2011年考研英语一阅读 Text 4 原文翻译及答案解析

It's no surprise that Jennifer Senior's insightful, provocative magazine cover story, "I love My Children, I Hate My Life, " is arousing much chatter - nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that "the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight."

詹妮弗·西尼尔（Jennifer Senior）那篇富有洞察力、引发争议的杂志封面故事《我爱我的孩子，我恨我的生活》引起广泛热议并不令人意外——没有什么比暗示育儿并非完全充实、丰富生命的经历更能引发人们讨论了。西尼尔并未得出结论说孩子让父母快乐或痛苦，而是建议我们重新定义幸福：不要将其视为可以用瞬间快乐衡量的东西，而应将幸福视为一种过去的状态。尽管抚养孩子的日常经历可能极其艰难，西尼尔写道，“那些当下让我们情绪低落的事情，日后可能会成为强烈满足感和喜悦的来源。”

The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive - and newly single - morn Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual "Jennifer Aniston is pregnant" news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity morn, or morn-to-be, smiling on the newsstands.

本周报刊亭上展示一位漂亮母亲抱着可爱婴儿的封面远非唯一的圣母与圣子形象。还有关于新近收养且新近单身的母亲桑德拉·布洛克（Sandra Bullock）的故事，以及常见的“詹妮弗·安妮斯顿（Jennifer Aniston）怀孕”新闻。几乎每周都至少有一位明星母亲或准母亲在报刊亭上微笑。

In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation, is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten killing? It doesn't seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the childless. Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn't have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.

在一个如此持续推崇生育的社会中，承认后悔生孩子等同于承认支持杀害小猫，这有什么奇怪吗？因此，将父母的后悔与无子女者的后悔相比较似乎不太公平。不幸福的父母很少被激发去思考是否不应该生孩子，但不幸福的无子女者却被这样的信息所困扰：孩子是世界上唯一最重要的事情：显然，他们的痛苦一定是他们生活中婴儿大小的空洞直接导致的结果。

Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like Us Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents are the least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is to raise a kid without a partner to lean on; yet to hear Sandra and Britney tell it, raising a kid on their "own" (read: with round-the clock help) is a piece of cake.

当然，像《Us Weekly》和《People》这样的名人杂志所呈现的育儿形象是极其不现实的，尤其是当父母是像布洛克这样的单亲母亲时。根据多项研究得出结论，父母比无子女夫妇更不幸福，单亲父母是最不幸福的。这并不令人震惊，考虑到在没有伴侣可依靠的情况下抚养孩子需要多少工作；然而，听桑德拉和布兰妮（Britney）说，独自抚养孩子（读作：有全天候帮助）是小菜一碟。

It's hard to imagine that many people are dumb enough to want children just because Reese and Angelina make it look so glamorous: most adults understand that a baby is not a haircut. But it's interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing parenthood aren't in some small, subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way that a small part of us hoped getting "the Rachel" might make us look just a little bit like Jennifer Aniston.

很难想象许多人会愚蠢到仅仅因为瑞茜（Reese）和安吉丽娜（Angelina）使其看起来如此光鲜而想要孩子：大多数成年人明白，婴儿不是理发。但有趣的是，想知道我们每周看到的无忧无虑、增强幸福感的育儿形象是否在某种微小、潜意识的方式上，助长了我们对实际经历的不满，就像我们中的一小部分人希望剪“瑞秋头”可能会让我们看起来有点像詹妮弗·安妮斯顿一样。

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