女人有必要结婚吗？ [美国媒体]

Is Marriage Worth It For Women?

女人有必要结婚吗？

The benefits go mostly for men.

好处都归男人了。

Noam Shpancer Ph.D. (insight therapy)

作者：诺姆·斯宾塞博士（内省力治疗师）



A casual look at how marriage is represented in popular culture may lead one to conclude that ending up at the altar is the ultimate female desire. Wedding magazines are aimed almost exclusively at brides, not grooms. Reality TV shows highlight Bridezillas, not Groomzillas, andThe Bachelor, in which multiple women vie for a ring, is a ratings juggernaut. The central attraction in the pageant of the average wedding is reserved for the bride’s dress, while the groom’s attire receives little billing. Pop culture queen Beyoncé herself has famously admonished men that if they like it, then they should put a ring on it.

对婚姻是如何在流行文化中占据一席之地的偶尔一瞥，可能导致一个人得出所有妇女最终都希望将登上教堂的祭坛作为自己的归宿这样一个结论。因为婚姻杂志几乎都是写给新娘而不是新郎看的，还因为有一些电视真人秀节目通过让多名妇女抢夺一枚戒指这种强调“新娘怪兽”而不是“新郎怪兽”或“单身汉”的安排而成为收视大户。就是普通老百姓举行的婚礼表演中，最受人瞩目的都是新娘的服装，而新郎的衣服几乎都不花什么钱。还记得流行天后碧昂斯责备男人的那句名言吗？“如果他们喜欢婚姻，那他们就应该给婚姻戴上戒指。”

Men, on the other hand, are often depicted as commitment phobic, having to be conned or whipped into marriage, or dragged to the altar against their deeply promiscuous nature, which abhors long-term monogamy. The notion of a "midlife crisis," during which men are bound to jettison their old wives for a new, younger trophy model is also a familiar cultural trope.

而另一方面男人往往要么被描述成有承诺恐惧症的、要么被描述成是被人哄着或是怂恿着才结婚的、甚而竟或是违背他们淫乱的天性（正是这种天性让他们憎恶长期的一夫一妻制）而被强行拖到祭坛上去的。因为“中年危机”这个词的意思说的就是中年男人免不了抛弃他们的老妻再去娶一个更年轻的、更能显示其身份地位的像模特一样的新妻，所以这个词也包含了一种人人熟悉的文化寓意在其中。

Marriage, we have been led to believe, is a natural habitat for women, but a stifling cage for men. Thus goes the popular fantasy. However, in the real world of data, things shake out quite a bit differently.

一直以来我们都被引导着去相信女性本能需要婚姻作为栖息之处，而男人则视其为一个令他窒息的牢笼，因此大众幻想也以此为基础产生。但是，在一个用数据说话的真实世界中事情却令人震惊地不同。

First, confounding the view of marriage as the female heaven and haven is the fact that marriage actually appears to benefit men more than it does women(link is external). Research has shown that the "marriage benefits"—the increases in health(link is external), wealth(link is external), and happiness(link is external)that are often associated with the status—go disproportionately to men. Married men are better off than single men. Married women, on the other hand, are not better off than unmarried women.

因为相较于女性而言婚姻其实让男人得到更多的好处，所以首先让我们检视“婚姻是妇女的天堂和避难所”这样一个观点。研究已经指出“由婚姻产生的好处”——这些“好处”既包括健康、财富方面的，也包括幸福感方面的——常常不成比例地流向男人。在上述方面已婚男性比单身男性情况更好，而已婚女性则比未婚女性更差。

Second, in contrast to the myth that marriage is a woman’s ultimate and sacred fulfillment is the reality that roughly two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women(link is external). This is true not only for the young and hip: A recent AARP survey(link is external) of 1147 men and women ages 40-79 who experienced a divorce in their 40s, 50s, or 60s, found that 66% of women said they initiated the split.

其次，神话都将婚姻说成是女性最终的和最神圣的满足，但是现实中大约2/3的离婚是由女方发起的。这个结果可不仅仅针对那些年轻爱赶时髦的。“美国退休人员协会”最近对1147名年龄介于40至79岁之间的、在40岁、50岁或是60岁都经历过离婚的男女进行了一次调查，结果发现66%的女性声称是自己提出的离婚。

New research suggests that there is something unique to marriage—other than the trials of getting along day-to-day with another person—that may make it less than hospitable to women.

新调查认为婚姻中存在一些对女性更不友好的东西，而这些东西只存在于婚姻中。有实验证明一个人与另一个人日复一日的生活在一起也不会产生这些东西。

A recent paper(link is external) by Stanford sociologist Michael J. Rosenfeld analyzed longitudinal data from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey—a survey of a nationally representative sample of 2,262 adults in heterosexual relations followed from 2009 to early 2015.
The results revealed an intriguing pattern: As expected, women initiated roughly two thirds (69%) of the breakups in heterosexual marriages.

斯坦福大学的社会学家麦克·J·罗森菲尔德曾从2009年到2015年早些时候，在全国范围内抽样，选出具有代表性的2262名存在异性婚恋关系的成年人作了一个名为“配偶是如何相遇并待在一起的”调查，并于一篇最近发表的论文中对其中的数据进行了纵向分析。结果正如预期一样揭示了一个有趣的模式：在异性婚姻中，大约2/3（69%）的离婚是由女方提出的。

However, the gendered trend in relationship breakups held only for marriages and not for other non-marital unions. Moreover, women in marriages, but not in other relationships, reported lower levels of satisfaction.

但是，这组与性别相关的趋势却只存在于婚姻关系而不是非婚姻关系的结盟中。此外，是处于婚姻关系中的女性，而不是处于其它爱情关系中的女性，报告说自己存在较低的满意度。

According to Rosenfeld, these data suggest that the tendency for women to initiate breakups is not an inherent feature of male-female relationships. Rather, it is a feature of male-female marriage. This finding appears to provide support for the notion that women experience the institution of marriage as oppressive, in large part because it emerged from and still carries the imprint of a system of female subjugation.

根据罗森菲尔德的论文，这些数据说明更多是由女性提出离婚的这种倾向不是男女爱情关系内在的特征，而是男女婚姻关系的一个特征。这项发现似乎支持了如下观点，即女性发现婚姻制度是一种欺骗，大部分缘于婚姻制度源于并且依然承载着镇压女性这样一个系统的印记。

Rosenfeld notes that marriage law was originally based on the common law assumption that the wife was the husband’s property. The last vestiges of this common law tradition legally subordinating wives to their husbands, such as allowing spousal rape, were eliminated in the United States only in the late 1970s. Most women in the U.S. still take the surnames of their husband when they marry, a practice required by law in many states until the 1970s.

罗森菲尔德指出最初作为婚姻法的基础的习惯法假定妻子是丈夫的财产。视妻子从法律上属于丈夫的传统（比如允许婚内强奸）一直留存在这部直到二十世纪70年代才从美国淘汰的习惯法中。大部分美国妇女在结婚时依然采用丈夫的姓氏，而且直到二十世纪70年代许多州都是用法律的形式将此规定下来并执行的。

Just as we cannot maintain grand ancient structures without contending with the limitations of ancient building materials, so it is difficult to sustain old traditions without keeping the old worldviews and habits from which they had emerged. The ghosts of female subjugation haunt the halls of contemporary marriage, to the detriment of married women.

正如同不与古老的建筑材料的局限性作斗争，我们就无法保持住庞大的古老建筑结构一样，如果我们无法保持产生久的传统的旧的世界观和习俗，那么我们在维持旧有传统上便会遭遇困难。镇压妇女的幽灵依然在现代婚姻的殿堂中飘荡，伤害着已婚妇女。

This is an intriguing idea, but doubts remain.

这个想法很有趣，但是疑点并未消失。

First, causality is difficult to establish in the absence of true controlled experimentation. In other words, since we cannot assign people randomly to married and unmarried groups at the outset, any difference between the groups in outcome may be the result of selection, rather than treatment, effects. For example: If married women are more likely to be dissatisfied, it may be because the marriage made them so (treatment effect) or because dissatisfaction-prone women are more likely to choose marriage (selection effect).

首先，缺乏真正控制的实验很难建立因果假设。也就是说，因为我们不能在一开始就把人随意分成已婚和未婚两类，所以在这两类之间的任何差别可能是选择效果而非治疗效果。举例说明：如果已婚妇女更可能感到不满意，那么这有可能是因为该婚姻让她们如此的（治疗效果），也有可能是因为倾向于不容易满意的妇女更可能选择结婚（选择效果）。

People’s expectations—a variable not measured in Rosenfeld’s data—may also play a role in relationship satisfaction. If the culture sets women’s expectations for marriage high and men’s low, then the reality of marriage, in which men benefit more, may elicit increased satisfaction in men—“This is much better than I expected"—and decreased satisfaction in women.

人们的期望（在罗森菲尔德的数据中，这个值是一个变量，没有测定）也可能在婚恋关系满意度中扮演一个角色。如果该文化将妇女对婚姻的期望值设定得高而将男性的设置得低，那么这段男性会从中得到更多好处的婚姻的实际情况便可能引起男性的满意度增加，而女性的满意度降低。男性会说：“这比我预期的要好得多。”

Moreover, while Rosenfeld’s work may shed light on the "push" side of the decision to leave, the equation he outlines is probably incomplete as it neglects the "pull" side. In general, life decisions are multiply determined. Internal states such as marital satisfaction are likely to be weighed in the decision-making process against external variables such as societal attitudes about divorce, or the ability to maintain contact with children and financial security after divorce. Indeed, existing data attests to the importance of such external pull factors in shaping decisions of both men and women.

此外，罗森菲尔德的工作可能对该判断“推”的一方阐明得很清楚却忽视了“拉”的一方，因此，他勾勒出来的等式可能不完整。总的说来，生活中作出的那些决定都是多方面作用的结果。比如在做决定时，相较于诸如社会对离婚的态度、抚养孩子的能力以及离婚后的财政保障这些外部变量，像物质满意度这样的内在状态的分量有可能被加重。不管是对男人还是对女人，目前的数据的确证明了在作出决定时那些存在于外部的“拉”的因素的重要性。

For example, the AARP survey pointed to the fact that men more often decided to stay in a bad marriage out of fear of losing touch with their children. These are not unjustified fears, as fathers often experience decreased levels of contact(link is external) with their children post-divorce.
Conversely, an unsatisfied woman’s decision to leave may depend in part on her employment status. For example, Ohio State University's Liana C. Sayer(link is external) and her colleagues have provided evidence to suggest that unsatisfied women are much more likely to leave if they are employed.

举例说明：“美国退休人员协会”的那项调查指出男人出于害怕失去接触孩子的机会而更倾向于决定维持一段坏的婚姻。这些害怕很正常，因为父亲们离婚之后和他们孩子之间往往渐行渐远。与之相反，一个满意度不高的妇女作出离开的决定常常部分取决于她有没有工作。举例说明：俄亥俄州立大学的莲娜·C·塞耶和她的同事们已经有证据证明满意度不高的妇女在有工作的情况下更有可能离开。



At the end of the day, the accumulating data paint a picture of marriage as complex commerce in which women may often play a paradoxical role: They work harder for a smaller share of the benefits, which may explain why, while they may often be more eager to get into a marriage, they are often also more eager to get out.

归根结底，那些逐渐累计的数据勾勒出了一副婚姻复杂的画面，就像复杂的贸易那样，而妇女在其中可能常常扮演着一个矛盾的角色：她们为了更少的好处而更努力地工作。这种矛盾也可以解释为什么她们在更渴望进入婚姻的同时往往也更渴望离开。


1）
My boyfriend pushed marriage soon into our relationship. I was an inexperienced young girl still in high school and married soon after graduation. He was controlling and possessive. I agree with the article, that marriage all in all was created for men to be "taken care of" especially in old age by a woman. I worked outside the home and took care of most everything... children, house, chores, meals and him. Why can't more marriages be more 50/50? I'm sure there are men who take good care of their wives and help out with the household work and don't expect to be waited on hand and foot.... and treat their wives like housekeepers and Mama's.

那个时候是我男友非要结婚的。我当时是一个还在念高中的年轻姑娘，毫无经验，毕业后就结婚了。他的控制欲和占有欲都很强。我赞同这篇文章的观点，我同意婚姻就是为男人创造的，尤其是为了让男人老了以后有一个女人“照顾”。我在外工作，同时还要照顾几乎每件事情……孩子、房子、做饭和他。为什么结婚越久事情就越不能对半分呢？肯定有男人将他们的妻子照顾得很好，这些男人还帮着做家务，并且不是什么都指望妻子……就仿佛他们的妻子是他们的家政服务员和保姆。

2）
^^^This! This right here is why women do not stay married. We must do all the chores, work outside the home, raise the kids, cook dinner, clean up after and do all these other things to treat our husbands like children as well and coddle them with no time left to enjoy our lives or pursue our interests or even relax most of the time. It is absurdly unfair and societal expectation must change for a more modern marriage with equal roles.

对！这就是妇女不应该结婚的原因。我们必须做所有的家务杂活、还要在外工作、还要抚养孩子、做饭、做卫生、还要把我们的丈夫当孩子一样照顾，娇惯他们以致于自己都没有时间享受生命或是追求自己的兴趣爱好或是休息。这绝对不公平。社会对婚姻的期望必须为一个更现代的、角色平等的婚姻而改变。

3）
And this is why most of the women here are single hags on the rags and will be forever. Men that are single get to avoid the constant nagging, be carefree, and actually have money. Amazing.

这就是为什么这里的大部分妇女都是单身（而且将永远单身下去）的原因。单身汉就不会自怨自艾，他们无忧无虑、大量挣钱。太精彩了。

4）
...then you are not for me. My marriage failed..and yes its harder work for women than men when in marriage..but i can say that deoends in the afe they are in. The more mature a career woman is..the better they get in handling relationships, with d right maturity that it needs. And not all women who reached d age of forty and above looks and feels aged..not me i can say. So i still like men who commits ^_^

……不管怎么讲，你的文章不是针对我的。我的婚姻失败了……是的……婚姻中女人比男人辛苦……但是我能不能讲这取决于她们进入一段浪漫史时自身的状态？职业妇女越是成熟，她们就越是能处理好婚恋关系，因为她们拥有处理好婚恋关系的成熟。不是每一个40岁（及以上）的妇女看上去或是感觉很老的……我敢说反正不是我。因此我依然喜欢作出承诺的男人。

5）
You are a pussy and like to nutshell entire genders prejudicially and stereotypically.

你这个小婊砸，满篇都是对男人和女人的偏见的陈词滥调。

6）
Gee...I dunno. Maybe women want to get married at first because they have been raised on fairytales and they actually fell in love and thought it was their turn for happily ever after? Then after marriage it becomes evident that the guy is a jerk and she has to be a live in maid/cook/sex slave/brood mare and nanny/plus work outside the home. So she probably looks around and thinks she'd have better luck elsewhere and decides to divorce and move on.

我不知道。也许女人一开始想结婚是因为她们都是在仙境中长大的，因此当她们确实恋爱了就会认为这段浪漫会永远持续？结婚之后那个家伙就成了蠢蛋，而她则不得不充当起女佣、厨师、性奴、种马、保姆的同时还要在外工作。所以她可能环顾四周，并认为换个地方她就会有好运，然后她决定离婚，一切从头来过。

7）
We are a long way off from that type of equality. Another problem with marriage is men often feel like they've "won" and no longer attempt to make their wives feel cherished or desired. Women turn into maids and babysitters all the while having her desirability as a woman diminished from lack of attention. No woman wants that! It's no wonder we're more likely to initiate divorce. It's not going to change though. Men are so spoiled. Society has always seen men as more favorable even among women. If you need proof just think of how many people say "I hope we have a son! Girls are just troublesome." Its not just men who favor men either! Women are just as guilty sometimes, some claiming "I don't get along with other females" crap. Which is just another side effect of the media only portraying women as important if they fit the unrealistic standards of beauty. Each girl has this garbage shoved in her face from childhood, breeding insecurity and body image issues and other disorders like anorexia. Then it all becomes a sick contest against other women to see who fits these unrealistic standards best. If change is going to happen two things need to be done. No more unrealistic beauty standards and no more gender favoritism. Which won't happen, because unfortunately: sex. Which puts all these things into motion. It all begins and ends with sex.

我们离男女平等还有很长一段路要走。婚姻的另一个问题是男人往往觉得他们“赢了”，于是就不再试图让他们的妻子感觉被珍视或是被渴望。 女人成了女佣和保姆，而作为一个女人的愿望因为缺乏注意而减少了。没有女人想这样！如果这样那么我们提出离婚就毫无悬念了，但是改变不会到来。男人都被宠坏了。社会往往视为对男人更有利，即使这个男人被一群女人围着。如果你需要证据，你只需想想有多少人说“我希望我们有一个儿子！女儿就是麻烦！”不仅仅是男人支持这种想法！女人有时也是有罪的。一些女人就会说“我不想和其他女人好好相处了”这样的废话。媒体还向女人说如果她们符合不实际的美丽标准她们就会显得更重要。这也造成了女人不能和女人好好相处。每个女孩从孩提时代就把这种垃圾贴一脸，还导致不安全感以及身体形象问题以及其它诸如厌食症这样的疾病。然后为了看一看谁更符合这些不实际的标准，这一切又变成了一场反其他妇女的病态的竞争。要改变，两件事需要做。不现实的美丽标准和性别利好都不能再有了。但是不幸的是，由于性这个问题这些都不会发生。性成了推动这一切的原动力。一切都以性开始，又以性结束。

8）
you are right especially about the sons part.i prefer goodness(daughters),because i have realised that men are bad and evil generally with the exception of gay men,metro me,asexual men,men who prefer older women,bimen....which shows that in general masculine is evil/bad and feminine good.which is why the world becoming more peace as men are becoming more 'feminized'

你都对，尤其是关于儿子那一部分。老天，我更喜欢善良（也就是女儿），因为我已经意识到男人总的说来是坏的、是恶魔。当然同性恋的男人、无性欲的男人、喜欢年长的妇女的男人例外……总之男子气就是恶魔或坏的，而女子气是好的。这也就是为什么当男人变得越来越娘的时候，这个世界就越和平。

9）
When a man and a woman engage in sex, they ARE
married. "If you break it, you own it."
"When a man will leave his mother and father and cleve
onto his wife, they shall be ONE FLESH."
The man is responsible for the support of his wife and
child.
The more women a man cleves too, the more wives he
has. Let's hope he can provide for them.
A woman cannot enjoy the same freedom. She cannot
have sex outside of her "marriage." If she does she is
commiting adultrey and should be stoned.

当男人和女人性交的时候他们就结婚了。“如果你把那儿捅破了，你就拥有它了。”“当一个男人将要离开他的父母并和他老婆睡在一起的时候，他们就结合为一体了。”这个男子就要负责养活他老婆孩子。一个男人睡的女人越多，他的老婆就越多。让我们希望他可以供得起他们。一个女人不能享受同样的自由。她不能与婚姻之外的男人性交。如果她那样做了，她就犯了通奸罪并应该被处以石刑。

Please stop making me sound like a total dork.
Thanks,
Jesus

（回楼上的）
请不要让我听起来像一个十足的傻瓜。
谢谢。
上帝