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美国人感受在中国养育孩子

(2023-01-19 08:13:19) 下一个

我和中国政府共同抚养了我的美国孩子

HEATHER KAYE 2023年1月19日

前几年,当新冠病毒在全球肆虐时,我在网上看到一张照片,一名美国女子的T恤上写着“我拒绝与政府共同抚养子女”——这是对学校口罩佩戴要求的回应,许多人认为这是政府的越权之举。我不禁失声大笑:从某种程度上说,我的孩子就是与中国政府共同抚养的。

2006年,我在时尚界的事业让我和丈夫来到上海,在那里度过了接下来的16年,并组建了家庭。在中国,政府的抚养参与从孩子未出生时就已经开始。根据现已放宽的计划生育政策,中国公民的生育数量是要受到限制的。由于重男轻女的堕胎传统,除非有医学上的必要,中国法律仍然禁止对未出生婴儿的性别进行鉴定。

作为外国人,我们不受这些法规的约束。但我不得不接受的是,我越来越大的肚子已经成为集体财产,会得到不请自来的抚摸和路人的评价(“这是个男孩。我看得出来!”),餐馆都拒绝为我提供冷饮。中国人认为简单的热水也具有药用价值,这源于卫生方面的考虑,以及热水能调和阴阳的信念。每次点冰拿铁,我都害怕被唠叨,尽管通常服务员都会给我温暖的微笑。

2008年和2010年,我们在上海先后迎来了两个健康的女儿,并面临着所有在华外籍家长都要面临的选择:是去读昂贵的国际学校,还是去政府监管且沉浸在中国文化和价值观中的本地学校就读。

我们权衡了中国学校的利(我们的女儿能学到流利的普通话,也有希望具备开阔的世界观)与弊(暴露于中共的政治宣传,以及作为外国人在中国学生中可能遇到社交孤立)。我们决定冒险一试。

政府这个严厉的共同抚养人很快就让人感受到了它的存在。女儿们所在的中国幼儿园凡事都要说教家长,包括女儿们应该睡多少小时,吃什么饭菜,以及她们的最佳体重应该是多少。每天早晨,孩子们要列队做体操,在升旗仪式上高唱国歌。为了促进空气流通,防止通过空气传染的疾病,教室的窗户通常是开着的,即使在冬天,孩子们都得穿着外套上课。

有时我们觉得孩子就像仅晚上和周末借宿在家,每个工作日都要被送回学校一样。

随着时间推移,好处开始显现。上了越来越多关于中华民族同心协力的道德、历史和文化课程后,我们的女儿回到家里也会讨论自律、正直和尊重长辈的话题。学校灌输了牢固的刻苦精神和对优秀成绩的全力以赴,我和丈夫不再需要敦促她们写作业;让老师和同学失望的羞耻感足以点燃她们的斗志。

美式教育盛行以学生为中心,强调的是孩子的需求,以及什么能吸引他们的注意力,并激发他们的独立思考。中国强调的重点则在于,只要你听老师的话努力学习,就能取得成功。为了弘扬中国文化,并提供替代西方影响的选择,政府资助的活动总会包含民乐表演、传统戏剧等等。有时候,女儿们会复述政治宣传内容,或是担心赶不上同学的成绩,因为我们没有早点教她们数学而感到担心。最后,我们这种要求不高的美国家庭文化帮助了她们保持平衡。

在中国抚养孩子也有其他好处,比如严格的审查制度让互联网对孩子更友好,国家还对未成年人玩网游的小时数进行了限制。讽刺的是,对国家管控严格的共产党带来了另一种自由:犯罪和人身安全方面的担忧基本不存在,女儿们从11岁起就可以在一座约2600万人口的城市不用大人陪同乘坐地铁。随处可见警察维持秩序的身影,不过他们态度温和(大部分没有持械);街道和每个街角的绿地都很整洁,公民的自豪感也是显而易见的。

疫情让这种体制出现了裂缝。去年3月下旬开始,上海经历了严厉的新冠封锁,导致我们被关在家中长达两个月,有时得依赖政府的食物配给。我们做出了离开中国的艰难决定,因为在过去近三年的时间里,主要由于中国的疫情限制,我们无法见到家人。去年6月,我们搬到了华盛顿特区。

在某些方面,回国带给我们的文化冲击比刚到中国时更强烈。我们回到了一个分裂的美国,许多人都认为政府不能插手民众的生活。这是我第一次在美国做两个女儿的家长,她们正处于初中和高中阶段。坚强、开明、独立,她们在这里茁壮成长,但也有很多东西需要适应。最近,她们在学校第一次接受实弹射击训练,我们也得改变认知,以一种我们在上海从不需要的方式保持警惕。在这样的时刻,我发现自己想念那个中国的共同抚养人。

美国的评论人士对中共的批判不绝于耳,其中很多是有道理的。但我们一家在中国的经历让我们懂得,深入了解一个对日常问题有不同答案的文化,会改变一个人看待世界的方式。以往看似非黑即白的做法有了更复杂的维度。

作为在中国的美国家长,我学会了欣赏强烈的共同价值观和民族团结意识。齐家如治国,是一门不完美的艺术。必须确立优先事项,必须做出艰难的选择。眼下正是我们相互学习,在街道、国家和世界之间架起新桥梁的关键时刻。对于美国政府这个共同抚养人,对共同利益的关注是我所寻求的基本价值。

Heather Kaye是一名美国时装设计师,曾在中国生活16年,她和丈夫在那里养育了两个女儿。

翻译:纽约时报中文网

China Helped Raise My American Kids, and They Turned Out Fine

By Heather Kaye  Jan. 18, 2023

Ms. Kaye lived in Shanghai for 16 years, where she raised two daughters.

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

When Covid was raging across the world a couple of years ago, I came across a picture online of an American woman wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed, “I refuse to co-parent with the government” — a response to perceived government overreach regarding school mask mandates. I laughed out loud: My own kids were, in a way, co-parented by the Chinese government.

My work in the fashion industry took my husband and me to Shanghai in 2006, where we spent the next 16 years and started a family. In China, government co-parenting begins in the womb. Chinese citizens have faced limits on how many children they were allowed under birth control policies that have since been relaxed. People in China are still legally barred from determining the gender of their unborn babies unless medically necessary, because of a history of sex-selective abortions.

As foreigners, we were exempt from such rules. But I had to accept that my growing belly had become community property, subject to unsolicited rubbing and sidewalk commentary (“It’s a boy. I can tell!”), and that restaurants would refuse to serve me cold beverages. Chinese people ascribe medicinal properties to simple hot water, rooted in hygiene concerns and the belief that it maintains a healthy balance in yin and yang. I dreaded the earful I would get each time I ordered an iced latte — though it was usually served with a warm smile.

In 2008 and 2010 we delivered two healthy daughters in Shanghai and faced the choice of all expatriate parents in China: between pricey international schools and enrollment in local schools, overseen by the government and with an immersion in Chinese culture and values.

We weighed the pros of the Chinese route (our girls would learn fluent Mandarin and, hopefully, a broadened worldview) and the cons (exposure to Communist Party propaganda and potential social isolation of being foreigners in a group of Chinese students). We took the plunge.

Our stringent government co-parent quickly made its presence felt. The girls’ Chinese kindergarten lectured us on everything, including how many hours our daughters should sleep, what they should eat and their optimal weight. Each morning all of the students performed calisthenics in straight rows and raised China’s red flag while singing the national anthem. Classroom windows were usually kept open to increase air circulation and prevent contamination by airborne illnesses, even during winter, when the kids would attend class wearing their coats.

We sometimes felt as if our children were on loan to us for evenings and weekends, to be delivered back to school each weekday.

Over time, the benefits kicked in. Constantly served up moral, history and culture lessons on pulling together for the sake of the Chinese nation, our girls came home discussing self-discipline, integrity and respect for elders. With school instilling a solid work ethic and a total drive for academic excellence, my husband and I didn’t need to push the girls to complete homework; the shame of letting their teachers and classmates down was enough to light their fires.

The prevailing student-centered American approach to education emphasizes the needs of the children and what engages them and promotes independent thought. China stresses that you can succeed — as long as you obey your teachers and work hard. To celebrate Chinese culture and offer an alternative to Western influences, government-funded events were always on offer, like traditional musical performances, operas and plays. At times, our girls would repeat propaganda or, concerned about keeping up with their peers, despair that we hadn’t tutored them earlier in math. At the end of the day, our less demanding American family culture helped keep the balance.

Raising kids in China was a plus in other ways — such as the heavy censorship, which results in a kid-friendly internet, and national limits on how many hours young people can spend playing online video games. Ironically, the tight control of the Communist Party surveillance state results in its own kind of freedom: With crime and personal safety concerns virtually eliminated, our daughters were riding the subway unsupervised in a city of around 26 million people from the age of 11. A constant but benign (and mostly unarmed) police presence kept order; streets and the green spaces around every corner were kept immaculate, and the sense of civic pride was palpable.

The pandemic laid bare cracks in the system. The punishing Covid lockdown of Shanghai that began in late March last year kept us confined at home for two months, dependent at times on government food rations. We had already made the difficult decision to leave China after nearly three years of being unable to see our families, largely because of Chinese pandemic restrictions, and moved to Washington, D.C., last June.

In some ways, the culture shock coming home feels stronger than when we first arrived in China. We’ve returned to a divided America where many feel government has no place in our lives. For the first time, I’m a parent in America of two daughters navigating their middle and high school years. Resilient, open-minded and independent, they are thriving here, but it’s been an adjustment. They had their first live-shooter drill at school recently, and we’ve adjusted our senses to be on alert in a way we never needed to in Shanghai. In these times, I find myself missing my Chinese co-parent.

There is no shortage of condemnation directed at China’s Communist Party by critics in the United States, much of it justified. But my family’s experience in China taught us that immersion in a culture with different answers to everyday questions alters how one sees the world. Practices that used to seem clearly right or wrong took on complexity and dimension.

As an American parent in China, I learned to appreciate the strong sense of shared values and of people connected as a nation. Parenting, like governing, is an imperfect art. Priorities must be set, and tough choices made. There’s never been a more crucial time for us to learn from one another and build new bridges across the street, nation and world. Attention to the common good is a fundamental value I seek in an American government co-parent.

Heather Kaye is an American fashion designer who lived for 16 years in China, where she and her husband raised two daughters.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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