The rugrat race

孩子們之間的比賽

詞匯

Rugrat/（口語）孩子，小孩

?

Working-class parents are becoming more like middle-class ones

工薪階層的父母正變得越來越像中產(chǎn)階級的父母

They have adopted their child-rearing habits

他們已經(jīng)養(yǎng)成了撫養(yǎng)孩子的習(xí)慣

Oct 3rd 2020 | NEW YORK

LIKE MANY?children around the age of two, Madison has decided not to do what her mother wants. She will not speak above a whisper. She does not want to read “Big Red Barn”. She will not identify her colours or her shapes, even though she knows them. So, for half an hour, her mother patiently cajoles, persuades, distracts and redirects. “You want me to read to you? What kind of sound does the cow make? Are you going to sing? What’s this?”

和許多兩歲左右的孩子們一樣，Madison并不想按照母親希望的那般做。她只小聲念叨。她不想讀《紅色大谷倉》。即使她知道自己的顏色和形狀，她也不會說出來。她媽媽花了有半個小時，連哄帶騙，說服、分散注意、再次（反復(fù)）詢問。“你想讓我把這部繪本讀給你聽嗎？繪本上這只牛發(fā)出什么樣的聲音？你想唱歌嗎？這是什么？

詞匯

Big Red Barn/繪本讀物https://www.sohu.com/a/169457642_278796 （繪本內(nèi)容和媽媽給孩子的提問內(nèi)容有關(guān)）

Cajole/以甜言蜜語哄騙；勾引

It would be a familiar scene in a pushy, upper-middle-class home. But this is a working-class black family in a poor district of Long Island, east of New York City. The careful cultivation of Madison reflects a change in her household. Her mother, Joy, says that she did little to prepare her two older children for school, assuming that they would be taught everything they needed to know. She is determined not to make the same mistake again.

對于愛出風(fēng)頭的中上層家庭來說，這將是一個熟悉的場景。但這是一個工薪階層的黑人家庭，位于紐約市東部長島的一個貧困地區(qū)。 Madison的精心栽培反映了她家庭的變化。她的母親Joy說，（在之前）她曾以為學(xué)校將會教會子女他們所需要學(xué)會的一切知識，便沒有為他倆更大的孩子的上學(xué)前準(zhǔn)備些什么。如今，她決心不再犯同樣的錯誤。

詞匯

Pushy/ 有進(jìn)取心的；愛出風(fēng)頭的

district /區(qū)域；地方；行政區(qū)

Across the rich world, working-class parents have reached the same conclusion. They expect more of their children than in the past, and treat them differently. Gradually, they have adopted child-raising habits normally associated with middle-class parents. That largely unheralded change has probably mitigated the harm done to poorer children by covid-19 and the school closures it prompted. Unfortunately, some damage has been done anyway.

在富裕國家，工薪階層的父母也得出了同樣的結(jié)論。他們對孩子的期望比過去更高，對待他們也有所不同。逐漸地，他們養(yǎng)成了通常與中產(chǎn)階級父母有關(guān)的撫養(yǎng)孩子的習(xí)慣。這種基本上沒有預(yù)兆的變化可能減輕了新冠對貧困兒童造成的傷害，也減輕了由此導(dǎo)致的學(xué)校關(guān)閉。不幸的是，依舊有一些危害一些造成。

詞匯

?unheralded /未事先宣布的；沒料到的

In 2003 Annette Lareau, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, published an astonishing book about child-raising. “Unequal Childhoods” showed that working-class parents—whether they were white or black, poor and welfare-dependent or with steady jobs—thought and behaved differently from middle-class ones. Most assumed that their children would develop naturally, and that their job was to keep them happy and safe. Middle-class parents, by contrast, engaged in what Ms Lareau called “concerted cultivation”, stimulating, stretching and scheduling their progeny to within an inch of their lives.

2003年，賓夕法尼亞大學(xué)的社會學(xué)家Annette Lareau出版了一本關(guān)于撫養(yǎng)孩子的驚人的書?！恫黄降鹊耐辍繁砻?，工薪階層的父母——無論他們是白人還是黑人、貧窮、依賴福利或有穩(wěn)定的工作——在思想和行為上都與中產(chǎn)階級父母不同。大多數(shù)人認(rèn)為他們的孩子會自然發(fā)育，而他們的工作就是讓子女快樂和安全地成正。相比之下，中產(chǎn)階級的父母則致力于 Lareau女士所稱的“協(xié)同培養(yǎng)”，促進(jìn)、延申和規(guī)劃他們的后代，并在生活上緊密聯(lián)系。

詞匯

Concerted/協(xié)調(diào)的；協(xié)定的；商議定的

?Progeny/子孫；后裔

Middle-class child-raising habits such as endlessly pointing out new things and answering children’s questions with other questions are easily mocked. They are also highly effective. Jill Gilkerson is the chief researcher at LENA, an organisation that measures children’s and adult’s speech using small digital recorders. By controlling for social class, she finds that 14% of the variance in adolescents’ IQ?scores can be explained by the frequency of “conversational turns” in their speech at 18-24 months—a measure of their interactions with adults. The effect of toddler talk on adolescents’ verbal comprehension was stronger: it explained 27% of the variance.

中產(chǎn)階級的育兒習(xí)慣，如無休止地指出新事物和用其他問題回答孩子的問題，很容易被嘲笑。但也很有效。Jill Gilkerson是LENA的首席研究員，該組織使用小型數(shù)字錄音機來測量兒童和成人的語言。通過對社會階層的管理，她發(fā)現(xiàn)青少年智商分?jǐn)?shù)中14%的差異可以用18-24個月時“談話轉(zhuǎn)換”的頻率來解釋——這是一種孩童與成人互動的衡量方式。幼兒說話對青少年語言理解的影響更大:這解釋了27%的差異。

詞匯

Variance/變異；變化；不一致；分歧

?Toddler/學(xué)步的小孩；幼童裝

Verbal/口頭的；言語的

Fortunately, the ideal of concerted cultivation seems to have spread. In 2018 Patrick Ishizuka of Cornell University presented American parents with domestic vignettes and asked what they thought of them. In one vignette, a girl who complains about being bored after school is told to go outside and play with her friends; in another, the bored girl is pushed into music lessons and sport. Mr Ishizuka found that highly educated and thinly educated parents differed hardly at all in their responses to these scenarios. Almost all thought the pushy parent was better.

幸運的是，協(xié)同培養(yǎng)的理想似乎已經(jīng)傳播開來。2018年，康奈爾大學(xué)(Cornell University)的Patrick Ishizuka向美國父母展示了一些家庭瑣事，并詢問他們對這些瑣事的看法。在一個小插曲中，一個女孩抱怨放學(xué)后很無聊，被告知去外面和她的朋友們玩;在另一個場景中，無聊的女孩被迫去上音樂課和運動。Ishizuka發(fā)現(xiàn)，受過高等教育的父母和沒受過高等教育的父母對這些情景的反應(yīng)幾乎沒有差別。幾乎所有人都認(rèn)為有進(jìn)取心的父母更好。

詞匯

Vignette/梗概，簡介，花絮

Scenario/方案；情節(jié)

?

Poorer parents are putting in more time, too. Sociologists Giulia Maria Dotti Sani and Judith Treas have data for 11 Western countries. In all but one (France) mothers without university educations are spending more time caring for their children than in the past. The Centre for Time Use Research has found a concertina pattern in Britain. In the mid-1970s highly educated and thinly educated mothers alike spent little time interacting with their children. Over the following decade the highly educated changed their behaviour, opening a large lead over everyone else. The less-educated then closed the gap (see chart).

貧窮的父母也投入了更多的時間。社會學(xué)家會瑪麗亞多蒂便為11個西方國家和朱迪絲胎面數(shù)據(jù)。除了法國這一個國家，其余國家沒有受過大學(xué)教育的母親比過去花更多的時間照顧孩子。時間使用研究中心（Centre for Time Use Research）在英國發(fā)現(xiàn)了一種類似于手風(fēng)琴的模式。在20世紀(jì)70年代中期，受過高等教育的母親和沒受過高等教育的母親幾乎都很少花時間和孩子交流。在接下來的十年里，受過高等教育的人改變了他們的行為，大大領(lǐng)先于其他所有人。受教育程度較低的人群隨后也縮小了差距(見圖表)。

詞匯

concertina / 類似風(fēng)琴的六角形樂器；六角手風(fēng)琴

?

Tomás Cano, a sociologist at the University of Frankfurt, suggests that child-raising norms are trickling down the social scale, much as liberal attitudes to divorce did in the second half of the 20th century. He has found that working-class Spanish parents are putting in more time on “developmental” child-care activities (such as reading and playing). Fathers in particular began to do more following the financial crisis, which hit Spain especially hard. They may have had more time for playing because so many had lost their jobs.

法蘭克福大學(xué)的社會學(xué)家托馬斯?卡諾指出，撫養(yǎng)孩子的規(guī)范正在向社會的各個層面滲透，就像20世紀(jì)下半葉對離婚的自由態(tài)度一樣。他發(fā)現(xiàn)，西班牙工薪階層的父母在“發(fā)展性”育兒活動(如閱讀和玩耍)上投入了更多的時間。尤其是在金融危機之后，其對西班牙的打擊尤為嚴(yán)重，尤其在此時父親們開始投入更多時間。他們可能有更多的時間（陪同孩子）玩耍，因為很多人都失業(yè)了。

?

All this attention may be helping children at school. Two scholars, Sean Reardon and Ximena Portilla, have shown that in America the gap between the test scores of the most privileged and least privileged children upon entry to nursery closed slightly between 1998 and 2010. In Britain all children in year one of school—aged five or six—are doing better in phonics tests than they were a decade ago. Those who are entitled to free school meals because of their parents’ poverty have advanced more.

所有這些關(guān)注可能對學(xué)校里的孩子們有所幫助。兩位學(xué)者Sean Reardon和Ximena Portilla指出，在1998年至2010年間，美國最富和最窮的孩子進(jìn)入托兒所時的測試分?jǐn)?shù)差距略有縮小。在英國，所有五到六歲的一年級學(xué)生在語音測試中的表現(xiàn)都比十年前要好。那些因父母貧困而有權(quán)享受免費學(xué)校餐的人進(jìn)步得更多。

詞匯

Phonics/聲學(xué)；拼讀法，聲音基礎(chǔ)教學(xué)法