美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Women's Work' Delves Into Gender Roles At Home And Relationships With Domestic Help

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Megan Stack is a former foreign correspondent for the LA Times. She gave up a life of covering war and natural disasters when she had her first child in Beijing. She hired a nanny and realized how dependent she had become, something she writes about in her book, called, "Women's Work." In a talk with Rachel Martin, Stack said it was a hard decision to write about her own home and family.

MEGAN STACK: I would not have done it if I could have found another way to tell the story that I felt that I wanted to tell. It is, really, at times, unflattering - a very honest view into this very difficult issues of parenting, and marriage, and paid domestic labor¹ and, you know, all of the tangled² issues around those things.

RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE³: If you talk to someone who has full-time⁴ child care at home - in this country, abroad - they will often suggest that these women are like family. And you talk about that in the book. But is that how you thought of them?

STACK: I have consciously tried to avoid thinking of these women in those terms because I think there are a lot of problems attached to that framing. When you say somebody is your family member, a lot of familiarity goes along with that, and a lot of labor protections tend to kind of go out the window because you sort of say, well, she's here and, you know, we love her, and she loves us and she loves the kids - she doesn't mind, you know, working the extra day off. She doesn't mind coming in even though maybe, you know, her family has something else to do. And you sort of impose.

I think it often starts from a very good place and an honest place. And I understand that place because I have definitely felt that I loved the women who worked in my house. Like, I literally⁵ loved them. I know that it starts in that feeling, which is a very natural and good feeling. But the problem is when you put that on somebody who is actually your employee and who doesn't have the same power in the relationship, you are taking away more of their power, I think.

MARTIN: You tell these anecdotes⁶ in the book about how reliant you did become on them. You mention, you know, your first caretaker in China, that if she had left, things would have just fallen apart. Even when one of them had a health emergency, or if there was some other urgent situation, you felt this panic, almost, that they were going to go away for maybe a day, but maybe it was going to be weeks.

Can you talk about that fear? Because I mean, it's a human who has a problem, and they need to go deal with it. But it was so debilitating⁷ for you to think about them being gone.

STACK: It was. Well, I think that that comes from a few things. I think for one thing, it was kind of the particularity of being in China and being so far from my family. And I was quite dependent on this woman who I trusted with my baby. And it wasn't easy for me. And the other thing was that I'm kind of a maniac⁸. I mean, I'm a workaholic. I was - you know, within a few weeks of having the baby, I was already just berating⁹ myself because I wasn't back to work at the book the way that I thought I would be, and now I have to write this book, but I didn't realize I was never going to sleep.

So my brain is dysfunctional, and how am I going to write a book in this state? And, you know, and every time Xiao Li was not there, I had the feeling, well, I'm going to lose another hour of writing time. And I was so desperate for work time. Which, in retrospect¹¹, seems a little crazy to me. So...

MARTIN: But it's really honest. You know?

STACK: Yeah.

MARTIN: It's a thing that a lot of women go through, feel, grapple with and don't talk about.

STACK: Yeah. I think that's true. I mean, I really was unprepared for a lot of the things that happened that first year, both just even the simple biological facts of sort of pregnancy¹² and delivery of the baby, and then the things that happen to your mind and your emotional state. That was all shocking. And then, you know, introducing this whole other element of another woman who's also a mother - you know, this was the thing that I began to focus on more and more.

And I wrote about this in the book, going from thinking about this other person, this other woman, this other mother, as somebody who is somehow there for you in a - as you - in sort of a functional¹⁰ way. You know, she's there so I can work, and she's there so I have somebody to help me watch the baby.

MARTIN: She's left her children to care for yours.

STACK: She's left her children. This is the realization¹³. And it's, of course, something you know, but it's coming to understand as a mother yourself, and it's coming to sort of to grapple with the ethics¹⁴ of this situation, which are not straightforward¹⁵. Even after having read this book, I feel like there are - I cannot condemn¹⁶ the model of paid domestic labor, but I can at the same time. I feel like, yes, you know, given the world that we have, you know, this was a good job for her. It was a way that she was able to make some money to take care of her daughter.

But the fact that she had left her daughter behind in order to have the money to support that daughter is, you know, it's a very common story. It's a very modern, contemporary, global story. It's happening all over the world. And, you know, the thing is, when you have that woman in your house, taking care of your children, it starts to seem very crazy. You know, like, who's taking care of her children?

MARTIN: How often did you let yourself think about that? Or did you block it out? I mean, how did you manage those thoughts?

STACK: I think it was a slow process of first, you know, not really being aware of it then becoming more aware of it and not wanting to think about it because it felt so dangerous to my status quo.

MARTIN: Right.

STACK: It was sort of like, OK, I don't want to think about it. And then thinking, no, you know, this is not in my nature. I'm a journalist, and I have always been someone who tries to go to the difficult places and the places that are uncomfortable. So I'm going there more and more. And I'm asking more questions. And then eventually, those feelings sort of led to me deciding to write this book, which is kind of a departure for me. There was a long time when I was sort of working on a different book, and I would meet friends for coffee and I would - we would talk about the things that are in this book, this "Women's Work." And I would say, if I had any time, I would write this book 'cause this is really...

MARTIN: (Laughter).

STACK: ...Interesting. (Laughter). But I don't have time for this book 'cause I'm engaged in real - you know, it was sort of like, I'm engaged in the serious stuff, not the mommy, and the baby and the household. So finally, I decided¹⁷, well, I am going to write that book. You know, and then it kind of turned into that. And that helped me a lot because it put me more at peace with confronting that.

Those - like, all of the aspects of the decisions that we had made and the trying, to the extent that I could, and trying to be respectful, but trying to bring the stories of the women and their families and their children and their own sort of landscapes as working mothers, and trying to put those into the same place as my own landscape as a working mother and to understand how they were intersecting.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: Writer Megan Stack, her latest book is called, "Women's Work: A Reckoning With Work And Home."

1 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

2 tangled   

adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• Your hair's so tangled that I can't comb it. 你的头发太乱了，我梳不动。
• A movement caught his eye in the tangled undergrowth. 乱灌木丛里的晃动引起了他的注意。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。

5 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

6 anecdotes   

n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• amusing anecdotes about his brief career as an actor 关于他短暂演员生涯的趣闻逸事
• He related several anecdotes about his first years as a congressman. 他讲述自己初任议员那几年的几则轶事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 debilitating   

a.使衰弱的

参考例句：

• The debilitating disease made him too weak to work. 这个令他衰弱的病，使他弱到没有办法工作。
• You may soon leave one debilitating condition or relationship forever. 你即将永远地和这段霉运说拜拜了。

8 maniac   

n.精神癫狂的人；疯子

参考例句：

• Be careful!That man is driving like a maniac!注意！那个人开车像个疯子一样！
• You were acting like a maniac,and you threatened her with a bomb!你像一个疯子，你用炸弹恐吓她！

9 berating   

v.严厉责备，痛斥( berate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He deserved the berating that the coach gave him. 他活该受到教练的严厉训斥。 来自互联网
• The boss is berating those who were late for work. 老板正在呵斥那些上班迟到的员工。 来自互联网

10 functional   

adj.为实用而设计的，具备功能的，起作用的

参考例句：

• The telephone was out of order,but is functional now.电话刚才坏了，但现在可以用了。
• The furniture is not fancy,just functional.这些家具不是摆着好看的，只是为了实用。

11 retrospect   

n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯

参考例句：

• One's school life seems happier in retrospect than in reality.学校生活回忆起来显得比实际上要快乐。
• In retrospect,it's easy to see why we were wrong.回顾过去就很容易明白我们的错处了。

12 pregnancy   

n.怀孕，怀孕期

参考例句：

• Early pregnancy is often accompanied by nausea.怀孕早期常有恶心的现象。
• Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage.怀孕期吸烟会增加流产的危险。

13 realization   

n.实现；认识到，深刻了解

参考例句：

• We shall gladly lend every effort in our power toward its realization.我们将乐意为它的实现而竭尽全力。
• He came to the realization that he would never make a good teacher.他逐渐认识到自己永远不会成为好老师。

14 ethics   

n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准

参考例句：

• The ethics of his profession don't permit him to do that.他的职业道德不允许他那样做。
• Personal ethics and professional ethics sometimes conflict.个人道德和职业道德有时会相互抵触。

15 straightforward   

adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的

参考例句：

• A straightforward talk is better than a flowery speech.巧言不如直说。
• I must insist on your giving me a straightforward answer.我一定要你给我一个直截了当的回答。

16 condemn   

vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑

参考例句：

• Some praise him,whereas others condemn him.有些人赞扬他，而有些人谴责他。
• We mustn't condemn him on mere suppositions.我们不可全凭臆测来指责他。

17 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。