Chelsea Handler, the television host and best-selling author of “My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands,” and Geoff Dyer, the critically acclaimed British writer whose 15 books include “Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D. H. Lawrence,” don’t have much in common on the surface, aside from both calling Los Angeles home. But neither has an interest in procreating.
电视节目主持人切尔茜·汉德勒(Chelsea Handler)出版过畅销书《躺平人生：我那老是出槌的一夜情》（My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands）。广受好评的英国作家杰夫·戴尔(Geoff Dyer)则出版过15本书，包括《一怒之下：与D·H·劳伦斯搏斗》(Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D. H. Lawrence)。除了都把洛杉矶称为家乡，俩人乍看上去似乎没有太多共同之处。不过，他们都没兴趣生育子女。

“I definitely don’t want to have kids,” Ms. Handler, 40, said in a 2013 television interview. “I don’t think I’d be a great mother. I’m a great aunt or friend of a mother.”
“我肯定不要孩子，”2013年，40岁的汉德勒在电视采访中说，“我觉得自己不会成为一个好妈妈。我是孩子们的好阿姨，妈妈们的好朋友。”
Mr. Dyer, 56, contributed an essay to the anthology “Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids,” out last week (the title sardonically appropriates the traditional criticisms against childless couples).
上周，一本名为《自私、肤浅、只顾自己：十六位作家谈论不要孩子的决定》（Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids，文集标题讽刺性地借用人们对无子女夫妇的传统批评）的文集出版，其中一篇来自56岁的戴尔。
In it, he related an episode a few years back in which gamboling children kept interrupting his tennis game in London as their mothers did nothing, much to his displeasure. The incident was “a clear demonstration that the rights of parents and their children to do whatever they please have priority over everyone else’s,” he wrote.
戴尔在文中提到几年前的一件事，当时他在伦敦打网球，几个玩闹的孩子不断打扰，孩子的妈妈们完全不加管束，这让他非常不快。他写道，这件事“清楚表明，父母和孩子比其他人更有随心所欲的优先权”。
(The disruption of racket sports at the hands of youth seems to be a bête noire for Mr. Dyer. Two winters ago, I found myself playing table tennis with him in a Brooklyn establishment. Within 10 minutes, we were booted out for a child’s birthday party as dozens of children and their guardians swarmed the room. “The only thing I hate more than children,” he told me as we gathered our belongings, “are parents.”)
（小孩扰乱戴尔打球似乎是他最讨厌的事。两年前，我在布鲁克林的一个体育馆和他打乒乓球。刚打了不到十分钟，几十个孩子和他们的监护人挤满房间，举办生日派对，我们被赶走了。我们收拾东西准备离开时，他对我说，“唯一一种比孩子更讨厌的人就是父母。”）
Ms. Handler’s and Mr. Dyer’s desire to be childless — or child-free, as some prefer — syncs with nationwide shifts over the last several decades, and with a host of celebrities who have spoken publicly about their decisions, like George Clooney, Oprah and Ricky Gervais.
汉德勒和戴尔不要孩子（有些人更喜欢说成“无子女拖累”）的愿望与过去几十年美国全国的趋势一致，一大堆名人公开表示不要孩子，比如乔治·克鲁尼(George Clooney)、奥普拉(Oprah)和里基·热维斯(Ricky Gervais)。
The percentage of childless women ages 40 to 44 doubled from 1976 to 2006, when the figure stood at over one-fifth of women. Their ranks have increased enough that the first NotMom Summit will take place in Cleveland this October. (The numbers have tailed off slightly since 2006, to about 15 percent; some explanations may be more-flexible workplace cultures for women, advances in fertility treatments and increasing acceptance of unmarried women who conceive through sperm donors.)
从1976年到2006年，40岁至44岁无子女女性占人口中的比例增长了一倍，2006年的比例超过五分之一。今年10月，这个人数不断增长的群体将在克利夫兰举办第一届“非妈妈峰会”（从2006年起，这个比例略微减少，降至约15%，原因可能包括工作场所文化对女性更为灵活；不孕治疗技术改进；人们更能接受通过捐精怀孕的未婚女人）。
People’s reasons for not reproducing remain as varied as ever, encompassing the personal, political, financial, environmental or the anti-narcissistic, as in the case of John Warner, the author of the novel “The Funny Man,” who self-deprecatingly wrote in an email, “I’m not convinced my genes are anything to wish on anyone.”
人们不想生育的原因和从前一样多种多样，包括个人、政治、经济和环境等因素以及反自恋。小说《有趣的人》(The Funny Man)的作者约翰·沃纳(John Warner)就是最后这种情况。他在电子邮件中谦虚地说，“我不确信自己的基因是任何人想要的。”
But one particular strain may be resistance to the current atmosphere of overparenting and its attendant upper-middle-class signifiers.
不过，对目前过度养育风气的抗拒，以及对与之相伴的中上层阶级意味的反感，也带来一种特别的压力。
“If I had kids, I can’t see doing it in New York City,” said Kate Bolick, the author of the coming book “Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own.” “Not just because I couldn’t afford it, but because I don’t like the idea of raising a child in this epicenter of class disparity and extreme wealth.”
“假如我有孩子，我觉得自己没法在纽约市养活他们，”作家凯特·博利克(Kate Bolick)说。她即将出版新书《不婚女子：自己过活》(Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own)。“不只是因为我负担不起，而且因为我不喜欢在这个等级分明、极度富有的地方养孩子。”
Meghan Daum, the editor of the anthology and a Los Angeles Times opinion columnist, said, “It’s undeniable that watching this culture play out — the helicopter parenting, the media fixation on baby bumps and celebrity childbearing and -rearing — is overwhelming, and it’s natural that people would react against it.”
这本文集的编辑、《洛杉矶时报》(Los Angeles Times)专栏作家梅根·多姆(Meghan Daum)说，“不可否认，看着这种文化愈演愈烈——随时监护的家长，媒体对名人怀孕、产子、育子的过度关注——的确令人不安，人们对它产生抗拒心理也是自然的。”
“I can’t tell you how many baby showers I’ve been to where the woman who’s having the child has this moment of ‘Oh, my God, what have I signed up for?’ ” Ms. Daum said. “I think there are people in the book who may have made a different decision if they’d been living in a different moment.”
“我记不清有多少次在宝宝派对上听到即将当妈妈的女人说：‘哦，天哪，我这是选择了什么？’”多姆说，“我觉得，这本书中肯定会有人认为，如果他们换个生活的时代，就有可能做出不同的决定。”
Still, she cautioned against attributing too much of the recent surge in childlessness by choice to societal trends. “Not to have a child is a very personal, visceral decision,” she said. “Ultimately, it comes from within, not from Park Slope.”
不过，她告诫大家不要把最近主动选择不要孩子现象的激增过多归因于社会潮流。“决定不要孩子是非常个人的、发自内心的决定，”她说，“说到底，它取决于个人，而非公园坡（Park Slope，纽约布鲁克林名人住宅区——译注）的影响。”
A few contributors to her anthology do, nevertheless, chalk up some of their misgivings to Park Slope-ish fads that seem intent on creating a generation of Stepford moms.
不过，这本文集中的几位作者也把某些担忧归因于公园坡的风气，那里似乎想造就一代“复制妈妈”（Stepford moms，此语来自电影《复制娇妻》[The Stepford Wives]——译注）。
Anna Holmes cataloged the “hoary ideas of womanhood” on display in her Brooklyn neighborhood, which has “overpriced boutiques filled with one-of-a-kind maternity clothes and hundred-dollar sets of receiving blankets made of ‘all-organic cotton.’ ”
安娜·霍姆斯(Anna Holmes)讲述了她所在的布鲁克林区展示出来的“关于女人特质的陈旧观点”。她说，那个区有很多“过于昂贵的孕婴精品店，里面充满孤品孕妇装以及用‘纯有机棉’做成的上百美元一套的婴儿毯”。
Laura Kipnis wrote about her “profound dread of being conscripted into the community of other mothers — the sociality of the playground and day-care center, and at the endless activities and lessons that are de rigueur in today’s codes of upper-middle-class parenting.”
劳拉·基普尼斯(Laura Kipnis)写道，她“特别害怕被拉入其他妈妈的团体，害怕游乐场和日托中心的交际，以及那些没完没了的活动和课程——如今这些活动和课程是中上层阶级养育子女的常规内容”。
Both descriptions reflect a few of the ways parenting (at least in this rarefied socioeconomic milieu) has evolved since the 1980s into a competitive and consumerist sport. Partly as a result of this overextension, the culture has begun representing parenting as a less-than-satisfying occupation.
她们的描述都反映出，自20世纪80年代以来，养育子女的某些方式（至少在这个特定的社会经济环境中）已演变成竞争性的消费主义活动。这种文化的过度发展在某些方面导致养育子女变成了一种不太令人满意的工作。
The news media periodically trot out articles about how parents are unhappier than their childless counterparts. The debatable postulation is often traced back to an influential 2004 study in which working mothers ranked child care the second-most-negative activity on a list of 16 (rated less negatively were commuting and housework).
新闻媒体偶尔高调抛出文章，声称有子女的人比无子女的人更不快乐。这个有争议的论断通常可以追溯到2004年一项有影响力的研究——在16项活动中，职业母亲们把照顾孩子列为第二个最不喜欢的活动（排在通勤和做家务之前）。
Child care, of course, is just one aspect of parenthood, albeit a significant part, and the mothers were polled on workdays, which likely increased their exhaustion and hostility toward their children. Yet other research followed that has, if not debunked claims of the misery of parenting, then at least made them more nuanced.
当然，照顾孩子只是为人父母的一个方面——虽然它是很重要的一个方面——而且那项调查是在工作日进行的，母亲们在工作日可能更疲惫，对孩子更有敌意。不过，之后的一些研究就算不能驳斥“养育子女很痛苦”这个观点，也至少表明实际情况更复杂。
A study last year from the Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business found that “parents’ happiness increases over time relative to non-parents.” Another 2014 paper, from the London School of Economics and the University of Western Ontario, determined that the first two children boost short-term happiness (which later returns to pre-birth levels), but not a third.
去年，圣克拉拉大学(Santa Clara University)利维商学院(Leavey School of Business)的一项研究发现，“随着时间流逝，与无子女人士相比，为人父母者的幸福感会慢慢增加”。去年，伦敦经济学院(London School of Economics)和安大略西部大学(University of Western Ontario)的另一项研究表明，前两个孩子能短暂增加幸福感（之后恢复到生孩子前的水平），但是第三个孩子不会产生这种效果。
So while the long-held opinion that having children is the key to a fulfilling life may, indeed, be true for most people, contemporary popular culture habitually indicates otherwise.
所以，虽然孩子是完满人生的关键这一传统观点可能的确符合大部分人的情况，但是当今流行文化总体来说表明了相反的情况。
Novels like Jenny Offil’s “Dept. of Speculation,” Lionel Shriver’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” (and the film version) and Elisa Albert’s “After Birth” all portray the ambivalence and agonies of motherhood; the runaway best-seller “Go the ____to Sleep” was a release valve for irritably fatigued parents; and a popular blog is a mocking backlash to “parent overshare on social networking sites.”
有很多小说描绘了做母亲的矛盾和痛苦，比如珍妮·奥菲尔(Jenny Offil)的《猜测部》(Dept. of Speculation)、莱昂内尔·施赖弗(Lionel Shriver)的《凯文怎么了》(We Need to Talk About Kevin，以及它的电影版)，以及埃莉莎·艾伯特(Elisa Albert)的《出生之后》(After Birth)。非常畅销的图书《快去睡觉》(Go the ____to Sleep)是暴躁疲惫父母的发泄口；还有个很受欢迎的博客，它嘲弄性地抵制“在社交网络上过度分享孩子照片的父母”。
With a few exceptions like NBC’s “Parenthood,” a paean to the titular vocation’s rewards (but which also didn’t shy away from the challenges of child rearing), TV parents are routinely sleep-deprived, harried, anxious, confused, cash-strapped, sexually frustrated or divorced, a far cry from the days of the comfortable and comforting stewards on “Family Ties,” “The Brady Bunch” and “Father Knows Best.”
也有少数几个例外——比如NBC频道的《为人父母》(Parenthood)，它称颂为人父母能带来的回报（不过它也没有回避育儿的挑战）——电视剧里的父母们往往睡眠不足，饱受折磨，焦虑困惑，囊中羞涩，没机会做爱或者已经离婚，与《亲情纽带》(Family Ties)、《脱线家族》(The Brady Bunch)和《父亲最清楚》(Father Knows Best)中舒服欣慰的监护人们大相径庭。
And the children in these offerings are repeatedly depicted as the bratty, tyrannical rulers of their enslaved progenitors. Perhaps this is one reason that Andrea Dickstein, 34, a director of e-business and marketing communications who lives on Long Island, doesn’t want children.
这些电视剧中的孩子都被描绘成放肆专横、奴役父母的暴君。也许这是34岁的安德烈娅·迪克斯坦(Andrea Dickstein)不想要孩子的一个原因。她是一名电子商务和营销传播主管，住在长岛。
“I think about having to attend or host children’s birthday parties, and it seems exhausting and unappealing,” she said. “Of course, the irony is I’m attending a colleague’s 2-year-old’s party this weekend. Maybe they’ll think I’m there to kidnap one.”
“我想，要是生了孩子，就必须参加或举办孩子生日派对，这些事很累人，也没什么意思，”她说，“当然，讽刺的是，这个周末我要去参加一个同事两岁孩子的派对。也许他们会觉得我去那儿是想绑架一个孩子。”
In a previous time, that statement would have been spoken in a whisper to evade censure. Now it’s anything but heretical, a standard line for people who not only see how difficult raising children can be, but for the generation that came of age as divorce rates spiked in the 1970s and ’80s (and which have since settled down some) and may be less optimistic about the classic nuclear family. For those who aren’t part of a cohesive familial unit that can provide different means of support, it’s far more daunting — emotionally and monetarily — to start a new clan.
要是从前，这话只能悄悄说，以免遭到非难。如今，这话不再是异端邪说，而是有些人常说的话，他们不仅看到了养孩子的艰难，而且作为在20世纪七八十年代离婚率激增时（之后离婚率下降了一些）成年的一代，他们对标准核心家庭不太乐观。对那些不是在有凝聚力的家庭（这样的家庭能提供各种支持）长大的人，组建一个新的小家庭会让人畏惧得多——不管是从心理上和财力上。
Nonetheless, spouses without children are still frequently perceived as self-centered; the symbolic couple for this stereotype may be the Machiavellian Frank and Claire Underwood on “House of Cards,” for whom nothing gets in the way of political ambition.
不过，不要孩子的夫妻依然经常被认为以自我为中心。这种固有思维的典型代表可能是《纸牌屋》(House of Cards)中不择手段的弗兰克和克莱尔·安德伍德(Frank and Claire Underwood)——任何事情都不能妨碍他们的政治野心。
Frank’s marriage proposal included the romantic pledge that “I’m not going to give you a couple of kids. … I promise you freedom from that.” Claire’s Lady Macbeth has had three abortions, one during one of her husband’s campaigns, which she lied about, claiming the pregnancy was the product of a rape. (She’s also been less than nurturing about other women’s pregnancies.)
弗兰克的求婚内容包括那句浪漫的誓言：“我不会让你生几个孩子……我保证你不会受孩子拖累。”麦克白夫人般的克莱尔流产过三次，其中一次是在丈夫竞选期间，她撒谎说那次怀孕是强奸所致（她对其他孕妇也不是很关爱）。
A less toxic on-screen duo would be the 40-something Brooklyn couple played by Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts in Noah Baumbach’s new film, “While We’re Young.” Having suffered through a few miscarriages, and noticeably ill-at-ease around babies and children, they have decided, or at least claim, that they like their lives as they are, which is to say career-focused, responsibility-free and self-absorbed.
本·斯蒂勒(Ben Stiller)和娜奥米·沃茨(Naomi Watts)在诺亚·邦巴赫(Noah Baumbach)的新片《年轻时候》(While We’re Young)中饰演的一对40岁左右的布鲁克林夫妇，他俩可能还不那么恶毒。他们经历过几次流产，和婴儿或孩子在一起显然局促不安，所以，他们决定安于目前的生活状态——至少是声称如此——专注事业，没有责任，以自我为中心。
But “it’s the parents who are selfish,” said Mr. Dyer, pointing to families typically own larger cars and use up more resources. Regarding “any environmental consciousness, the needs of their family get ahead of everything else,” he said in an interview. “In terms of behaving in a civic way, I feel my behavior is always exemplary.”
不过，戴尔说，“真正自私的是那些做父母的”，他指出有孩子的家庭往往拥有更大的汽车，占用更多资源。他在采访中说，至于“环保意识，对于他们来说，自己家庭的需要高于其他一切”，“从文明行为的角度看，我感觉自己的行为一直堪称典范”。
His assertion is backed up by some studies showing that childless adults volunteer more for their community. In addition, their interest in leaving behind a better world has nothing to do with their own genetic line but with humanity itself. (Ms. Daum said that after she decided not to have children, she believed she “had to compensate by volunteering, doing more work, being there more for my friends.”)
他的论断得到了某些研究的支持。这些研究表明，无子女的成年人更多为社区义务工作。另外，他们想留下一个更美好的世界不是为了自己的后代，而是为了全人类（多姆说，在她决定不要孩子后，她认为自己“必须通过多做义工、多工作、多陪伴朋友来进行补偿”）。
One could also make the economic case that, with their taxes, childless couples are selflessly subsidizing the education and well-being of other people’s children (who provide tax breaks for their parents). Conversely, it is these parents’ descendants who will be taking care of the childless adults — and keeping society operational — when they are elderly.
有人可能会说，从经济角度讲，无子女夫妇通过纳税无私地资助他人子女的教育和福利（父母们还可以享受税收减免）。反过来，这些父母的子女将在无子女者年老之后照顾他们，维持社会运转。
“The fact is, everybody is selfish,” Ms. Daum said. “It’s like saying, ‘You breathe.’ Parents and non-parents need to think of themselves as partners. Kids need all sorts of role models, and not have every adult they know be somebody’s parent. We need to reframe the conversation, otherwise it just becomes, ‘Who’s more selfish?’ ”
“实际上，每个人都是自私的，”多姆说，“这就像是说，‘你呼吸空气了。’为人父母者和无子女者需要视彼此为搭档。孩子需要各种各样的榜样，他们认识的所有成年人不必都是某个人的父母。我们需要重新组织对话，否则问题就变成了：‘谁更自私？’”
Related to questions of egotism are those of class and reservations about participating in bourgeois child rearing, let alone their inability to meet its expenses.
与自我中心问题相关的是阶级问题，以及用中产阶级方式养育子女的争议，更别提入不敷出的问题。
Ms. Holmes’s essay touched upon “the creeping commodification of childhood in the form of must-have status symbols — baby carriages, sleeper clothing — and the economic inequalities and educational failures that find parents signing up their toddlers for placement in private elementary schools years in advance” as accounting “for some of the aversion I have for the demands of modern American parenthood.”
霍姆斯的文章提到“不断发展的童年商品化问题——很多东西变成社会地位的象征，比如婴儿推车和婴儿睡袍——以及经济不平等和教育失败的问题，有些父母提前多年为尚在学步的孩子预订私立小学的位置”，这是“我厌恶现代美国养育子女要求”的原因之一。
“From the outside, parenting today seems so harried and overwhelmed with Disney and plastic junk,” said Ms. Bolick, the author of “Spinster.” “Or you can be really rich and buy handmade Swedish wooden toys and curate your child’s life.”
“从表面上看，如今，迪士尼乐园和塑料玩具等让养育孩子变得痛苦，令人不知所措，”《不婚女子：自己过活》的作者博利克说，“或者，你非常富有，给孩子买瑞典手工制作的木头玩具，策划孩子的人生。”
She compared today’s modern accouterments of childhood with the simpler time of “when I grew up in the ’70s, when you sat a kid down with a bowl and a wooden spoon,” she said. (Pressed for clarification as to exactly which century her recreation with kitchenware occurred in, she maintained it was the 1970s, not the 1870s.)
她把如今孩子们的玩具与“自己70年代童年时的玩具”进行比较：在那个更纯朴的年代，“给孩子一个碗和一个木勺，让他们自己玩就行了”（当被要求说明到底她拿厨房用具玩耍是在哪个世纪时，她说是20世纪70年代，而不是19世纪70年代）。
Even some of the staunchest anti-reproduction advocates, though, concede that they may eventually second-guess their decision.
不过，甚至连有些坚决反对要孩子的人也承认，他们可能最终会质疑自己的决定。
“There are regrets, but my entire life is an ocean of regret, and that’s just one drop in it,” Mr. Dyer said. “I would probably, in my 60s, be ready to start having kids, as long as I was spared all the stuff about it that doesn’t appeal to me. By then I’d have lost interest in practically everything, so there’d be no opportunity cost involved.”
“会有遗憾，不过我的一生充满遗憾，这只是沧海一粟，”戴尔说，“我很可能会在60多岁时准备好开始要孩子，只要我不用去做任何我不喜欢的事情就行。到那时，我会失去对任何事情的兴趣，所以应该不会有机会成本。”
But to do that, he acknowledged, “I’d have to trade in my wife for a younger model,” before cheekily adding, “Younger — and also a model, I’d hope.”
不过他承认，要想那时候要孩子，“我必须把妻子换成一个年轻点的模特”，后来他又厚脸皮地补充说，“年轻点的——我希望是个模特”。
Mr. Dyer was recently awarded a Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, which comes with $150,000. When it was suggested to him that, after taxes, the money could have been used for almost two years of top-tier college tuition, Mr. Dyer had a less scholastic plan for his winnings.
前不久，戴尔获得了温德姆-坎贝尔文学奖(Windham-Campbell Literature Prize)，奖金是15万美元。有人对他说，扣完税后，这些钱差不多足以支付顶级大学两年的学费，不过戴尔对奖金的计划与求学关系不大。
“Instead it’s bought 20 years of beer drinking,” he said.
“它够我买20年啤酒，”他说。