessions board about hating parenthood. She wrote, "My pregnancy was totally planned and I thought it was a good idea at the time. Nobody tells you the negatives before you get pregnant -- they convince you it's a wonderful idea and you will love it. I think it's a secret shared among parents ... they're miserable so they want you to be too."

By having more honest conversations about parenting, we can avoid the kind of secret depressions so many mothers seem to be harboring. If what we want is deliberate, thought-out, planned, and expected parenthood -- and parenting that is healthy and happy for children -- then we have to speak out.

女性一定要爲人母嗎?

littledo/譯

2008年，內布拉斯加州將遺棄兒童合法化。該舉動是“平安港”(safe haven)法案的一部分，該法案旨在解決該州殺嬰率升高的問題。與其他州的平安港法案一樣，如果認爲自己還沒準備好養育自己的嬰兒，內布拉斯加的父母可以在指定地點將他們遺棄而不用擔心被逮捕或起訴。但立法者在邏輯上犯了一個大錯：他們沒有限定棄兒的年齡。

法案通過後的幾周時間裏，有父母開始遺棄自己的孩子。但問題來了：被遺棄的孩子中沒一個是嬰兒。幾個月的時間裏，有36個兒童被留在州立醫院或警察局，其中有22個兒童超過了13歲。有一位51歲的祖母遺棄了一個12歲的男孩，還有一個父親遺棄了整個家庭：年齡從1到17歲不等的九個孩子。臨近的幾個州有人一聽說遺棄孩子不用承擔什麼後果，還特地開車前來。

內布拉斯加州政府意識到自己犯了個大錯，於是召開了特別立法會重新制定了法律，設定了棄兒年齡限制。州長大衛·海因曼(Dave Heineman)說這次變更將“把重心重新放回此法律的初衷，即拯救剛出生的嬰兒，免除棄兒父母的法律責任。變更後法律也將禁止其他州的父母把兒童帶到內布拉斯加州遺棄。”

2008年12月21日是允許遺棄任何年齡兒童的舊安全港法案有效的最後一天，有一位母親從加州的優洛郡驅車1200公里來到內布拉斯加的金伯爾州立醫院留下了他14歲的兒子。

內布拉斯加發生的一切讓人們不禁疑問：假設不會有任何後果，我們中有多少人會遺棄自己的孩子?不管怎麼說，遺棄兒童不是什麼新鮮的話題，這一現象在美國也絕對稱不上罕見。現在美國有超過40萬名兒童在寄養中心等待收養，每年數千家長遺棄自己的孩子。甚至有個女人把收養的小孩送回其出生國，在孩子胸前像別購物單一樣彆着一封致歉信。不管這是不是因爲養孩子很難，很多美國人都放棄做父母。

2009年一個網名Ann的人登陸“祕密”網站(Secret Confession)留下了三句話：“我很沮喪。我討厭當媽媽。我也討厭當全職媽媽!”三年後，這條“坦白”下的評論仍然很多，超過數千條，而一般每條“坦白”下只有十幾條評論。我們這個匿名的Ann戳中了要害。

一個42歲懷孕的女人寫道：“我也討厭當媽媽，每天都一成不變。想想我要到六十歲才能解放，那時候我的人生就完了。”還有一個網友k’s mom說：“我覺得自己身陷困境、情緒焦慮、快撐不住了。我愛我女兒，她也被照顧得很好，但如果可以再來一次我絕不會選這條道路。”

Gianna寫道：“我愛我的兒子，但我討厭當媽媽。這真是個單調、壓抑、吃力不討好而且讓人精疲力竭、讓人壓抑的工作。當媽媽和坐牢一樣。我現在真希望他趕快滿18歲、最好滾得遠遠地去上大學，這樣我就能假釋了。”一個家住華盛頓特區的媽媽甚至說，儘管她在生兒子前反對墮胎，但現在要是又懷孕了她恨不得“立刻飛到墮胎診所去。”

這些回覆大多來自自稱經濟狀況穩定的女性。她們討厭當媽媽並非因爲“缺錢”這種用爛了的原因。她們沒說明詳細原因，只是覺得當媽媽並非人們所說的那麼好，而且如果能夠重來一次，她們不會再這麼做了。

一些人說待家裏做全職媽媽太無聊，很多人抱怨另一半不願意分擔照顧小孩的責任。另外一個媽媽寫道：“和大多數人一樣，我的丈夫幾乎不怎麼照顧小孩。我不得不計劃一切、做所有的事情。”有一些人是偶然懷孕的，迫於丈夫或男友的壓力撐過了孕期。還有一些人知道自己永遠不想要小孩，仍感覺這是她們“應該”做的事情。

然而，很多人都提到了一種感覺——失去自我，她們的生活已經完全被自己孩子的需求綁架。DS寫道：“我覺得我完全失去了自我。我從沒想過生小孩、把自己放到一邊會讓自己感覺這麼糟糕。”別人期待你做一個完完全全的媽媽已經夠糟糕了，每天都生活在這種期待中更是毀滅靈魂。讓我們成爲獨立個體、讓我們獨一無二的每樣東西都不再重要。媽媽這個角色決定了我們的一切，沒什麼改變。

“女性的奧祕允許甚至鼓勵女性忽略自己身份的問題。”貝蒂·弗裏丹寫道，“這種奧祕說女性面對‘我是誰’這個問題時能回答‘湯姆的妻子、瑪麗的媽媽。’我不確定事實究竟真相是什麼，也不確定這答案正確了多久，但在我這一代這是正確的回答，對現在的女孩來說這也是一樣——美國女孩不再有專門的形象來告訴自己她們是誰，能是誰，想成爲誰。”

出版《女性的奧祕》時，弗裏丹稱女性公共形象大多和家用用品有關——“洗衣機、麪包粉、洗滌劑”，所有這些形象都是通過廣告或雜誌推銷。如今，美國女性的公共形象不只是家庭主婦。我們可以看到自己出現在電視、廣告、電影、雜誌中，形象可以是政治家、企業主、知識分子、軍人。但正因如此，單純母親的公共形象纔會如此狡猾陰險。我們看到了自己不同的形象，我們以爲弗裏丹所寫的壓抑的標準已不復存在，但其實它只是做了點小改變。這是因爲無論我們女性看到自己有多少種公共形象，這些形象還是很侷限。這些形象仍主要是標準的中產階級的白人女性，而且它們仍把女人分成母親和非母親。

美國文化無法接受有女人不想成爲母親這一事實。這與我們所學的女性的形象相悖，與她們迫切的想要孩子的願望相悖。看看媒體和流行文化，我們會發現女人甚至女孩永遠都迫切地想要個孩子，這是我們最大的渴望。

但事實是，大多數女人一生的大多數時間都在避孕。古特馬赫研究所(Guttmacher Institute)的研究顯示，有兩個小孩的45歲左右的女性只有五年的時間想要懷孕、正在懷孕、不打算避孕。但生孩子前後，她爲了避免懷孕平均有25年的時間禁慾或採取避孕措施。幾乎所有15至44歲的有性經歷的美國女性(99%)都會採取各種形式的避孕措施。僅次於吃藥的第二常見的避孕形式是絕育手術。現在選擇這種長效的避孕措施的女性越來越多，比以往任何時期都多。舉個例子，2005年以來宮內避孕器的使用增加了161%。爲了避免爲人父母真是花了相當的時間和精力啊!

也許統計數據只簡單地說明了如今女性不過是更積極地控制受孕的時機。很大程度上看這是對的，但這和一個更驚人的事實相矛盾：美國有一半的懷孕非有意而爲之。如果考慮到墮胎率和小產率，我們會發現一個相當驚人的事實：美國三分之一的嬰兒是計劃外出生的。然而，還有一個不那麼讓人驚奇的研究結果：是否要小孩的意願決定性地影響了家長對孩子的感覺以及孩子如何被對待，有時這種影響程度讓人恐懼。

密歇根大學人口研究員Jennifer Barber研究了來自各種社會經濟背景的超過3000名母親和她們近6000個孩子。Barber和她的同事詢問那些剛生完小孩的女性“在你懷孕前你是否想要懷孕?”回答“是”的人分到“計劃內”組，回答“否”的人繼續被問到：“你是不想在那個時候有小孩，還是完全不想要小孩?”根據答案的不同，她們被分爲“時機不當”組和“不想要”組。被研究的兒童中有超過60%屬於“計劃內”，30%的屬於“時機不對”，還有10%的明確屬於“不想要”。

Barber的研究結果表明“非計劃”中孩子(時機不對的和不想要的)得到的父母的養育比計劃中的孩子少。無論是研究結果還是母親自述都顯示，非計劃中的孩子基本上得不到兒童應該得到的情緒和認知上的支持。在“認知”方面，Barber的研究計算了兒童家中圖書的數量、父母讀書給孩子聽或教他們數數、背字母表等技能的頻繁程度。在“情感”支持方面，他們設計了一套標準來衡量母親的“熱情度”及“反應度”、家庭成員在一起的時間長短以及父親與孩子呆在一起的時間。父母計劃中的孩子從父母那得到的全面超過非計劃中的孩子。非計劃中的孩子比計劃中的兄弟姐妹也受到更嚴酷的管教以及更多的懲罰措施。

Barber指出，這種模式可能是由於父母壓力大、對不希望出生的孩子明顯缺乏耐心。而且，不在父母期待時間出生的孩子以及父母不希望降生的孩子也會增加父母和其他孩子交流的緊張程度。Barber還指出，計劃外的嬰兒除了情感上會被忽視，其健康情況、死亡率、母親產後抑鬱情況也會受到影響，有時甚至會出現虐待的情況。

田納西州謝爾比維爾的託麗·海森把她收養的七歲的兒子一個人送上回俄羅斯的飛機時，除了解釋不想養他了之外她什麼都沒話留下，她也因此成爲美國受到最多斥責的女人。俄羅斯官員非常生氣，暫時禁止美國人收養俄羅斯兒童。我們有時候也預料到父親會逃避責任，但當母親這麼做的時候，我們所學的有關母親和母性本能的核心被撼動了。

2001年人類學家沙拉·布拉夫·赫迪在猶他州的一次演講說，做女性被視作生育儘可能多孩子的同義詞。因此母親遺棄子女被視作反常。這種對父母，對母親，尤其是遺棄子女的母親的簡單且情緒化的反應是美國長期以來處理這種問題如此困難的原因之一。正如赫迪所說，“再多的法律也無法確保母親會愛自己的孩子。”

正因如此，平安港法案這樣的項目(無論是限制年齡還是不限制年齡)始終無法真正找到問題的核心。正如兒童保護基金(Children’s Defense Fund)兒童福利與心理健康部部長瑪麗·李·艾倫所說，“這些法律幫助婦女扔掉自己的孩子，但在這些棄兒行爲發生前沒有爲婦女和兒童提供任何支持。”

不幸的是，討論這種結構性的問題從來不是美國的強項。赫迪注意到，立法者過於害怕而不敢把關注點放到實用的解決方案上。“討論問題的原因所在需要政策制定者討論性教育和避孕的問題，更別說流產了。相較於這種可能斷送自己政治前程的問題，他們更喜歡討論無意義的社會政策。”

如果關注兒童的政策制定者和普通人真的想要減少被遺棄兒童的數量，他們則需要解決體制的問題：貧困、產假、資源獲取以及醫療問題。我們需要鼓勵女性要求其另一半(如果有的話)提供更多幫助。從某種程度上說這是最容易修復的問題，因爲我們知道我們再這一方面必須做點什麼，這個問題多年來一直沒有一點變化。另外，我們需要幫助準父母在情緒上做好準備，真實地說明爲人父母和做母親是什麼樣的。這裏也需要承認爲人父母不是每個人都有義務——如果爲人父母是項要求，人們就不會完全考慮清楚透徹，也很容易陷入做父母的矛盾境地和不快心情中。

就拿特里尼蒂爲例吧，她是在祕密網站那條討厭當母親的坦白下留言的母親之一，她寫道：“我懷孕完全是計劃之中的，那時候我覺得這是個好主意。沒有人在你懷孕前告訴你懷孕的壞處，他們只告訴你這是個美妙的想法你會喜歡這主意的。我認爲這是父母間的祕密：當父母很痛苦，他們想把你也拖下水。”

通過更加真誠地談論爲人父母，我們能避免很多媽媽心中祕密的壓抑情緒。如果我們希望自己爲人父母是深思熟慮後的結果，符合自己的計劃和期待，如果我們希望自己的孩子健康快樂，那我們必須把這些說出來。