By Kelly Oakes

作者：凱利.奧克斯


From sleeping in separate beds to their children to transporting them in prams, Western parents have some unusual ideas about how to raise them.

從分開睡到用嬰兒車送孩子，西方父母對(duì)如何撫養(yǎng)孩子總是有一些不同尋常的想法。

"Is he in his own room yet?" is a question new parents often field once they emerge from the haze of life with a newborn. But sleeping apart from our babies is a relatively recent development – and not one that extends around the globe. In other cultures sharing a room, and sometimes a bed, with your baby is the norm.

“他已經(jīng)在自己的房間里了嗎?”這是剛帶著新生兒走出生活陰霾的父母經(jīng)常要面對(duì)的一個(gè)問題。但是，與嬰兒分開睡覺是一種相對(duì)較新的發(fā)展，這在全球范圍內(nèi)并不是普遍存在的現(xiàn)象。在其他文化中，和寶寶同住一間房，有時(shí)甚至同睡一張床是很正常的。

This isn’t the only aspect of new parenthood that Westerners do differently. From napping on a schedule and sleep training to pushing our children around in strollers, what we might think of as standard parenting practices are often anything but.

這并不是西方人初為人父母的唯一不同之處。他們會(huì)讓孩子按時(shí)間表午睡、做睡眠訓(xùn)練，會(huì)推著孩子在嬰兒車?yán)镒邅?lái)走去，但是我們可能認(rèn)為的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)育兒做法往往完全不是這樣的。

Parents in the US and UK are advised to have their babies sleep in the same room as them for at least the first six months, but many view this as a brief stopover on their way to a dedicated nursery.

美國(guó)和英國(guó)的父母被建議至少在頭六個(gè)月里要讓孩子和自己睡在同一個(gè)房間里，但很多人認(rèn)為這只是孩子們?nèi)ｉT托兒所的途中的一個(gè)短暫停留。

In most other societies around the world, babies stick with their parents longer. A 2016 review that looked at research on children sharing not just a room but a bed with one or more of their parents found a high prence in many Asian countries: over 70% in India and Indonesia, for example, and over 80% in Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Research on bedsharing rates in countries across Africa is patchy, but where it does exist suggests the practice is near-universal.

在世界上大多數(shù)其他國(guó)家，嬰兒跟父母在一起的時(shí)間更長(zhǎng)。2016年的一項(xiàng)研究對(duì)兒童與父母中一人或多人同住一間房、同睡一張床的時(shí)間進(jìn)行了研究，該研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，在許多亞洲國(guó)家，兒童與父母同住一間房、同睡一張床的幾率很高。例如，嬰兒時(shí)期印度和印度尼西亞父母的陪伴會(huì)超過70%，斯里蘭卡和越南超過80%。關(guān)于非洲各國(guó)父母和嬰兒的共床率研究并不完整，但已有數(shù)據(jù)還是表明（父母和嬰兒同床）這種做法幾乎是十分普遍的。
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Debmita Dutta, a doctor and parenting consultant in Bangalore, India, says that despite Western influences, bedsharing remains a strong tradition in India – even in households where children have their own rooms. "A family of four has three bedrooms, one each for each child and for the parents, and then you would find both the children in the parent's bed," she says. "It's that common."

印度班加羅爾的醫(yī)生兼育兒顧問Debmita Dutta說(shuō)，盡管印度深受西方文化的影響，但是同床睡在印度仍然是一種強(qiáng)大的傳統(tǒng)，即使在孩子有自己房間的家庭里，嬰兒時(shí)期孩子還是會(huì)和父母同床睡。她說(shuō)：“一個(gè)四口之家有三間臥室，兩個(gè)孩子和父母各一間，但是你會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)兩個(gè)孩子都會(huì)睡在父母的床上。這是很常見的?！?/b>
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Bedsharing is one way to reduce the burden of babies waking up at night, says Dutta. Her own daughter had a rollout bed next to her parents' that she could sleep on until she was seven years old. "Even after she stopped breastfeeding, she still liked to sleep with us in the same room," she says.

Dutta說(shuō)，同床是減少嬰兒夜間醒來(lái)有負(fù)擔(dān)的一種方法。她自己的女兒就睡在父母床旁邊的一張滾軸床上，她可以在上面睡到七歲?！凹词顾Ｖ沽四溉槲桂B(yǎng)，她仍然喜歡和我們睡在同一個(gè)房間里?！彼f(shuō)。

Many parents in Western societies instead turn to sleep training methods, the most extreme version of which involves leaving a baby on their own to "cry it out", in an effort to encourage their babies to sleep for longer stretches so their parents can get some much-needed rest. In Australia there are even state-funded residential sleep schools parents can check-into, to sleep train their children.

西方社會(huì)的許多父母轉(zhuǎn)而采用睡眠訓(xùn)練方法，其中最極端的一種是放任嬰兒 “哭出來(lái)”，這樣做是為了鼓勵(lì)他們的嬰兒睡得更久，嬰兒睡久了他們的父母也可以得到一些急需的休息。在澳大利亞甚至有國(guó)家資助的寄宿睡眠學(xué)校，家長(zhǎng)可以加入來(lái)訓(xùn)練孩子的睡眠。

Encouraging early independence aligns with a typical Western cultural focus on individualism. For that reason, bedsharing can seem to some like giving in to your child, and encouraging them to stay dependent on their parents. But parents with a more collectivist mindset, like Dutta, usually don't see it that way. "You give them some self-confidence and some independence, they will separate from you on their own," she says. "They will not stick to you forever."

鼓勵(lì)早期獨(dú)立與典型的西方個(gè)人主義文化相一致。因此，在一些西方人看來(lái)，與孩子同床就等于是向孩子妥協(xié)，鼓勵(lì)他們繼續(xù)依賴父母。但像Dutta這樣的集體主義心態(tài)的家長(zhǎng)通常不這么看。她說(shuō):“家長(zhǎng)只要給他們一些自信和獨(dú)立，他們自己就會(huì)和你分開。他們不會(huì)永遠(yuǎn)跟著你?！?/b>
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Cultural factors affect not just where babies sleep, but when and how much they sleep, too.

文化因素不僅會(huì)影響嬰兒的睡眠地點(diǎn)，還會(huì)影響他們的睡眠時(shí)間和睡眠時(shí)長(zhǎng)。

Research by Jun Kohyama, CEO at the Tokyo Bay Urayasu Ichikawa Medical Center, and colleagues has found that babies in Japan tend to nap less than those in other Asian countries once they reach three months of age, possibly, he says, because "sleep is considered a lazy attitude in Japan".

東京灣市川醫(yī)學(xué)中心首席執(zhí)行官Jun Kohyama及其同事進(jìn)行的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，日本的嬰兒在三個(gè)月大后往往比其他亞洲國(guó)家的嬰兒午睡得少，他說(shuō)，這可能是因?yàn)椤霸谌毡荆X被認(rèn)為是一種懶惰的態(tài)度”的原因。

Kohyama also found that children in Asian countries tend to have later bedtimes than their counterparts in predominantly-Caucasian countries. He thinks parents wanting to spend time with their children in the evenings is partly to blame. Bedsharing – the cultural norm in Japan – could also be a factor. "Parents feel their baby is a part of his or her own body," he says.

Kohyama還發(fā)現(xiàn)，與以白種人為主的國(guó)家相比，亞洲國(guó)家的兒童往往睡得更晚。他認(rèn)為部分原因在于亞洲父母想在晚上花時(shí)間陪孩子。日本的文化規(guī)范中的同床共枕也可能是他們晚睡的一個(gè)因素。他說(shuō):“父母覺得寶寶是自己身體的一部分?！?/b>
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Though, as in the UK, the US American Academy of Pediatrics advises parents to share a room with their baby to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), it warns against sharing a bed because bedsharing has been associated with an increased risk of SIDS.

和英國(guó)一樣，盡管美國(guó)兒科學(xué)會(huì)建議父母和孩子同住一間房以降低嬰兒猝死綜合癥(SIDS)的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，但它警告不要和嬰兒同床同睡，因?yàn)橥餐矔?huì)增加患嬰兒猝死綜合癥的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。

But Rashmi Das, a professor in paediatrics at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar, and author of a review on bedsharing safety, says that a lack of high-quality research on the topic makes it difficult to say whether bedsharing itself increases the risk of SIDS in the absence of other risk factors like smoking and drinking. "We could not tell whether bedsharing is actually increasing the risk of SIDS," says Das.

Rashmi Das是全印度醫(yī)學(xué)科學(xué)研究所布巴內(nèi)斯瓦爾的兒科教授, 他也是一篇關(guān)于同床安全的評(píng)論文章的作者。他說(shuō),由于這個(gè)主題缺乏高質(zhì)量的研究，在沒有如吸煙和飲酒的其他危險(xiǎn)因素的情況下，很難判斷同床睡本身是否會(huì)增加?jì)雰衡谰C合癥的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。Das說(shuō):“我們不知道同床是否確實(shí)增加了嬰兒猝死綜合癥的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。”

Studies on the topic mostly come from high-income countries, where bedsharing is less common. But low-income countries, where bedsharing is traditional, also have some of the lowest SIDS rates in the world.

關(guān)于這一話題的研究大多來(lái)自高收入國(guó)家，在這些國(guó)家，同床睡并不常見。但是，傳統(tǒng)上同床睡的低收入國(guó)家也有一些國(guó)家的嬰兒猝死綜合癥發(fā)生率是極低的。

It doesn't seem to be a simple issue of geography: when someone living in the West has imported their cultural practices from elsewhere, they bring the lower SIDS risk with them too. Families of Pakistani origin living in the UK, for example, have a lower SIDS risk than white British families – despite mothers commonly sharing a bed with their baby.

這似乎不是一個(gè)簡(jiǎn)單的地理問題:當(dāng)生活在西方的人從其他地方引進(jìn)他們的文化習(xí)俗時(shí)，他們也帶來(lái)了較低的嬰兒猝死綜合癥風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。例如，居住在英國(guó)的巴基斯坦裔家庭比英國(guó)白人家庭患嬰兒猝死綜合癥的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)更低，而在巴基斯坦裔家庭，母親通常與嬰兒同睡一張床。


"It's the cultural practices that are associated with the lower SIDS," says Helen Ball, a professor of anthropology at the University of Durham and director of the university's Parent-Infant Sleep Lab. Mothers of Pakistani-origin in Bradford have higher rates of breastfeeding and are less likely to smoke, drink, and put their baby to sleep in a separate room – all factors that are known to reduce the risk of SIDS.

“這是因?yàn)槲幕?xí)俗與低風(fēng)險(xiǎn)的嬰兒猝死綜合癥有關(guān)?！?Helen Ball這樣說(shuō)道, Hellen是杜倫大學(xué)的人類學(xué)教授，也是該大學(xué)父母嬰兒睡眠實(shí)驗(yàn)室的主任。巴基斯坦裔的母親在布拉德福德有更高的母乳喂養(yǎng)率，而且她不太可能吸煙,喝酒,也不太可能讓自己的孩子睡在一個(gè)單獨(dú)的房間。所有這些因素都減少了嬰兒猝死綜合癥的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。

Das says he'd like to see bedsharing encouraged but "with a caution note that those persons who are bedsharing should not smoke, should not take alcohol, should not be very obese". UK SIDS-prevention charity The Lullaby Trust has advice for parents who want to make their bed a safe sleep surface for their baby.

Das說(shuō)，他希望看到人們鼓勵(lì)父母和嬰兒同床而睡，但“要注意的是，同床而睡的情況下父母不應(yīng)該吸煙，不應(yīng)該喝酒，不應(yīng)該太胖”。英國(guó)預(yù)防小嬰兒猝死的慈善機(jī)構(gòu)搖籃曲信托向那些想與寶寶同床而睡的父母提供了建議。

Just as bedsharing keeps babies close during the night, babywearing provides a way to keep them close in the day while parents run errands or work around the house. Rather than a new trend, carrying children in a sling is something humans have done for as long as we’ve been around. It was only when prams became popular during the Victorian era that traditional baby carriers became less common among some sections of Western society. In the rest of the world, there are seemingly almost as many different ways to carry a baby as there are cultures in which babies are carried.

跟與寶寶同睡能讓寶寶在晚上與父母親密無(wú)間的原理一樣，當(dāng)父母在家里做雜事或工作時(shí)，穿寶寶袋也能讓父母和嬰兒在白天親密無(wú)間。用背帶背孩子不是一種新潮流，而是人類自古以來(lái)一直就在做的事。直到維多利亞時(shí)代，嬰兒車開始流行起來(lái)之后，傳統(tǒng)的寶寶背帶才在西方社會(huì)的某些地區(qū)變得不那么常見。而在世界其他地方，抱孩子的方式幾乎和抱孩子的文化一樣多。

Even parents who don't use a sling will probably have noticed the instant calming effect of picking up their baby and moving with them. "They intuitively know that this kind of rhythmic motion, between 1-2 hertz, has some power to calm down a baby," says Kumi Kuroda at the Riken Centre for Brain Science in Japan.

即使是那些不使用嬰兒背帶的父母也可能會(huì)注意到當(dāng)他們抱起他們的孩子并跟著他們移動(dòng)時(shí)會(huì)產(chǎn)生立竿見影的鎮(zhèn)定效果。日本理化研究所腦科學(xué)中心的Kumi Kuroda說(shuō):“這些父母憑直覺知道這種1-2赫茲之間的有節(jié)奏的運(yùn)動(dòng)有使嬰兒平靜下來(lái)的力量?！?/b>

Kuroda began looking into the physiological effects of carrying infants when she saw that previous research, which used parental diaries rather than real-time physiological measurements, didn’t find any correlation between the amount of time babies were carried and the amount they cried. "I couldn’t agree with that," she says.

Kuroda看到之前的研究，這一研究使用的是父母的日記而不是實(shí)時(shí)的生理測(cè)量，所以這項(xiàng)研究并沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)嬰兒被抱著的時(shí)間和他們哭的次數(shù)之間有任何關(guān)聯(lián)，于是她開始著手研究抱著嬰兒的生理影響?！拔也煌膺@種說(shuō)法。”她說(shuō)。

Her research found that carrying a baby reduced their heart rate and movement as well as how much they cried. She says subsequent research found that movement without holding, such as transporting a baby in a pram or car seat, as well as holding without moving, also calms a baby over time, but that they work faster in combination.

她的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，抱著嬰兒會(huì)降低他們的心率和運(yùn)動(dòng)，以及他們哭的次數(shù)。她說(shuō)，隨后的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，即使不用父母有抱著的動(dòng)作，比如用嬰兒車或汽車座椅放置嬰兒，也不用抱著嬰兒走來(lái)走去，隨著時(shí)間的推移也會(huì)讓嬰兒平靜下來(lái)，但兩者結(jié)合起來(lái)效果會(huì)更快。

Close contact, day and night, is what babies expect, biologically-speaking. In their first months they need to be fed frequently around the clock. Even when a baby's circadian rhythm develops and their sleep begins to consolidate during nighttime hours, waking during the night for at least their first year is normal.

從生物學(xué)角度來(lái)說(shuō)，日夜密切接觸是嬰兒所期待的。在它們出生的頭幾個(gè)月里，它們經(jīng)常需要被喂食。即使嬰兒的晝夜節(jié)律開始發(fā)展，他們的睡眠開始在夜間鞏固，但是至少在頭一年，嬰兒在夜間醒來(lái)也是很正常的。

In the West, there’s a cultural belief that children who sleep on their own will be more independent.

在西方，有一種文化觀念認(rèn)為，自己睡覺的孩子會(huì)更獨(dú)立。
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"Babies' biology has not changed dramatically over hundreds or thousands of years," says Ball. "But our culture has changed dramatically, and our expectations of babies and of parenting has changed dramatically over the course of a few decades."

“嬰兒生物學(xué)在幾百年或幾千年里都沒有顯著變化，” Ball說(shuō)?！暗覀兊娜祟愇幕呀?jīng)發(fā)生了巨大的變化，在這幾十年的時(shí)間里，我們對(duì)嬰兒和育兒的期望也發(fā)生了巨大的變化?！?/b>

But the idea that night-waking is normal is not the message that new parents in the West are getting from family, friends and the wider culture. "We've sort of developed this cultural myth that babies shouldn't wake at night," says Ball.

但是，嬰兒“半夜醒來(lái)是正常的”這一觀念，并不是西方國(guó)家的新父母從家人、朋友和更廣泛的文化中得到的信息?！拔覀円呀?jīng)形成了一種文化神話，認(rèn)為嬰兒就是不應(yīng)該在晚上醒來(lái)，”Ball說(shuō)。

That myth has consequences. Disturbed sleep in early parenthood has been associated with postpartum depression. But Ball says that trying to "fix" a baby's sleep isn't getting to the heart of the problem – instead, supporting the parents directly is more likely to improve their mental health.

這個(gè)神話有其后果。初為人父母的睡眠紊亂與產(chǎn)后抑郁癥有關(guān)。但Ball說(shuō)，試圖“修復(fù)”嬰兒的睡眠并不能觸及問題的核心，相反，直接支持父母更有可能改善他們的心理健康。

"Parents who are depressed experience their baby's sleep disruption worse than parents who aren't," she says. "Our argument is that actually, we need to fix what's going on in the parents' heads, we need to support them to think about all of this in a different way." She put together the Baby Sleep Info Source to arm new parents with accurate information on baby sleep.

她說(shuō)，“抑郁的父母比正常的父母更容易影響寶寶的睡眠。實(shí)際上我們的觀點(diǎn)是，我們需要糾正父母的想法，我們需要支持他們以不同的方式思考這一切?！?于是她整合了嬰兒睡眠信息資源來(lái)為新父母提供嬰兒睡眠的準(zhǔn)確信息。

The idea that older babies "should" be able to sleep through the night comes from research from the 1950s that found, out of a group of 160 babies living in London, 70% began "sleeping through the night" by three months of age.

大一點(diǎn)的嬰兒“應(yīng)該”能夠睡到天亮的這一想法來(lái)自20世紀(jì)50年代的一項(xiàng)研究，該研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，住在倫敦的160個(gè)嬰兒中，70%的嬰兒在三個(gè)月大的時(shí)候就開始“睡到天亮”了。

But the researchers defined "sleeping through" as not waking their parents by crying or fussing between the hours of midnight and 5am – far from the unbroken eight-hour stretch that many new parents long for – and not whether the babies themselves were actually asleep during that period. In any case, 30% of the babies hadn't begun sleeping longer stretches by that age, and half of the babies that were "sleeping through" reverted back to waking more at night later in their first year.

但在研究中，研究人員對(duì)“睡過頭”的定義是:在午夜到凌晨5點(diǎn)之間，父母沒有因孩子哭鬧或煩擾而被吵醒。這實(shí)際上遠(yuǎn)不是許多新父母所渴望的連續(xù)8小時(shí)的睡眠，研究沒有關(guān)注嬰兒本人在這段時(shí)間是否真的睡著了的問題。無(wú)論如何，30%的嬰兒在那個(gè)年齡段都沒有睡得更久，而且有一半“一直睡到天亮”的嬰兒在一歲之后又會(huì)在晚上醒得更多。

Even today, much research on infant sleep only looks at a specific subset of the global population. "So much of the research over the last several decades has been done on Western babies," says Ball.

即使在今天，許多關(guān)于嬰兒睡眠的研究也只是針對(duì)全球人口中的一個(gè)特定小團(tuán)體而已。Ball說(shuō):“在過去幾十年里，很多研究都是在西方嬰兒身上進(jìn)行的?！?/b>

While there are undoubtedly differences between cultures when it comes to how we care for babies, there are many differences within them, too. Not everyone in the West thinks a baby sleeping in their own room is ideal. In one study, for example, Italian parents called it "unkind".

毫無(wú)疑問，不同文化之間在如何照顧嬰兒方面存在差異，但相同文化內(nèi)部也有很多差異。在西方，并不是每個(gè)人都認(rèn)為讓嬰兒睡在自己的房間里是最理想的。例如，在一項(xiàng)研究中，意大利父母就稱之為“不友好”。

Personal circumstances play a big part in how people care for their babies, and every parent finds their own particular way to do things. "All families are different, so a wide diversity is OK," says Kuroda.

個(gè)人環(huán)境在人們?nèi)绾握疹櫵麄兊暮⒆臃矫嫫鹬艽蟮淖饔茫總€(gè)父母做事情都有自己獨(dú)特的方式。Kuroda表示:“所有的家庭都是不同的，所以廣泛的多樣性是可以的?！?/b>

For her part, Kuroda co-slept with her four children as a way to adapt to being away from them during the day. "I'm working full time and if I separate the whole night, it's really minimal time for the baby. We can intensely communicate, even in the nighttime. It’s real communication and time together."

就Kuroda而言，她和四個(gè)孩子一起睡以彌補(bǔ)白天沒有陪伴他們的生活的空缺?！拔胰於荚诠ぷ鳎绻艺矶己退麄兎珠_，那我留給孩子的時(shí)間就真的很少。即使在夜間，我們也能熱情地交流。這是真正的用時(shí)間在交流?！?/b>

But she says, as with all parenting choices, people should find what works for them and their baby, rather than worrying too much about what anyone else is doing. "I think the parent and the infant can adapt to each other," she says. "It's like a tango."

但她說(shuō)，就像所有的育兒選擇一樣，人們應(yīng)該找到適合自己和孩子的方法，而不是過于擔(dān)心其他人在做什么。她說(shuō)：“我認(rèn)為父母和嬰兒可以互相適應(yīng)，就像探戈一樣。”

The key to thinking outside the Western box might be to remember that babies are not out to manipulate us, no matter how tempting it might be to see it that way at 3am. "What we really need with babies is to stop thinking about them as hard-to-please bosses," says Dutta. "They're helpless little beings that have come into this world, and we must look at them with empathy and compassion."

跳出西方思維模式的關(guān)鍵可能是要記住，嬰兒不是來(lái)操縱我們的，不管是否在凌晨3點(diǎn)他們多么容易產(chǎn)生這樣的想法。Dutta說(shuō):“我們真正需要的是，不要把嬰兒看作是難以取悅的老板。他們是來(lái)到這個(gè)世界上的無(wú)助的小生命，我們必須用同情和憐憫之心來(lái)看待他們?！?br />
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