為什麼男人想要美貌妻子和聰明女兒

YOU can tell a lot about a person by whom they choose to marry. As the nominees selected at this week’s Republican National Convention and next week’s Democratic one take the stage along with their family members, they will display not only stark policy differences, but also two competing views of marriage, kin and the role of women in society. What we saw from Republicans: Men who want their wives at home while they celebrate the professional successes of their daughters.

從一個人對終身伴侶的選擇上，可以瞭解到不少有關這個人的情況。本週共和黨全國代表大會和下週的民主黨全國代表大會上，提名人都要攜家庭成員登台，他們不僅要展示明顯的政策分歧，也要展現兩種截然不同的婚姻觀、親情觀，以及對於女性社會角色的看法。我們從共和黨一方看到的跡象是：男人希望妻子留在家裏，同時又會慶祝女兒在職業生涯中的勝利。

The Republican Party has long praised traditional family values and intrinsic differences between men and women, while Democrats emphasize egalitarianism and expanding opportunities for women and girls. Few candidates in recent history have embodied those dissimilarities in such sharp relief as Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. On Monday night, Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, spoke about her husband and their family values. The speech was, like the woman herself, fairly unobjectionable on its face, with platitudes about family and country, patriotism and hard work. Like much of the Trump image, though, the shiny veneer hid shoddy construction: The very same parts of the speech that lauded integrity, hard work and honesty were lifted almost word for word from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech.

共和黨長久以來都擁護傳統的家庭價值觀，以及男性和女性的固有區別；而民主黨強調平等主義，提倡為女人和女孩增加機會。近年來，很少有哪兩個候選人像希拉里·克林頓(Hillary Clinton)和唐納德·J·特朗普(Donald J. Trump)這樣，鮮明地體現出這些區別。星期一晚上，特朗普的妻子梅拉尼婭(Melania)談到了丈夫和他們的家庭價值觀。這場演講和她本人一樣，表面上並不會引起反感，都是一些關於家庭和國家、愛國主義以及勤奮工作的陳詞濫調。然而和特朗普塑造的大部分形象一樣，這段演講也是金玉其外敗絮其中：其中恰恰是關於正直、辛勤工作與誠實的部分，是逐字逐句從米歇爾·奧巴馬(Michelle Obama)2008年民主黨大會演講中剽竊而來的。

It seems not even purported Trump family values are authentic. To borrow from Mr. Trump: sad.

甚至所謂的特朗普的家庭價值觀也不是真實的。用特朗普的話説：可悲。

One traditional value Mr. Trump does hew to: wanting an old-fashioned wife but a modern, professional daughter. On Thursday, convention-goers heard from the elder Trump daughter, Ivanka, a successful businesswoman whose feminism-tinged speech about the gender wage gap and affordable child care sounded less like any policy positions ever pushed by Mr. Trump and more like her book-in-progress, “Women Who Work.” They also witnessed how the Trump family embodies a very old sexist hypocrisy: Men who want one thing for their wives and another for their children.

特朗普所堅持的一個傳統價值觀是：妻子是老派的，但女兒則是現代化的、職業化的。星期四，特朗普的長女、成功的商業女性伊萬卡(Ivanka)向參與大會的人發表了帶有女權主義色彩的演講，談到兩性之間工資差異，以及可負擔的兒童保育費用，它們聽上去不太像特朗普所推行的任何政策立場，而更像是她正在寫的那本《工作的女人》(Women Who Work)。與會者們還目睹特朗普一家上演了一幅老套的性別歧視虛偽畫面：男人對妻子要求的是一回事，向子女要求的又是另一回事。

While Trump family values may not be particularly honorable, they are perversely traditional. Melania Trump told the R.N.C. audience that “Donald is intensely loyal to family,” a claim belied by his own marital history — she is wife No. 3, and No. 2 was the woman with whom he cheated on No 1. Mr. Trump has children with three different women; he blames giving his wife too much responsibility in his business for his first divorce, and his wife’s wanting him to spend too much time at home with her and their daughter for his second.

特朗普的家庭價值觀可能不是特別值得尊敬，但他們卻異常傳統。梅拉尼婭·特朗普告訴共和黨全國代表大會的觀眾，“唐納德特別忠於家庭”，這句話和他的婚史是矛盾的——她是他的第三任妻子，而他是背叛了第一任妻子才娶了第二任妻子。特朗普和三個女人都生了孩子；第一次離婚時，他説要怪自己給了妻子太多管理他企業事務的責任；而第二次他責怪妻子希望他花太多時間待在家裏陪伴她和女兒。

The qualities Mr. Trump seeks in his romantic partners are remarkably retro. Melania Trump is a former model with her own QVC jewelry line and skin care brand who emphasizes that her role as a mother comes before all else; Mr. Trump has spoken disparagingly of working women, does little in the way of child care, and expects women to be more aesthetically appealing than intellectually substantive. “We know our roles,” his wife has said. “I didn’t want him to change the diapers or put Barron to bed.” Mr. Trump agrees: “I won’t do anything” to take care of the children, he told Howard Stern in 2005. “I’ll supply funds and she’ll take care of the kids.” By contrast, Mr. Trump took out a campaign ad featuring Ivanka, and said of her: “I am so proud of Ivanka. She is a terrific person, a devoted mother and an exceptional entrepreneur.”

特朗普選擇戀人的標準非常復古。梅拉尼婭·特朗普原本是個模特，擁有自己的QVC首飾生產線和護膚品品牌，她強調自己的角色首先是個母親；特朗普以貶損的口氣説起工作女性，對兒童保育工作所做甚少，希望女人外貌要美，而不是要有大腦。“我們知道我們的角色分工，”他的妻子説過。“我不希望他去換尿布或者照顧巴戎(Barron)睡覺。”特朗普表示同意：“我不會做什麼照顧孩子的事”，2005年，他對霍華德·斯特恩(Howard Stern)説。“我出錢，她出力。”相反，特朗普推出的競選廣告上有伊萬卡，他説：“我為伊萬卡而驕傲，她是個很棒的人，一個充滿奉獻精神的母親和一個傑出的企業家。”

It can feel unfair to criticize political spouses, who are often dragged into the spotlight only because of whom they married. Mr. Trump, though, is running for office, making his treatment of women — personal and political — as relevant as his treatment of his employees or business partners. The distinctions between the Clinton marriage and the Trumps’ reflect an uncomfortable evolution also happening in homes across the United States. In the past half-century, American women have undergone a transformation in roles, and married couples now look a lot more like the Clintons — or Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner — than whatever traditional view of women and home life that Mr. Trump holds: Most women work outside the home full time, and men increasingly marry women who are their educational and professional equals.

政治家的配偶經常只是因為伴侶才被勉強拖入聚光燈下，批評他們顯得不太公平。然而特朗普正在競選總統職位，因此他對待女人的方式——不管是私人生活中還是政治生活中——都和他對待僱員或商業伴侶的方式是有關的。克林頓的婚姻與特朗普的婚姻之間的區別，反映出一種令人不舒服的演化，這種變化也同樣發生在全美國的家庭裏。半個世紀以來，美國女人經歷了角色的轉變，夫妻之間的關係更像是克林頓夫婦，或者也更像伊萬卡·特朗普與她丈夫賈裏德·庫什納(Jared Kushner)，而不是像特朗普堅持的那種女人和家庭的傳統觀點；如今大多數女人都全職工作，男人愈來愈傾向於同擁有同樣教育和職業背景的女人結婚。

But the public remains deeply ambivalent about these shifts. Today, 40 percent of women are their family’s primary breadwinners, and nearly 80 percent of Americans agree that women should not return to traditional roles in society. A third still say it’s best for small children if Mom doesn’t work at all. The Republican Party has particularly struggled to accept this new model, and still pushes back on women’s progress by opposing policies that would help women work and plan their families: things like federally funded child care, paid parental leave and access to birth control. Ivanka Trump’s speech on Thursday was closer to a laundry list of the very policies Democrats have promoted and Republicans have tried to block.

但是公眾對這些變化抱有深深的矛盾心態。如今，40%的女人是家中主要收入來源的提供者，將近80%的美國人都同意，女人不應當回到傳統的社會角色中去了。然而三分之一的人仍然認為，母親不工作，對於小孩來説是最好的。共和黨一直很勉強地接受這個新角色，仍然在通過反對幫助女人工作和為生育做計劃的法案來延緩女性進步的腳步，比如聯邦撥款的兒童保育、帶薪產假和生育控制等。伊萬卡·特朗普週四的演説很接近民主黨致力推進而共和黨竭力反對的政策清單。

And like Mr. Trump praising his daughter’s business acumen, men want different things in their wives than in their daughters. Changing gender roles look less threatening when it’s their children who benefit. According to a survey published by Maria Shriver’s Shriver Report, American men listed “intelligence” as the top quality they valued in both a wife and a daughter, but then the responses split: More men said they wanted their wives to be attractive and sweet than said the same about their female children. For daughters, men ranked being independent, strong and principled as more important qualities than those same characteristics in wives. Two-thirds of men want an independent daughter, but only one in three wants an independent wife. Fourteen percent of men said they wanted a wife who was a homemaker; just 5 percent said the same about their daughters.

正如特朗普讚揚女兒的商業頭腦，男人對妻子的要求和女兒的要求是不一樣的。如果能令子女受益，性別角色的改變看上去也就不會那麼有威脅性。根據瑪麗亞·施賴弗(Maria Shriver)的施賴弗報告，美國男人把“智慧”列為他們最希望妻子和女兒擁有的品質，但接下來的回答就分裂了：説希望妻子迷人可愛的男人比説希望女兒迷人可愛的男人多。而希望女兒更加獨立、堅強和堅持原則的男人比希望妻子擁有相同品質的男人多。三分之二的男人希望女兒獨立，但是隻有三分之一的男人希望妻子獨立。14%的男人説他們希望妻子能持家，只有5%的男人希望女兒能持家。

This dynamic seems to play out in the Trump family: Mr. Trump’s wife is professionally attractive, anecdotally nice and by her own telling fairly traditional, while his elder daughter is a strong, independent and well-educated businesswoman who was mentored by her father and rose to prominence inside his companies. Ivanka has been more publicly involved in the campaign than her stepmother, serving as something of a surrogate spouse to Mr. Trump by defending his treatment of women and emphasizing his good character. And it was Ivanka, not Melania Trump, who not only introduced Mr. Trump as the Republican Party nominee on Thursday night, but highlighted what he would do in office to help women.

這種動態似乎正好體現在特朗普一家身上：特朗普的妻子在職業上很有魅力，據説人很好，據她自己説也相當傳統；而他的大女兒是個堅強、獨立、受過良好教育的事業女性，受她父親教導，在他的公司開始出名。伊萬卡在競選宣傳中比她的繼母曝光更多，扮演了特朗普配偶的替代品角色，為他對待女人的方式進行辯護，強調他的好品質。週四晚上，也是伊萬卡，而不是梅拉尼婭，介紹特朗普作為共和黨提名人，而且強調他一旦入主白宮，會採取何種政策幫助女性。

This female empowerment narrative — of the daughter, not the wife — is one Americans are more ready to accept. A man who says he’s never changed a diaper and is on his third marriage to a former model may appeal to a resentful male minority, but will look unfamiliar and unappealing in much of the country. A successful child, though — that’s relatable and desirable. When men have daughters, their attitudes shift and they begin to adhere less stringently to traditional gender roles; no similar effect happens to mothers of girls. Fathers of daughters are also more likely to support reproductive rights than men who don’t have girls.

這種由女兒而不是妻子來進行的女性賦權敍事是美國人更容易接受的。一個説自己絕對不會換尿布、結過三次婚、第三任妻子以前是模特的男人，可能會對少數心懷不滿的男性有吸引力，但是對這個國家的大多數人來説可能不太常見，也不令人喜歡。然而一個成功的孩子就令人喜聞樂見了。男人有了女兒後，他的態度會改變，不再那麼嚴格拘泥於傳統的性別角色；但對女兒的媽媽就不會有類似的轉變。有女兒的父親會比沒有女兒的男人可能會更支持生育的權利。

Men have often given their female offspring more opportunities than their female partners, perhaps seeing their children as extensions of themselves. Even today, many men find themselves newly appalled at sexism after having a girl, a reaction apparently not stoked by being born of a woman, married to a woman or simply seeing women as human. In our reluctantly feminist America, one question this election poses is whether we’ve evolved enough to value women as individuals instead of assessing them relationally, as an attractive wife supporting her husband or as a high-achieving daughter reflecting a flattering light back on her parents.

相比女性伴侶，男人經常會給自己的女性後代更多機會，或許是因為他們把孩子視為自己的延續。甚至到了今天，很多男人也是在有了女兒之後，才開始厭惡性別歧視，這個反應顯然不是天生就是女人、和女人結婚，或者把女人當做人來看待所能產生的。在這個勉強算得上女權主義的美國，這次選舉暴露出來一個問題，我們是不是已經進步到按照個體的價值來評價女人，而不是按照與她們的關係來衡量她們，只把她們當做支持丈夫的迷人妻子或是取得很高成就、能為父母臉上增光的女兒。

It’s a question Mr. Trump has addressed in his personal life. His answer isn’t very pretty.

這就是特朗普的個人生活所顯示出來的問題。他的回答並不是太妙。