ON her first morning in America, last summer, my daughter went out to explore her new neighborhood — alone, without even telling my wife or me.

去年夏天，我的女儿来美国的第一天早上，她就走出去探索新的社区了——独自一人，甚至没告诉我和我太太。

Of course we were worried; we had just moved from Berlin, and she was just 8. But when she came home, we realized we had no reason to panic. Beaming with pride, she told us and her older sister how she had discovered the little park around the corner, and had made friends with a few local dog owners. She had taken possession of her new environment, and was keen to teach us things we didn’t know.

我们当然感到担心，我们才刚从柏林搬来，而且她只有8岁。不过等她回到家时，我们意识到没有理由担惊受怕。她自豪地笑着，向我们和她姐姐讲述了自己是怎样发现街角的小公园的，而且她还与几个遛狗的本地人交上了朋友。她已经熟悉了自己的新环境，而且迫切地想教给我们一些我们自己不知道的事情。

When this story comes up in conversations with American friends, we are usually met with polite disbelief. Most are horrified¹ by the idea that their children might roam around without adult supervision². In Berlin, where we lived in the center of town, our girls would ride the Metro³ on their own — a no-no in Washington. Or they’d go alone to the playground, or walk a mile to a piano lesson. Here in quiet and traffic-safe suburban⁴ Washington, they don’t even find other kids on the street to play with. On Halloween, when everybody was out to trick or treat, we were surprised by how many children actually lived here whom we had never seen.

我们和美国朋友聊天时谈到这段故事，他们通常都会礼貌地表露出难以置信的态度。想到孩子或许会在没有成年人监护的情况下自己四处游荡，多数人都会感到惊恐。我们在柏林居住在市中心，我们的女儿可以自己搭乘地铁——这在华盛顿是绝对不行的。她们也可以自己去游乐场，或者走一英里路去上钢琴课。但在华盛顿这个环境安静、交通安全的郊区，她们在街上连一起玩耍的孩子都找不到。在万圣节前夜，所有人都出来玩“不给糖就捣乱”时，我们发现有很多孩子生活在这里，而我们却从没见到过，因此感到十分惊讶。

A study by the University of California, Los Angeles, has found that American kids spend 90 percent of their leisure time at home, often in front of the TV or playing video games. Even when kids are physically⁵ active, they are watched closely by adults, either in school, at home, at afternoon activities or in the car, shuttling them from place to place.

加州大学洛杉矶分校(University of California, Los Angeles)的一项研究发现，美国儿童大约90%的闲暇时间是在家中度过的，常常是在电视机前，或者是在玩电子游戏。即使在孩子们活动的时候，他们也会受到成年人的密切关注，无论是在学校、在家、午后出门活动时，或者是在车中从甲地移动到乙地时。

Such narrowing of the child’s world has happened across the developed world. But Germany is generally much more accepting of letting children take some risks. To this German parent, it seems that America’s middle class has taken overprotective parenting to a new level, with the government acting⁶ as a super nanny.

这样收窄孩子的世界的现象，在整个发达世界都在发生。然而，德国人通常更愿意接受让孩子们面对一些风险。在我这个德国家长看来，美国的中产阶级似乎把带孩子时保护欲太强的问题，提升到了全新高度，而政府的做法仿佛是一个超级保姆。

Just take the case of 10-year-old Rafi and 6-year-old Dvora Meitiv, siblings⁷ in Silver Spring, Md., who were picked up in December by the police because their parents had dared to allow them to walk home from the park alone. For trying to make them more independent, their parents were found guilty by the state’s Child Protective Services of “unsubstantiated child neglect.” What had been the norm a generation ago, that kids would enjoy a measure of autonomy after school, is now seen as almost a crime.

马里兰州银泉(Silver Spring)的兄妹，10岁的拉斐·梅蒂夫(Rafi Meitiv)和6岁的德芙拉(Dvora)，去年12月被警方带走了，因为他们的父母竟然敢让她们自己从公园走回家。为了让他们更独立，他们的父母却被州里的儿童保护服务局(Child Protective Services)判定，存在“未经证实的育儿疏忽”。让孩子在放学后享有一定的自主权，这是上一代人的惯常做法，可现在却几乎被当成了犯罪。

Today’s parents enjoyed a completely different American childhood. Recently, researchers at the University of Virginia conducted interviews with 100 parents. “Nearly all respondents remember childhoods of nearly unlimited⁸ freedom, when they could ride bicycles and wander through woods, streets, parks, unmonitored by their parents,” writes Jeffrey Dill, one of the researchers.

今天的父母们小时候享受过的美式童年是完全不同的。最近，弗吉尼亚大学(University of Virginia)的研究人员对100名家长进行了访谈。“几乎所有的受访者都记得，童年时有过近乎无限的自由，他们可以骑自行车，可以在树林里、街道上、公园里游逛，完全不会受到家长的监督，”其中一位研究人员杰弗里·迪尔(Jeffrey Dill)写道。

But when it comes to their own children, the same respondents were terrified by the idea of giving them only a fraction of the freedom they once enjoyed. Many cited fear of abduction, even though crime rates have declined significantly. The most recent in-depth study found that, in 1999, only 115 children nationwide were victims of a “stereotypical⁹ kidnapping” by a stranger; the overwhelming majority were abducted¹⁰ by a family member. That same year, 2,931 children under 15 died as passengers in car accidents. Driving children around is statistically¹¹ more dangerous than letting them roam freely.

然而谈到他们自己的孩子，向孩子给予自己曾享有过的一小部分自由的想法，却让他们感到担心。许多人都提到担心诱拐，尽管犯罪率已经显著下降。最新的深入研究发现，在1999年，全美只有115个孩子遭到陌生人“典型意义上的绑架”，绝大多数孩子是被亲人劫持的。同年，有2931名15岁以下的儿童作为乘客死于交通事故。从统计数据看，驾车带孩子们出门，比让他们自由地游逛更危险。

Motor development suffers when most of a child’s leisure time is spent sitting at home instead of running outside. Emotional development suffers, too.

如果孩子的大部分闲暇时间在家中度过，而不是在户外跑动，那么运动机能的发育就会受到影响。情感发育也会受到影响。

“We are depriving them of opportunities to learn how to take control of their own lives,” writes Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College. He argues that this increases “the chance that they will suffer from anxiety, depression, and various other mental disorders,” which have gone up dramatically in recent decades. He sees risky¹², outside play of children among themselves without adult supervision as a way of learning to control strong emotions like anger and fear.

“我们剥夺了他们学习如何控制自己生活的机会，”波士顿学院(Boston College)研究教授彼得·格雷(Peter Gray)写道。他提出，这加大了“他们感到焦虑、抑郁，及其他各种精神障碍的可能性”，这些精神障碍的发病率近几十年急剧提高。在他看来，孩子们在没有成年人监督的情况下在外玩耍，尽管有风险，但却是学习控制愤怒和恐惧等强烈情绪的方法。

I am no psychologist like Professor Gray, but I know I won’t be around forever to protect my girls from the challenges life holds in store for them, so the earlier they develop the intellectual maturity¹³ to navigate¹⁴ the world, the better. And by giving kids more control over their lives, they learn to have more confidence in their own capabilities¹⁵.

我不是格雷教授那样的心理学家，但我知道我无法永远保护我的女儿，帮她们应对人生向她们提出的种种挑战。所以，她们越早发展出智力上的成熟，可以在这个世界中穿行，就越好。让孩子对自己的生活有更多控制权，他们就会对自己的能力有更多信心。

It is hard for parents to balance the desire to protect their children against the desire to make them more self-reliant. And every one of us has to decide for himself what level of risk he is ready to accept. But parents who prefer to keep their children always in sight and under their thumbs should consider what sort of trade-offs are involved in that choice.

一方面是保护孩子的欲望，另一方面是让他们自立的想法，父母在其中很难取舍。我们每一个人都必须自己决定，打算接受多大程度的风险。然而，那些喜欢把孩子放在自己的视线之内，抓在手心里的家长们，应当考虑一下这种选择背后的损失。

At a minimum, parents who want to give their children more room to roam shouldn’t be penalized¹⁶ by an overprotective state. Cases like the Meitivs’ reinforce the idea that children are fragile objects to be protected at all times, and that parents who believe otherwise are irresponsible, if not criminally negligent¹⁷.

最起码，希望让孩子有更多空间去自由活动的家长，不应该被保护欲过强的政府所惩罚。类似梅蒂夫一家这样的案例，强化了儿童是脆弱的物品，应当时时刻刻受到保护的念头，也强化了如果父母不这样做就是不负责任，甚至是玩忽职守似的犯罪的想法。

Besides overriding¹⁸ our natural protective impulses in order to loosen the reins¹⁹ of our kids, my wife and I now also have to ponder the possibility of running afoul of the authorities. And we thought we had come to the land of the free.

要想放松对孩子们的掌控，除了克制我们保护孩子的自然冲动，我和我太太现在还要考虑惹恼官方的可能性。我们本以为来到了一个自由的国度。