打孩子到底对不对？

译者 raystar

I did not want to smack my son. Indeed, had you suggested, when I first held him to my chest as a newborn eight years ago, that I would raise my hand to him one day, I would have laughed in your face. My parents – and teachers – had smacked me when I was growing up and it didn’t appear to have scarred me. Come to think of it, I couldn’t really remember it in any detail. But that was then. Times had changed. Physical violence, against a child, now? Simply wrong.

我并不想打我的儿子。事实上，如果你告诉我，当我八年前第一次将这个新生儿拥在怀里，就注定我总有一天会向他挥起巴掌，我一定会嘲笑你这种想法。在我成长的过程中我的父母和老师都打过我，但这似乎并没有吓唬到我。仔细想想，具体细节我都不记得了。但时代不同了。在今天对一个孩子施加暴力？很显然大错特错。

Two and a half years later, my beautiful, quixotic son had grown into a devilish handful. I know, I know: they all are. But – honestly – he was trickier than most. We were loving but consistent parents: no meant no. Yet “no” was becoming a bit toothless: the sanctions behind it did not seem to work. Threaten him with the “naughty step” and he’d go and sit on it pre-emptively. Take away a favourite toy and he’d throw all his other possessions down the stairs. Tell him that he was naughty and he’d shout “go away” with the venom of a character penned by Irvine Welsh. We’d open our mouths to remonstrate. He’d toddle off.

两年半后，我那漂亮又爱幻想的儿子长成了一个难缠的小恶魔。没错， 我知道：孩子们都是这样。但老实说，他比大多数人都调皮。作为父母，我们深爱着孩子，但是也很坚持：不就是不。然而，我们口中的“不”渐渐失去了威信：它代表的威慑力似乎不起作用了。我们被儿子“调皮的阶段” 搞怕了，倒是他每次占据了主动权。为了拿到一个心爱的玩具他可以把所有其他的东西都丢在楼梯上。如果我们责备他太调皮，他就会学着Irvine Welsh那样，恶狠狠地大吼“滚开”。我们一开口抗议，他就一摇一摆走开了。

All of this was frustrating. But that’s parenthood, right? It was only when he became an unrepenting liability – I couldn’t persuade him to keep away from the cooker – that frustration shaded into panic. What if he ended up with a hot pan on his head?

这些都让人沮丧。但这不正是父母该做的吗？然而他越发不知悔改。我怎么也没办法阻止他远离电饭煲。我们的沮丧变成了恐惧。万一一口滚烫的锅扣在了他的头上怎么办呢？

Still, we didn’t smack him. I thought perhaps we should. My wife disagreed. She’s a paediatrician, so she won. After all, I wondered, wasn’t it illegal, anyway? It’s not, actually, but it is complicated. My wife, who works in child protection, explained the rules to me once my anger had subsided. What you can’t do is smack a child and leave a mark. So a soft smack might be OK? How soft? Wouldn’t he just laugh? Safer not to smack him at all.

尽管如此，我们还是没有打他。我想也许我们真该打他一顿。但我的妻子不同意。她是儿科医生，所以我听了她的。我想，不论如何打人始终是违法的。事实上不是这样，但牵扯的东西太复杂。我的妻子在儿童保护中心工作，每当我的愤怒得以平息，她就会向我解释这些条款。打孩子并且留下印记是绝对不能做的。那么轻轻地打一下就可以吗? 多轻才可以呢？他会不会只是一笑了之？看来还是不要动他一根指头比较安全。

Then, when my wife was seven months pregnant with our second child, we went to the Natural History Museum to see the animatronic, life-size Tyrannosaurus rex. There was a long queue. We stood in it anyway: our son really wanted to see that moving T.rex. But the queue was static. He grew cross, furious and apoplectic in quick succession. The queue inched… nowhere.

后来当我妻子怀着我们的第二个孩子已经7个月时，我们去自然历史博物馆参观了动物机器人，真实比例的霸王龙。当时参观的队伍排了很长。我们也排在队伍里，因为儿子确实很想看会动的霸王龙。但是队伍移动缓慢。他很快变得生气，愤怒而且烦躁。而队伍仍然纹丝不动。

He started screaming. I hushed him. He screamed harder, so I threatened to take us home. Sweat pricked across my back and scalp. He lashed out. My wife joined me in trying to calm him. He kicked her as hard as he could in the stomach.

他开始咆哮。我让他安静下来。他叫得更凶了，我威胁他要回家。汗滴顺着我的后背和头皮流了下来。他挥舞手脚大闹起来。我的妻子也来帮我一起劝他安静。他却使足了劲，朝妻子的肚子上踢了一脚。

I picked him up and carried him, still fighting, into the men’s toilets. They appeared full, but no, there was one empty cubicle. I banged us into it, pulled down his pants, told him he must never do that again, and smacked him. Hard. It seemed to echo. His face buckled and twisted. He drew a baffled breath. And he howled. The cubicle door swung open to reveal a line of men, all peeing one way and looking another: at me.

我把他拎起来抓住他，他还在拳打脚踢，我把他带进了男厕所。看上去已经满员的厕所里还有一个空档位。我把他拽进去，狠狠地关上门，脱下他的裤子，告诉他他再不准这样做，然后使狠狠地打他。似乎还有些回音。他的面部扭曲着，重重地呼气，然后嚎叫起来。档位的门开了，一排男人一边方便，一边扭过头来，看着我。

Nobody said anything. What would I have done if they had? I had no idea. Did I regret what I’d done, though? I couldn’t answer that question, either. I’d smacked my son for a reason. I’d tried every other non-violent means of discipline. I’d shut him in his room, and plonked him on that damn step. Perhaps more damagingly, I’d bellowed at him. Nothing worked. The smack cut straight to the point. Don’t do that again, it said. And he didn’t. But to see my son flinch from me made me feel physically sick.

没有人出声。就算他们说了什么，我又能怎么做呢？我不知道。可是，我后悔我所做的吗？我也无法回答这个问题。因为某种原因我打了我的儿子。我已经试过了其他所有的文明方法。我把他关在屋子里，把他摔在台阶上砰砰作响。也许更让他受伤害的是，我责骂了他。然而这统统没有奏效。我的这顿打表明了我的看法。它告诉儿子不要再犯事儿了，而他确实没有。但是看到儿子总是躲着我，这让我很不好受。

Time passed. My son has calmed down. Last year, a Booker-shortlisted novel, Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap, used the incident of a child being smacked at a boozy barbecue to examine unravelling relationships and ethnic fault lines in the Melbourne middle class. It’s been turned into a television series, showing on BBC4.

时间一点一点过去，我的儿子也安静了不少。去年，一本图书大奖的候选小说，Christos Tsiolkas 的《耳光》，讲述了一个孩子在一次可以饮酒的烧烤上挨打的故事，以此来审视各种延伸的关系和墨尔本中产阶级存在的种族断层。这部小说被拍成了电视剧，在BBC4台播放。

Then this summer’s riots, and the public’s reaction to them, brought the issue back for me. I was dismayed by the violence. The perpetrators – children, mostly, some as young as eight – had to be stopped. But then I read the knee-jerk calls for baton charges, rubber bullets and worse. We need to send in the army if it happens again, give the ''feral’’ kids ''a good kicking’’ to sort them out.

而今年夏天的骚乱以及公众的反应，让我开始重新考虑儿童教育的问题。我对这些暴行感到失望。这些暴力的实施者多数是孩子，有的还很年幼，只有8岁，我们必须阻止他们。但是我听到一些相应的呼吁，让警察和橡皮子弹来对付他们，结果却更糟。如果再发生此类事件，我们需要派出军队，给这些“野”孩子“一点颜色看看”，以此来惩罚他们。

No, we don’t. These demands are as unhinged as the violence that prompted them. But they reveal a generation that seems to live in fear of its own children.

不对，我们不能这样做。这种要求就和他们心中的暴力一样，毫无逻辑可言。但是他们揭示了一代人，生活在对自己孩子的恐惧中。

Boris Johnson, writing in this newspaper, said he was “staggered” by the number of parents who stopped him in the street after the riots, lamenting that “they do not dare administer physical chastisement for fear of the social services”. This is “the key intergenerational issue”; they “feel frightened of their loss of control”.

Boris Johnson在他在报纸专栏中写道，在骚乱之后他在街头被一些父母拦住，痛诉“那些孩子因为害怕社会服务，并不担心接受身体上的惩罚”。他对此感到惊讶。这是“两代人之间的关键问题”；他们“生怕失去对孩子的控制”。

Maybe he, and they, have a point. Those who work in child protection – my wife among them – abhor intervening unnecessarily in family life. Yet the ghosts of Victoria Climbie, “Baby P” and others mean they must take any suspected abuse very seriously indeed. As the law stands, if you smack a child, you run a risk.

也许他和他们都有这样一个观点。那些致力于儿童保护的人，包括我的妻子，都不喜欢对家庭生活非必要的干预。然而，Victoria Climbie (2000年英国一个死于父母暴力的8岁女孩)，“Baby P” (2007年英国一个被父母虐待致死的17个月大男孩) 还有其他同样遭遇的孩子的冤魂告诉人们，我们必须非常严肃地对待任何可疑的虐待行为。

A better father than me might have found a less drastic way of teaching his son not to drop-kick an unborn sister. Or circumvented it entirely. I don’t know. That’s why I’ve written a novel of my own about it. What I Did begins with a boy running into a road. His father smacks him. A passer-by objects. Soon social services are involved, and the family is threatened to its core.

一个比我优秀的父亲也许会找到一种不那么极端的方式来教育他的儿子，不要踢他尚未出生的妹妹，或者完全避免这种事情的发生。我不知道。这也是为什么我把自己的故事写成了一本小说，《我做了什么》。小说的开始是一个男孩跑向一条路，他的父亲打了他。一个路过的行人阻止了他。很快社会服务介入，这个家庭收到了警告。

But, like The Slap, What I Did is about more than smacking: it’s about parenting, the boundary between the state and the family, and – since the story is told by the six-year-old at the centre of it all, Billy – it’s about the hilarious, emotionally charged, awe-filled state of childhood.

但是，和《耳光》一样，《我做了什么》讲的不仅仅是打孩子：这本书还提到了孩子的养育，国家和家庭所发挥的不同作用。另外，由于这个故事是由一个6岁的小男孩Billy为中心来讲述的，这本书还描述了愉快，感性却充满恐惧的童年。

But corporal punishment is central to the story, and most people have a strong opinion on the subject. If the book makes them question it, I’ll be pleased.

然而对孩子的暴力惩罚依然是故事的核心，而且 大多数人对这个话题都持有激烈的观点。如果这本书能让他们质疑这种暴力，我会感到很欣慰。