Last year, a friend of mine sent a shipment of green rubber flooring, at great impractical expense, to a villa in the south of France because she was worried that over the summer holiday her toddler would fall on the stone floor. Generations of French children may have made their way safely to adulthood, walking and falling and playing and dreaming on these very same stone floors, but that did not deter her in her determination to be safe. This was, I think, an extreme articulation of our generation’s common fantasy: that we can control and perfect our children’s environment. And lurking somewhere behind this strange and hopeless desire to create a perfect environment lies the even stranger and more hopeless idea of creating the perfect child.
去年，我的一位朋友花了不菲的代价，把一批环保塑胶地板运至位于法国南部的别墅，原因是担心在暑假期间，她蹒跚学步的孩子会在石板地上摔伤。虽然一代代法国孩子可能就是在同样的石头地上跑、摔、玩、睡，而且平安长大成人，但这并未阻止她要确保安全的决心。我认为，这极端体现了我们这辈人的普遍臆想：我们能够控制孩子，让孩子的成长环境完美无缺。在这种为孩子营造理想环境的奇怪而又徒劳的想法背后，暗藏着更为奇特、也更为徒劳的理念：培养理想化的孩子。