How to Make Parenting Less Lonely | Stacey McLachlan | TED · TED
Stacey McLachlan分享如何避免育儿带来的孤独感，强调保持社交生活的重要性。适合练习情感表达和生活话题。
My cousin Beth has a 10-year-old daughter named Birdie, and she might be the most interesting child alive.
我的表姐贝丝有一个10岁的女儿，名叫伯迪。她可能是这个世界上最有趣的孩子了。
She does karate, she gardens, she makes stop-motion animation films.
她练习空手道，喜欢园艺，还制作定格动画电影。
She's a Renaissance woman.
她是一位真正意义上的“文艺复兴时期的女性”——既具备传统女性的美德，又拥有现代女性的智慧与能力。
I think we can all agree.
我想我们都能达成共识。
But even though she is obviously amazing
但尽管她显然非常出色……
company, and while Beth is obviously pretty fond of her, Beth still had a pretty socially isolating experience as a parent.
贝丝显然非常喜欢自己的女儿，但作为父母，她在社交方面仍然感到相当孤立（即难以与他人建立良好的联系）。
Or as she put it, "I've just had the loneliest decade of my life."
或者用她自己的话来说：“这是我一生中最孤独的十年。
Beth isn't alone in her aloneness.
贝丝并不是唯一一个感到孤独的人。
A study by Action for Children of 2,000 people found that 68 percent of parents felt isolated from their friends after having kids.
由“Action for Children”组织开展的一项针对2000人的研究发现，68%的家长在有了孩子后感到与朋友之间的联系变得疏远了。
68 percent.
68%。
Let me do some quick math for you.
让我帮您快速算一下。
Break it down, because I'm basically a woman in STEM, as you can tell from the glasses.
请详细解释一下吧。其实，我就是一个从事 STEM（科学、技术、工程和数学）领域工作的女性——从我的眼镜就能看出来这一点。
That's more than half, almost 75 percent.
这超过了总数的一半，几乎达到了75%。
Almost three-quarters.
接近四分之三。
It's a lot, it's a lot.
确实很多，非常多。
Another 40 percent felt unsupported in their parenthood.
另有 40% 的人认为自己在为人父母的过程中缺乏支持。
A different study in the UK found that half of mothers under 30 felt lonely often or always.
英国的另一项研究发现，30岁以下的女性中有一半经常或一直感到孤独。
That sucks.
那太糟糕了。
Needless to say, I was a little bit nervous about that isolation when I got pregnant myself four years ago.
不用说，四年前我自己怀孕的时候，对于那种与外界隔绝的状态也感到有些紧张。
That's right, I'm a teen mom.
没错，我是一名未成年妈妈。
It wasn't just Beth's dire warning, it wasn't just the statistics.
这不仅仅是贝丝发出的严峻警告，也不仅仅是那些统计数据而已。
It was that I had seen so many of my friends, during childless phase of my life, disappear once they became parents themselves.
在我还没有孩子的那些年里，我目睹了许多朋友在成为父母后便逐渐从我的生活中消失了。
Disappear into a black hole of parenthood.
消失在为人父母的“黑洞”之中（即被繁重的育儿责任所吞噬）。
It wasn't that our friendships fell apart because I was jealous of the attention the babies were getting,
我们的友谊并没有因此破裂——毕竟我并不是因为嫉妒那些婴儿所获得的关注而产生矛盾的。
although, obviously, that's a small part of it.
不过，显然这只是整个问题的一小部分而已。
It was that once somebody has kids and you don't, you just fall out of sync.
一旦有人有了孩子，而你却没有，你们之间就会产生隔阂（或者说，你们的生活节奏就不再同步了）。
You can't do the same sort of things together that you always used to.
你们现在不能再像过去那样一起做那些事情了。
You can't bring your baby along to the pottery studio where you're failing miserably.
你不能带着你的宝宝去那个陶艺工作室——毕竟你在那里的表现糟糕透顶。
You can't take them along with you to your improv class.
你不能把它们带到即兴表演课上。
You can't bring them out for drinks with the gals.
你不能带她们和女朋友们一起出去喝酒。
When you do, you're either stressed out that you’re ruining everyone else’s fun
当你这么做的时候，要么会因为担心自己破坏了别人的兴致而感到压力重重；
you’re going on Reddit afterwards and learning that some people think of children at restaurants as crotch goblins.
之后你去了 Reddit（一个社交新闻网站），发现有些人认为在餐厅里的孩子就像那些“小捣蛋鬼”一样（即行为令人讨厌的孩子）。
It's not encouraging.
这实在让人感到沮丧（或：没有丝毫鼓舞人心的地方）。
It's absolutely easy for parents to shrink away from their usual activities and environments, even after the tough newborn days are over.
对于父母来说，远离他们平时习惯的活动和所处的环境其实非常容易——即使那些充满挑战的新生儿时期已经过去了也是如此。
It’s not just inconvenient to lose those friendships -- it’s unhealthy.
失去那些友谊不仅会带来不便，还会对个人的心理健康产生负面影响（即属于不健康的行为）。
An 80-year Harvard study found that the biggest indicator of success, longevity, happiness, isn't wealth, it isn't status,
哈佛大学进行的一项为期80年的研究发现，决定一个人是否成功、能否长寿以及是否幸福的最大因素，并非财富或社会地位。
it isn't how many abs you have, it is relationships.
重要的不是你有多少块腹肌，而是你的人际关系。
Not how popular you are, but how many close relationships you have in your life.
重要的不是你有多受欢迎，而是你在生活中拥有多少亲密的关系。
How many people care about you, follow up with you, are invested in your life.
究竟有多少人真正关心你、愿意与你保持联系、并愿意为你的人生付出努力呢？
Who's laughing with you and fighting with you and reminding you that an eight-pack is not realistic, Stacey.
谁会和你一起笑、和你一起争论，还会提醒你“拥有八块腹肌”是不现实的呢，斯泰西？