“我爱孩子，但后悔当妈妈”

今天是母亲节。

就在朋友圈里纷纷祝福自己的妈妈节日快乐的时候，偶然间我刷到了一篇题为《母亲节，你后悔做母亲了吗？研究可能跟你想的不一样》的文章。

是啊，成为母亲，或者成为父母，有人后悔吗？

这就是今天的选题来源。文章很长，值得一看。

妈妈，应该先是自己，然后才是我们的妈妈。愿每一位伟大的妈妈都能做自己，节日快乐！

无注释原文：

The Two Reasons Parents Regret Having Kids

The Atlantic

AUGUST 31, 2021

Carrie wishes that she’d never had children. She spent a few years feeling satisfied as a mother, but now locks herself in the kitchen and wonders, "Who am I? What am I doing here?" She can’t pursue paid work, because she has to shepherd her 12-year-old and 10-year-old to school as well as to therapy appointments for their disabilities. Carrie, who lives in the U.K., told me that she often fantasizes about visiting her friend in Hawaii and never coming back. Her words felt so taboo that she asked to be referred to by only her first name. But sentiments of parental regret are less rare than one might imagine.

When American parents older than 45 were asked in a 2013 Gallup poll how many kids they would have if they could “do it over,” approximately 7 percent said zero. In Germany, 8 percent of mothers and fathers in a 2016 survey “fully” agreed with a statement that they wouldn’t have children if they could choose again (11 percent “rather” agreed). In a survey published in June, 8 percent of British parents said that they regret having kids. And in two recent studies, an assistant psychology professor at SWPS University, Konrad Piotrowski, placed rates of parental regret in Poland at about 11 to 14 percent, with no significant difference between men and women. Combined, these figures suggest that many millions of people regret having kids.

Feelings of ambivalence about parenthood aren’t necessarily going to do harm to children. But when regret suffuses the parent-child dynamic, the whole family can suffer. Although the research on parental regret is still nascent, Piotrowski told me, some evidence looking at adolescent mothers suggests an association between regretting parenthood and a harsher, more rejecting attitude toward their children. Kara Hoppe, a family therapist and co-author of Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents, told me her work with patients suggests that children might feel emotional neglect “if the parent consistently really does not want to be there.” Children are so focused on themselves, developmentally, that they can internalize lack of interest from their mother or father as a personal failing, she said.

Though neither Piotrowski’s studies nor the surveys directly asked parents what caused these feelings, experts believe that there are two major pathways to parental regret. One of them is burnout. Parents might be devoted to their children, but feel exhausted and inadequately supported. Like Carrie—whose children have autism—some parents used to feel like effective caregivers but ended up facing unexpected responsibilities and saying things like “I’m not cut out to be a mom” and “I love my kids, but I don’t have what it takes.” Isabelle Roskam, a prominent scholar in parental burnout at Belgium’s Université Catholique de Louvain and a clinician, told me that in this scenario, “they don’t want to be a parent, because they are not able to be the perfect parent.” In one of Piotrowski’s studies, perfectionists were more likely to have trouble seeing themselves as a parent, to burn out in the role, and to experience regret. He also found that severe financial strain, being a single parent, and a history of rejection or abuse in one’s own childhood could contribute to parental regret. Burnout can be temporary and unrelated to regret. But Piotrowski essentially concluded that as the gap between the resources available to a parent and the demands of caring for a child grows, the odds of regret increase.

Not surprisingly, parental burnout has risen during the pandemic, Roskam said. As-yet-unpublished data from a team led by Hedwig van Bakel, a behavioral-science professor at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, estimated the global prevalence of parental burnout in 2020 at 4.9 percent (up from 2.7 percent in data collected in 2018 and 2019); parents who spent more days in lockdown and had to give more attention to children were particularly affected. Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, the founder and director of the Trauma Stewardship Institute, told me that she has seen an uptick in parental regret related to the relentlessly taxing events of the past year, and an internalization of the resultant pressure. Parent after parent thinks, “I’m not enough. There’s something wrong with me,” she told me. They’ve started to question their identity as caregivers. Piotrowski pointed me to research showing that parents who are burned out may be more likely to become neglectful or violent toward their children; kids with burned-out parents are more likely to experience symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The other key reason for parental regret is that some parents simply never wanted kids in the first place. Mary is a stay-at-home mother of two in South Dakota. In 2014, she accidentally became pregnant and experienced a stillbirth. Around the same time, her mentor died by suicide. Feeling that she wanted to prove she could do pregnancy “correctly,” Mary conceived again. “I let hormones and feelings and trauma trick me into having kids,” she told me. When her first son was nine months old, she accidentally became pregnant again.

Orna Donath, an Israeli sociologist and the author of Regretting Motherhood: A Study, confirms this second route to regret. In her research, she interviewed 10 fathers who regretted becoming parents; eight of them reported not wanting children but having them to appease their partner. Some of Donath’s female subjects had supportive partners and the financial resources to raise kids but still felt an “ever-present” burden, she wrote.

Piotrowski concluded that choosing parenthood is a predictor of adapting to it; he noticed apparently higher rates of regret in Poland relative to Germany, which tracked with considerably lower access to abortion in the former. Research from UC San Francisco supports this idea: In one study, mothers with a child born as a consequence of abortion denial were more likely to report having difficulty bonding, as well as feeling trapped or resentful, than mothers who had an abortion and subsequently had a child. Kara Hoppe has seen this reflected in her adult patients. One woman told her, “I don’t think my mom ever really wanted to be a mom,” and attributed the neglect and abuse she experienced as a child to birth control not yet being available for her mother’s generation. As a kid, however, she thought, “What’s wrong with me?”

Some people simply aren’t cut out for raising children, and their kids suffer as a result. But perhaps fewer parents would be regretful if society didn't make parenting so hard. Decreasing parental regret could be possible, with a host of structural shifts: access to reproductive choice as well as individualized treatment for parental burnout and change to policies regarding child care, family leave, work schedules, and the gender pay and promotion gaps.

People might also feel less shame in their regret—and more motivation to address it—if society held more realistic expectations of parents. Women in particular are told that the early years of parenting are tough, but that they will naturally adapt to motherhood; when the sacrifices don’t get easier, that’s supposedly because they’re selfish, damaged, or both. This research tells a different story: Parental regret is the experience of a sizable minority of mothers and fathers. Talking about it could decrease pressure on parents to raise children perfectly, on women to become subsumed by motherhood, or on people to have kids at all. After I spoke with Mary, she sent me an email. “I cried for like an hour after I got off the phone,” she wrote. “I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that there really are other moms who feel this way.”

- ◆ -

注：中文文本为机器翻译仅供参考，并非一一对应

含注释全文：

The Two Reasons Parents Regret Having Kids

The Atlantic

AUGUST 31, 2021

Carrie wishes that she’d never had children. She spent a few years feeling satisfied as a mother, but now locks herself in the kitchen and wonders, "Who am I? What am I doing here?" She can’t pursue paid work, because she has to shepherd her 12-year-old and 10-year-old to school as well as to therapy appointments for their disabilities. Carrie, who lives in the U.K., told me that she often fantasizes about visiting her friend in Hawaii and never coming back. Her words felt so taboo that she asked to be referred to by only her first name. But sentiments of parental regret are less rare than one might imagine.

卡莉（Carrie）希望她从未生过孩子。她花了几年时间觉得作为一个母亲很满意，但现在把自己锁在厨房里，想知道：我是谁？我在这里做什么？她不能从事有薪工作，因为她必须带着她12岁和10岁的孩子去上学，并为他们的身心障碍预约治疗。住在英国的卡莉告诉我，她经常幻想去夏威夷访友，然后再也不回来。她的话让人觉得很忌讳，以至于她要求只用她的名来称呼。但是，后悔成为父母的情绪并不像人们想象的那样罕见。

shepherd /ˈʃɛpəd/ 表示“牧羊人，羊倌”，英文解释为“a person whose job is to take care of sheep and move them from one place to another”。

作动词时，表示“带领（一群人），引导（人群）”，英文解释为“to lead or guide a group of people somewhere, making sure that they go where you want them to go”，用法：shepherd sb into/out/towards sth，举个🌰：

The tour guides shepherded the rest of the group onto the bus.

导游把团中的其他人带上了巴士。

fantasize /ˈfæn.tə.saɪz/ 表示“空想；幻想”，英文解释为“to think about something very pleasant that is unlikely to happen”举个🌰：

He fantasized about winning the Nobel Prize.

他幻想过获得诺贝尔奖。

taboo /təˈbuː/ 作名词，表示“禁忌，忌讳”，英文解释为“A taboo against a subject or activity is a social custom to avoid doing that activity or talking about that subject, because people find them embarrassing or offensive”举个🌰：

The topic of addiction remains something of a taboo in our family.

毒瘾在我们家依然是个有些忌讳的话题。

作形容词，表示“忌讳的，为社会习俗所不容的，不被人接受的；（因会冒犯人或引起尴尬而）禁忌的，忌讳的；（因太神圣或太邪恶而）禁止接触的，禁止使用的”。

表示“观点；意见；看法；情绪”，英文解释为“a thought, opinion, or idea based on a feeling about a situation, or a way of thinking about something”举个🌰：

I don't think she shares my sentiments.

我认为她不同意我的观点。

When American parents older than 45 were asked in a 2013 Gallup poll how many kids they would have if they could “do it over,” approximately 7 percent said zero. In Germany, 8 percent of mothers and fathers in a 2016 survey “fully” agreed with a statement that they wouldn’t have children if they could choose again (11 percent “rather” agreed). In a survey published in June, 8 percent of British parents said that they regret having kids. And in two recent studies, an assistant psychology professor at SWPS University, Konrad Piotrowski, placed rates of parental regret in Poland at about 11 to 14 percent, with no significant difference between men and women. Combined, these figures suggest that many millions of people regret having kids.

在2013年的盖洛普民意调查中，当45岁以上的美国父母被问及如果可以“重来”，他们想要有多少个孩子时，大约7%的人表示希望没有孩子。在德国，2016年的一项调查中，8%的母亲和父亲“完全”同意这样的说法，即如果他们可以重新选择，他们不会生孩子（11%的人选择“相当”同意）。在6月公布的一项调查中，8%的英国父母表示，他们后悔生孩子。而在最近的两项研究中，华沙人文社科大学心理学助理教授康拉德·皮奥特罗夫斯基（Konrad Piotrowski）认为，波兰的父母后悔率约为11%至14%，男女之间没有明显差异。总之，这些数字表明，数百万人对生孩子感到后悔。

Feelings of ambivalence about parenthood aren’t necessarily going to do harm to children. But when regret suffuses the parent-child dynamic, the whole family can suffer. Although the research on parental regret is still nascent, Piotrowski told me, some evidence looking at adolescent mothers suggests an association between regretting parenthood and a harsher, more rejecting attitude toward their children. Kara Hoppe, a family therapist and co-author of Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents, told me her work with patients suggests that children might feel emotional neglect “if the parent consistently really does not want to be there.” Children are so focused on themselves, developmentally, that they can internalize lack of interest from their mother or father as a personal failing, she said.

对父母身份的矛盾感并不一定会对孩子造成伤害。但是，当懊悔充斥着父母与孩子的关系时，整个家庭都会受到影响。皮奥特罗夫斯基告诉我，尽管对成为父母感到懊悔的研究仍处于初级阶段，但一些针对青春期母亲的证据表明，对成为父母感到懊悔与对孩子更严厉、更排斥的态度之间存在关联。卡拉·霍普（Kara Hoppe）是一位家庭治疗师，也是《婴儿炸弹：给新手爸妈的亲子关系生存指南》（Baby Bomb: A Relationship Survival Guide for New Parents）一书的作者之一，她告诉我，她对患者的研究表明，“如果父母一直真的后悔有孩子这事”，孩子们可能会感受到情感上的忽视。她说，孩子们非常关注自己，以至于他们会将来自母亲或父亲对其的忽视内化为个人的失败。

ambivalence /æmˈbɪv.ə.ləns/ 表示“矛盾心理”，英文解释为“the state of feeling of being ambivalent”如：her ambivalence towards men 她对男性的矛盾心理。

suffuse /səˈfjuːz/ 表示“弥漫于；布满；充满”，英文解释为“to spread through or over something completely”举个🌰：

His voice was low and suffused with passion.

他的嗓音低沉，饱含激情。

nascent /ˈnæsənt/ 表示“新生的；初期的；开始发展的”，英文解释为“Nascent things or processes are just beginning, and are expected to become stronger or to grow bigger.”如：the still nascent science of psychology 方兴未艾的心理学，a nascent problem 新出现的问题。

adolescent /ˌædəˈlesnt/ 作名词，表示“青少年”，英文解释为“a young person who is developing into an adult”。

作形容词，表示“青春期的；青少年的”，英文解释为“being or relating to an adolescent”如：an adolescent boy 青春期的男孩；也可以指“（成年人或其行为）孩子气的，幼稚的”，英文解释为“used to describe an adult or an adult's behaviour that is silly and like a child's”如：adolescent humour/behaviour 孩子气的幽默/幼稚的举止。

internalise/internalize 表示“将（情感）藏在心底；使（想法、态度、信仰等）成为性格的一部分，使内化”，英文解释为“If you internalize your emotions or feelings, you do not allow them to show although you think about them. To accept or absorb an idea, opinion, belief, etc. so that it becomes part of your character”举个🌰：

Many women tend to internalize their anxiety and distress.

许多女性常常将所有的焦虑和苦恼都深藏心底。

Though neither Piotrowski’s studies nor the surveys directly asked parents what caused these feelings, experts believe that there are two major pathways to parental regret. One of them is burnout. Parents might be devoted to their children, but feel exhausted and inadequately supported.

尽管皮奥特罗夫斯基的研究和调查都没有直接询问父母是什么原因导致了后悔，但专家们认为，导致父母后悔有两个主要原因。其中之一是倦怠。父母可能对他们的孩子尽心尽力，但感到疲惫不堪，得不到足够的支持。

1）表示“精疲力竭；过度劳累”，英文解释为“the state of being extremely tired or ill, either physically or mentally, because you have worked too hard”。

2）表示“（火箭）熄火点，燃烧终止”，英文解释为“the point at which a rocket has used all of its fuel and has no more power”。

补充一个说法：

📍burn the candle at both ends表示“劳累过度；起早贪黑而疲惫不堪”（to work or do other things from early in the morning until late at night and so get very little rest）

Like Carrie—whose children have autism—some parents used to feel like effective caregivers but ended up facing unexpected responsibilities and saying things like “I’m not cut out to be a mom” and “I love my kids, but I don’t have what it takes.” Isabelle Roskam, a prominent scholar in parental burnout at Belgium’s Université Catholique de Louvain and a clinician, told me that in this scenario, “they don’t want to be a parent, because they are not able to be the perfect parent.” In one of Piotrowski’s studies, perfectionists were more likely to have trouble seeing themselves as a parent, to burn out in the role, and to experience regret. He also found that severe financial strain, being a single parent, and a history of rejection or abuse in one’s own childhood could contribute to parental regret. Burnout can be temporary and unrelated to regret. But Piotrowski essentially concluded that as the gap between the resources available to a parent and the demands of caring for a child grows, the odds of regret increase.

就像卡莉--她的孩子有自闭症--一些父母曾经觉得自己是事实上的监护人，但最后却要面对意想不到的责任，并说“我不适合做妈妈”和“我爱我的孩子，但我没有这个能力”这样的话。比利时法语区鲁汶大学（Université catholique de Louvain）从事相关研究的著名学者、临床医生伊莎贝尔·罗斯卡姆（Isabelle Roskam）告诉我，在这种情况下，“他们不想做父母，因为他们没有能力成为完美的父母”。在皮奥特罗夫斯基的一项研究中，完美主义者更有可能难以将自己视为父母，在这个角色中感到倦怠并觉得后悔。他还发现，严重的经济压力、单亲、以及在自己的童年中被抛弃或虐待的历史，都会导致父母感到懊悔。感到倦怠可能是暂时的，与后悔无关。但皮奥特罗夫斯基的基本结论是，随着父母可用的资源和照顾孩子的要求之间的差距越来越大，感到后悔的几率也会增加。

autism /ˈɔː.tɪ.zəm/ 表示“孤独症；自闭症”，英文解释为“a condition that starts in young children and typically causes behaviour that is unusually centred on the self while limiting the development of social and communication skills”举个🌰：

Autism is four times more common in boys than in girls.

男孩子患自闭症的发病率是女孩子的4倍。

一般说not be cut out for sth，表示“天生就不适合…”，英文解释为“If you are not cut out for a particular type of work, you do not have the qualities that are needed to be able to do it well.”举个🌰：

I left medicine anyway. I wasn't really cut out for it.

我还是不再从医。我不太合适干那个。

1）表示“重要的；著名的；杰出的”，英文解释为“important or well known”举个🌰：

He played a prominent part in the campaign.

他在这次运动中发挥了重要作用。

2）表示“突出的，显眼的”，英文解释为“Something that is in a prominent position can easily be seen.”举个🌰：

New books are displayed in a prominent position on tables at the front of the store.

新书陈列在商店前面桌子上的一个显眼位置。

1）表示“压力；重负；重压之下出现的问题（或担忧等）”，英文解释为“pressure on sb/sth because they have too much to do or manage, or sth very difficult to deal with; the problems, worry or anxiety that this produces”举个🌰：

You will learn to cope with the stresses and strains of public life.

你要学会怎样应付公众人物生活的紧张和辛劳。

2）表示“（动植物的）品系，株系，品种”，英文解释为“an animal or plant from a particular group whose characteristics are different in some way from others of the same group”举个🌰：

Scientists have discovered a new strain of the virus which is much more dangerous.

科学家们已经发现了一种危险得多的新病毒。

📍此前9000名乘客因鼻拭子重复使用受害文中出现的例句：The health ministry confirmed this week that it had recorded two cases of the more infectious strain that was first detected in India. 卫生部本周证实，已发现了两例在印度首次发现的更具传染性的病毒株。

1）表示“可能性，机会；几率，概率”，英文解释为“the probability (= how likely it is) that a particular thing will or will not happen”举个🌰：

The overall odds of winning a lottery prize are 1 in 10.

抽中彩票的几率是1/10。

2）表示“不利条件；掣肘的事情；逆境”，英文解释为“something that makes it seem impossible to do or achieve sth”举个🌰：

They secured a victory in the face of overwhelming odds.

尽管情况非常不利，他们仍得到了胜利。

📍奥巴马卸任后首次重返白宫 和拜登互开玩笑文中提到，奥巴马讲话：“Despite great odds, Joe and I were determined, because we met too many people on the campaign trail who shared their stories, and our own families had been touched by illness.”“尽管困难重重，乔和我还是下定决心，因为我们在竞选路上遇到了太多分享他们故事的人，我们自己的家庭也被疾病所影响。”

📍great odds 表示“困难重重，困难诸多”，相当于a lot of difficulties，举个🌰：

We believe that, despite great odds, we can achieve a peaceful settlement.

我们相信，尽管困难重重，我们还是能够实现和平解决。

Not surprisingly, parental burnout has risen during the pandemic, Roskam said. As-yet-unpublished data from a team led by Hedwig van Bakel, a behavioral-science professor at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, estimated the global prevalence of parental burnout in 2020 at 4.9 percent (up from 2.7 percent in data collected in 2018 and 2019); parents who spent more days in lockdown and had to give more attention to children were particularly affected.

罗斯卡姆说，毫不奇怪，在新冠疫情期间，父母的倦怠感已经上升了。由荷兰蒂尔堡大学（Tilburg University）行为科学教授赫德维格·范·巴克尔（Hedwig van Bakel）带领的一个团队尚未公布的数据估计，2020年全球父母倦怠盛行的比例为4.9%（高于2018年和2019年收集的数据中的2.7%）；那些在隔离中度过更多日子、不得不对孩子给予更多关注的父母受到的影响尤其大。

Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, the founder and director of the Trauma Stewardship Institute, told me that she has seen an uptick in parental regret related to the relentlessly taxing events of the past year, and an internalization of the resultant pressure. Parent after parent thinks, “I’m not enough. There’s something wrong with me,” she told me. They’ve started to question their identity as caregivers. Piotrowski pointed me to research showing that parents who are burned out may be more likely to become neglectful or violent toward their children; kids with burned-out parents are more likely to experience symptoms of depression and anxiety.

创伤管理研究所（Trauma Stewardship Institute）的创始人和主任劳拉·范·德诺特·利普斯基（Laura van Dernoot Lipsky）告诉我，她看到与过去一年残酷又繁重的事件有关的父母感到后悔的情况上升，以及由此产生的压力的内化。一个又一个家长认为，“我不够好。我有问题，”她告诉我。他们已经开始质疑自己作为监护人的身份。皮奥特罗夫斯基向我指出，研究表明，感到倦怠的父母可能更有可能变得忽视或暴力对待他们的孩子；父母感到倦怠的孩子更有可能出现抑郁和焦虑的症状。

表示“增长”，英文解释为“an increase in something”。

表示“难懂的，费劲的”，英文解释为“difficult or needing a lot of thought or effort”举个🌰：

I just need an entertaining read for the beach - nothing too taxing.

我去海滩度假时喜欢看一些休闲读物——不要太费神的。

The other key reason for parental regret is that some parents simply never wanted kids in the first place. Mary is a stay-at-home mother of two in South Dakota. In 2014, she accidentally became pregnant and experienced a stillbirth. Around the same time, her mentor died by suicide. Feeling that she wanted to prove she could do pregnancy “correctly,” Mary conceived again. “I let hormones and feelings and trauma trick me into having kids,” she told me. When her first son was nine months old, she accidentally became pregnant again.

后悔成为父母的另一个关键原因是，有些父母一开始就不想要孩子。玛丽是南达科他州（South Dakota）的一位带着两个孩子的家庭主妇。2014年，她意外怀孕并经历了一次死产。大约在同一时间，她的导师自杀身亡。感觉到她想证明她可以“正确”地进行怀孕，玛丽再次怀孕了。她告诉我，“荷尔蒙、情绪和精神创伤让我上当受骗，生下了孩子。”当她的第一个儿子九个月大时，她意外地再次怀孕。

表示“（因为要照看孩子，父母不外出工作而）留在家中的”，英文解释为“A stay-at-home parent is a parent who stays at home to take care of their children rather than going out to work.”

表示“死产”，英文解释为“the birth of a dead baby”

1）conceive (of) sth (as sth)表示“想出（主意、计划等）；想象；构想；设想”，英文解释为“to form an idea, a plan, etc. in your mind; to imagine sth”举个🌰：

God is often conceived of as male.

上帝常常被想象为男性。

2）另一个含义表示“怀孕；怀（胎）”，英文解释为“When a woman conceives or conceives a child , she becomes pregnant”。

🎬电影《云图》（Cloud Atlas）中的台词提到：One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so. 一个人可以打破任何陈规，只要这个人能首先想到这样做。

🎬电影《最后的维加斯》（Last Vegas）中的台词提到：My brain cannot conceive how old this body is. 我的脑袋没办法接受老去的躯体。

🎵歌曲《A Better Way》中就有这么一句歌词：

I'll try

hormone /ˈhɔːməʊn/ 表示“激素；荷尔蒙”，英文解释为“a chemical substance produced in the body or in a plant that encourages growth or influences how the cells and tissues function; an artificial substance that has similar effects”，如：growth hormones 生长激素。

Orna Donath, an Israeli sociologist and the author of Regretting Motherhood: A Study, confirms this second route to regret. In her research, she interviewed 10 fathers who regretted becoming parents; eight of them reported not wanting children but having them to appease their partner. Some of Donath’s female subjects had supportive partners and the financial resources to raise kids but still felt an “ever-present” burden, she wrote.

以色列社会学家奥娜‧多纳特（Orna Donath）是《成为母亲的选择》（Regretting Motherhood: A Study）一书的作者。她证实了后悔成为父母的第二个原因。在她的研究中，她采访了10位对成为父母感到后悔的父亲；其中8位表示不想要孩子，但为了安抚他们的伴侣而生了孩子。她写道，研究对象中的部分女性有支持他们的伴侣和养育孩子的经济资源，但仍然感到“永远存在的”负担。

表示“平息；抚慰；绥靖；姑息”，英文解释为“to prevent further disagreement in arguments or war by giving to the other side an advantage that they have demanded”举个🌰：

She claimed that the government had only changed the law in order to appease their critics.

她称政府修改法律仅仅是为了安抚那些批评政府的人。

Piotrowski concluded that choosing parenthood is a predictor of adapting to it; he noticed apparently higher rates of regret in Poland relative to Germany, which tracked with considerably lower access to abortion in the former. Research from UC San Francisco supports this idea: In one study, mothers with a child born as a consequence of abortion denial were more likely to report having difficulty bonding, as well as feeling trapped or resentful, than mothers who had an abortion and subsequently had a child. Kara Hoppe has seen this reflected in her adult patients. One woman told her, “I don’t think my mom ever really wanted to be a mom,” and attributed the neglect and abuse she experienced as a child to birth control not yet being available for her mother’s generation. As a kid, however, she thought, “What’s wrong with me?”

皮奥特罗夫斯基总结说，选择为人父母预示着要适应它；他注意到波兰的后悔率明显高于德国的，这与前者的堕胎机会低得多有关。加州大学旧金山分校的研究支持了这一观点：在一项研究中，与那些堕胎过并随后生下孩子的母亲相比，因不能堕胎而生下孩子的母亲更有可能报告说，她们很难与孩子建立关系，并感到陷入困境或愤恨。卡拉·霍普在她的成年病人身上看到了这一点。一位妇女告诉她：“我认为我的母亲并不真正想成为一个母亲。”她把她小时候经历的忽视和虐待归咎于她母亲那一代人还没有节育措施。然而，作为一个孩子，她认为，“我有什么错呢？”

表示“（通常指通过手术进行的）堕胎，人工流产”，英文解释为“If a woman has an abortion, she ends her pregnancy deliberately so that the baby is not born alive.”举个🌰：

He and his girlfriend had been going out together for a year when she had an abortion.

他的女友流产时，他和她已经交往了一年时间。

作动词，表示“联合；团结；建立关系”，英文解释为“to develop a close connection or strong relationship with someone, or to make someone do this”举个🌰：

The aim was to bond the group into a closely knit team.

其目的在于使整个团体紧密团结在一起。

📍bonding本身可以作不可数名词，表示“人与人之间的关系（或联结）；亲密关系的形成”，英文解释为“the process of forming a special relationship with sb or with a group of people”，如：mother-child bonding 母子亲情，female bonding 女性的情谊。

表示“被困住；陷入困境”，英文解释为“If someone or something is trapped, that person or thing is unable to move or escape from a place or situation.”举个🌰：

The two men died when they were trapped in a burning building.

这两名男子因被困在燃烧着的大楼里而丧生。

表示“感到愤恨；不满；憎恶”，英文解释为“feeling angry because you have been forced to accept someone or something that you do not like”如：a resentful look 憎恶的眼神。

Some people simply aren’t cut out for raising children, and their kids suffer as a result. But perhaps fewer parents would be regretful if society didn't make parenting so hard. Decreasing parental regret could be possible, with a host of structural shifts: access to reproductive choice as well as individualized treatment for parental burnout and change to policies regarding child care, family leave, work schedules, and the gender pay and promotion gaps.

有些人根本不适合抚养孩子，他们的孩子因此而受苦。但是，如果社会不使养育孩子变得如此艰难，也许会有更少的父母感到后悔。通过一系列的结构性转变，减少父母的遗憾是可能的：获得生育选择，对父母的倦怠进行个性化的治疗，改变有关儿童护理、探亲假、工作时间安排以及性别薪酬差距和晋升差距的政策。

表示“生殖；生育；繁殖”，英文解释为“relating to the process of reproduction”。

People might also feel less shame in their regret—and more motivation to address it—if society held more realistic expectations of parents. Women in particular are told that the early years of parenting are tough, but that they will naturally adapt to motherhood; when the sacrifices don’t get easier, that’s supposedly because they’re selfish, damaged, or both.

如果社会对父母抱有更现实的期望，人们可能也会对自己的遗憾感到不那么羞愧，并有更多动力去解决这个问题。特别是女性被告知：养育子女的早期是艰难的，但她们会自然而然地适应成为母亲；当自我牺牲并没有那么容易时，这应该是因为她们是为了自己的、或是受到了伤害，或两者兼而有之。

This research tells a different story: Parental regret is the experience of a sizable minority of mothers and fathers. Talking about it could decrease pressure on parents to raise children perfectly, on women to become subsumed by motherhood, or on people to have kids at all. After I spoke with Mary, she sent me an email. “I cried for like an hour after I got off the phone,” she wrote. “I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that there really are other moms who feel this way.”

这项研究给出了不同的角度：感到后悔成为父母是相当多母亲和父亲的经历。谈论这个问题可以减少对父母完美抚养孩子的压力，减少对女性成为母亲的压力，或者减少对人们拥有孩子的压力。在我与玛丽交谈后，她给我发了一封电子邮件。“挂断电话后，我哭了大概一个小时。”她写道，“我没有意识到我是多么需要听到，真的有其他妈妈有这种感觉。”

sizeable/sizable表示“相当大的”，英文解释为“fairly large”，如：a sizeable amount of money 数目可观的一笔钱，举个🌰：

Part-time students make up a sizeable proportion of the college population.

非全日制学生在大学生总人数中占了很大的比例。

subsume /səbˈsjuːm/ 表示“将…归入，把…纳入”，英文解释为“to include something or someone as part of a larger group”举个🌰：

All these different ideas can be subsumed under just two broad categories.

所有这些不同的想法可归为两大类。

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