从老公手里领贤妻奖金的曼哈顿小妇人

WHEN our family moved from the West Village to the Upper East Side in 2004, seeking proximity to Central Park, my in-laws and a good public school, I thought it unlikely that the neighborhood would hold any big surprises. For many years I had immersed myself — through interviews, reviews of the anthropological literature and participant-observation — in the lives of women from the Amazon basin to sororities at a Big Ten school. I thought I knew from foreign.

2004年，为了离中央公园、亲戚和一所出色的公立学校近一些，我们全家从西村搬到上东区。当时，我以为这个社区不太可能有让人大吃一惊的地方。在那之前的很多年里，通过采访、梳理人类学著作和参与观察的方式，我一直沉浸在对从亚马孙流域到顶级名校女生联谊会的女性生活的研究之中。我以为自己虽置身其外却知之甚多。

Then I met the women I came to call the Glam SAHMs, for glamorous stay-at-home-moms, of my new habitat. My culture shock was immediate and comprehensive. In a country where women now outpace men in college completion, continue to increase their participation in the labor force and make gains toward equal pay, it was a shock to discover that the most elite stratum of all is a glittering, moneyed backwater.

然后，我就在新搬去的地方遇到了光鲜的居家妈妈们。我后来简称她们为Glam SAHM。我遭遇的文化冲击十分直接，并且是全方位的。在一个女性的高校毕业人数超过了男性、在劳动力市场中的参与度持续提高、在同工同酬方面也在取得进步的国家里，发现最精英的阶层是一潭闪闪发光的富贵死水，实在是令人震惊。

A social researcher works where she lands and resists the notion that any group is inherently more or less worthy of study than another. I stuck to the facts. The women I met, mainly at playgrounds, play groups and the nursery schools where I took my sons, were mostly 30-somethings with advanced degrees from prestigious universities and business schools. They were married to rich, powerful men, many of whom ran hedge or private equity funds; they often had three or four children under the age of 10; they lived west of Lexington Avenue, north of 63rd Street and south of 94th Street; and they did not work outside the home.

社会科学领域的研究人员到哪里都可以做研究，不应抱有某个群体天生就更值得研究，或更不值得研究的观念。我坚持从事实出发。那些女性主要是我在带儿子去游乐场、孩童活动小组和幼儿园时遇到的。她们大都30多岁，有名牌大学和商学院的高等学位。她们的丈夫有钱有势，很多是做对冲或私募基金的。她们往往有三四个不到10岁的孩子，住在列克星敦大道以西、63街以北和94街以南，并且不外出工作。

Instead they toiled in what the sociologist Sharon Hays calls “intensive mothering,” exhaustively enriching their children’s lives by virtually every measure, then advocating for them anxiously and sometimes ruthlessly in the linked high-stakes games of social jockeying and school admissions.

她们辛辛苦苦从事的，是社会学家莎伦·海斯(Sharon Hays)所说的“高强度地养育孩子”。她们用尽一切办法来丰富孩子的生活，再焦虑地，有时甚至是不择手段地在社交竞争和学校录取这些相互联系的高赌注游戏中为他们呐喊助威。

Their self-care was no less zealous or competitive. No ponytails or mom jeans here: they exercised themselves to a razor’s edge, wore expensive and exquisite outfits to school drop-off and looked a decade younger than they were. Many ran their homes (plural) like C.E.O.s.

她们关注自身形象的热情丝毫不逊于此，彼此之间在这方面的竞争也绝不含糊。这里不会出现马尾辫或妈妈裤：她们会锻炼出一副刀锋般的身姿，穿着价格不菲的精美套装送孩子去学校，看上去比实际年龄年轻十岁。其中很多人都像首席执行官那样打理自家的多处房产。

It didn’t take long for me to realize that my background in anthropology might help me figure it all out, and that this elite tribe and its practices made for a fascinating story.

没用多久，我就意识到，自己的人类学背景可能有助于弄清楚这一切。这个精英群体和其中的行为可以成就一个令人着迷的故事。

I was never undercover; I told the women I spent time with that I was writing a book about being a mother on the Upper East Side, and many of them were eager to share their perspectives on what one described as “our in many ways very weird world.”

我从不偷偷摸摸的，会在见面时对她们说，自己正在写一本书，关于在上东区为人母的故事。她们中的很多人迫切地想和我分享自身对“我们这个从很多方面来看非常奇怪的世界”的观点。这是其中一个人的原话。

It was easy for me to fall into the belief, as I lived and lunched and mothered with more than 100 of them for the better part of six years, that all these wealthy, competent and beautiful women, many with irony, intelligence and a sense of humor about their tribalism (“We are freaks for Flywheel,” one told me, referring to the indoor cycling gym), were powerful as well. But as my inner anthropologist quickly realized, there was the undeniable fact of their cloistering from men. There were alcohol-fueled girls’ nights out, and women-only luncheons and trunk shows and “shopping for a cause” events. There were mommy coffees, and women-only dinners in lavish homes. There were even some girlfriend-only flyaway parties on private planes, where everyone packed and wore outfits the same color.

在六年的大部分时间里，我和她们中的逾百人生活在同一片地方，一起吃午饭，一起养育孩子。她们富有、能干、美丽，其中的很多人善于讽刺、充满睿智，对这个群体的生活方式抱有一种幽默感（“我们是飞轮[Flywheel]的一群怪物，”其中一人对我说。她指的是一家室内骑车健身馆）。这让我很容易以为，她们同样也是强大的。然而，我内心深处的那个人类学研究者很快意识到一个无可争辩的事实，那就是她们与男性隔绝。她们会组织出去喝一杯的女孩之夜活动、仅限女性参与的午宴、内部服装秀和“你买我捐”活动。还有妈咪咖啡聚会和豪宅里仅限女性出席的晚宴。甚至还有在私人飞机上举行的仅面向女性友人的空中聚会，每个人带的和身上穿的衣服要是同一种颜色。

“It’s easier and more fun,” the women insisted when I asked about the sex segregation that defined their lives.

“这样更简单，更好玩，”当我问到界定她们生活的性别隔离时，那些女性坚持这么说。

“We prefer it,” the men told me at a dinner party where husbands and wives sat at entirely different tables in entirely different rooms.

“我们更喜欢这样，”那些男性在一次晚宴上告诉我。当时，他们和妻子分别坐在不同房间的不同桌。

Sex segregation, I was told, was a “choice.” But like “choosing” not to work, or a Dogon woman in Mali’s “choosing” to go into a menstrual hut, it struck me as a state of affairs possibly giving clue to some deeper, meaningful reality while masquerading, like a reveler at the Save Venice ball the women attended every spring, as a simple preference.

有人告诉我，性别隔离是一种“选择”。但是，与“选择”不工作，或者马里的多贡女性“选择”月经期间关在小屋里一样，在我看来，这是一种状态，可能会在简单偏好的伪装之下，揭露某种更深层的、意味深长的现实。这样的伪装，就好比是这些女性每年春天都会参加的“拯救威尼斯”舞会上的狂欢者戴的面具。

And then there were the wife bonuses.

然后，还有贤妻奖金的事情。

I was thunderstruck when I heard mention of a “bonus” over coffee. Later I overheard someone who didn’t work say she would buy a table at an event once her bonus was set. A woman with a business degree but no job mentioned waiting for her “year-end” to shop for clothing. Further probing revealed that the annual wife bonus was not an uncommon practice in this tribe.

在和她们喝咖啡时，我听人提到“奖金”二字，吓了一跳。后来，我又在无意间听到有名不工作的女士说，一旦奖金到位，她就要包下某次活动的一张桌子。另一名拥有商务学位但没有工作的女性提到，她在等待拿自己的“年终奖”去买衣服。进一步的探索揭示出，在这个群体中，年度贤妻奖金并不是一种罕见的做法。

A wife bonus, I was told, might be hammered out in a pre-nup or post-nup, and distributed on the basis of not only how well her husband’s fund had done but her own performance — how well she managed the home budget, whether the kids got into a “good” school — the same way their husbands were rewarded at investment banks. In turn these bonuses were a ticket to a modicum of financial independence and participation in a social sphere where you don’t just go to lunch, you buy a $10,000 table at the benefit luncheon a friend is hosting.

有人告诉我，人们可能会在婚前或婚后协议中拟定贤妻奖金的条款，而分发的依据不仅是丈夫打理基金的状况，还有妻子自己的表现，比如她对家庭预算管理得如何，孩子们是否上了“好”学校。这种方式，与丈夫在投行获取奖励的方式如出一辙。然后，凭借这些奖金，妻子能享受到有限的财务独立，跻身一个社交圈——在这个圈子里，你不仅仅是去吃午餐，而是要在朋友举办的慈善午宴上花1万美元（约合6.2万元人民币）包下一张桌子。

Women who didn’t get them joked about possible sexual performance metrics. Women who received them usually retreated, demurring when pressed to discuss it further, proof to an anthropologist that a topic is taboo, culturally loaded and dense with meaning.

那些没拿到奖金的女性，会用可能存在性表现指标开玩笑。拿到奖金的女性则往往会回避，如果听到了进一步谈论此事的要求，她们就会抗议。在一名人类学研究者看来，这证明某个话题属于禁忌，充满文化内涵且含义丰富。

But what exactly did the wife bonus mean? It made sense only in the context of the rigidly gendered social lives of the women I studied. The worldwide ethnographic data is clear: The more stratified and hierarchical the society, and the more sex segregated, the lower the status of women.

不过，贤妻奖金究竟意味着什么？只有从我研究过的那些女性严格按照性别划分的社交活动来看，它才说得通。世界范围内的人种学数据很明确：社会层级和等级越明显，性别隔离越严格，女性的地位就越低。

Financially successful men in Manhattan sit on major boards — of hospitals, universities and high-profile diseases, boards whose members must raise or give $150,000 and more. The wives I observed are usually on lesser boards, women’s committees and museums in the outer boroughs with annual expectations of $5,000 or $10,000. Husbands are trustees of prestigious private schools, where they accrue the cultural capital that comes with being able to vouch for others in the admissions game; their wives are “class moms,” the unremunerated social and communications hub for all the other mothers.

在曼哈顿，经济富裕的男性是一些大型董事会的成员——其中包括医院、大学和备受关注的疾病。这些董事都必须筹集或捐出至少15万美元的资金。据我观察，他们的妻子通常会在外围的次要董事会、女性委员会和博物馆任职，每年的预期金额为5000或1万美元。丈夫是著名私立学校的校董，并在那里积累文化资本，从而能够在招生游戏中为其他人作担保；他们的妻子则是“超级妈妈”，是其他所有母亲社交和交流活动的不计回报的核心。

WHILE their husbands make millions, the privileged women with kids who I met tend to give away the skills they honed in graduate school and their professions — organizing galas, editing newsletters, running the library and bake sales — free of charge. A woman’s participation in Mommynomics is a way to be helpful, even indispensable. It is also an act of extravagance, a brag: “I used to work, I can, but I don’t need to.”

尽管丈夫挣的钱数成百上千万，但我遇到的这些带小孩的上层女性，倾向于免费提供她们在研究生院和工作中磨练的技能——组织大型集会、编辑通讯稿件、管理图书馆和举办糕饼义卖活动。女性对“妈妈经济学”的参与是一种让自己有用乃至必不可少的方式。这也是一项奢侈之举，一种吹嘘炫耀：“我工作过，我有能力工作，但我不必工作。”

Anthropology teaches us to take the long and comparative view of situations that may seem obvious. Among primates, Homo sapiens practice the most intensive food and resource sharing, and females may depend entirely on males for shelter and sustenance. Female birds and chimps never stop searching out food to provide for themselves and their young. Whether they are Hadza women who spend almost as much time as men foraging for food, Agta women of the Philippines participating in the hunt or !Kung women of southern Africa foraging for the tubers and roots that can tide a band over when there is no meat from a hunt, women who contribute to the group or family’s well-being are empowered relative to those in societies where women do not. As in the Kalahari Desert and rain forest, resources are the bottom line on the Upper East Side. If you don’t bring home tubers and roots, your power is diminished in your marriage. And in the world.

人类学教育我们，要以一种长期的、带有比较性的视角来看待那些看似显而易见的情形。在灵长目动物中，智人会进行程度最大的粮食和资源分享，而在住所和食物方面，雌性智人或许会完全依赖雄性。为了养活自己和孩子，雌鸟和母黑猩猩从不会停止对食物的搜寻。不论是几乎与男性花同样多的时间来搜寻食物的哈扎部落女性，或是参与狩猎的菲律宾阿埃塔女性，还是当狩猎无果时，通过寻找块茎和根茎来帮家人渡过难关的非洲南部的昆族女性，与那些不为群体或家庭的福祉做贡献的那些族群的女性相比，她们享有更大的权力。正如在卡拉哈里沙漠和雨林中那样，资源是上东区的关键。如果你不带块茎和根茎回家，那么在婚姻中，你的权力就会被削弱。在外面的世界里也是如此。

Rich, powerful men may speak the language of partnership in the absence of true economic parity in a marriage, and act like true partners, and many do. But under this arrangement women are still dependent on their men — a husband may simply ignore his commitment to an abstract idea at any time. He may give you a bonus, or not. Access to your husband’s money might feel good. But it can’t buy you the power you get by being the one who earns, hunts or gathers it.

有钱有势的男人，在婚姻缺乏真正的经济平等时，或许仍能以伙伴的姿态说话，而且行动上也像真正的伴侣。的确有不少人是这样的。然而，在这种安排之下，女性仍然依附于她们的男人——丈夫可以随时将他的承诺化为一个抽象的概念。他可以为你提供奖金，也可以不给。能用丈夫的钱，感觉或许不错。但是，它无法给你带来通过成为那个挣钱、打猎或采集的人而能获得的权力。

The wives of the masters of the universe, I learned, are a lot like mistresses — dependent and comparatively disempowered. Just sensing the disequilibrium, the abyss that separates her version of power from her man’s, might keep a thinking woman up at night.

我了解到，那些大权在握者的妻子，与情妇非常相似——她们依赖别人，相对而言，也没有什么权力。单是感受这种不平衡，那道把妻子手中的权力与丈夫掌握的权力分隔开来的鸿沟，或许就会让一名有思想的女性彻夜不眠。