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hly_123
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The Power of Birth Order(e-c)practice

The Power of Birth Order 出生顺序的力量
Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2007 By JEFFREY KLUGER
Rudy Archuleta for TIME

It could not have been easy being Elliott Roosevelt. If the alcohol wasn't getting him, the morphine was. If it wasn't the morphine, it was the struggle with depression. Then, of course, there were the constant comparisons with big brother Teddy.

  做埃利奥特.罗斯福真是不容易--要么在沉迷于酒精，要么在用吗啡，再不然就是在和抑郁作斗争。还当然就是永远地将自己和大哥西奥多.罗斯福做比较。

In 1883, the year Elliott began battling melancholy, Teddy had already published his first book and been elected to the New York State assembly. By 1891—about the time Elliott, still unable to establish a career, had to be institutionalized to deal with his addictions—Teddy was U.S. Civil Service Commissioner and the author of eight books. Three years later, Elliott, 34, died of alcoholism. Seven years after that, Teddy, 42, became President.

  1883年正是埃利奥特开始和忧郁做斗争的一年，（哥哥）西奥多那时已出了自己的第一本书，并被选入了纽约州议会；在1891年--埃利奥特还没建起自己的事业而且要为对付自己的毒瘾不得不进戒毒所--此时的西奥多在美国公务员委员会任职，著书八本；三年过后，三十四岁的埃利奥特死于酒精中毒；又过了七年后，42岁的西奥多.罗斯福成为了美国总统。

Elliott Roosevelt was not the only younger sibling of an eventual President to cause his family heartaches—or at least headaches. There was Donald Nixon and the loans he wangled from billionaire Howard Hughes. There was Billy Carter and his advocacy on behalf of the pariah state Libya. There was Roger Clinton and his year in jail on a cocaine conviction. And there is Neil Bush, younger sib of both a President and a Governor, implicated in the savings-and-loan scandals of the 1980s and recently gossiped about after the release of a 2002 letter in which he lamented to his estranged wife, "I've lost patience for being compared to my brothers."

  埃利奥特并不是给他家人们带来头疼(--或者说，至少是头疼)的唯一有一位最后成了美国总统哥哥的人。尼克松总统的弟弟：罗纳德.尼克松和从亿万富翁霍华德休斯获得的贷款；替利比亚说话的卡特总统的弟弟比尔卡特；克林顿总统的弟弟罗杰克林顿因为可卡因而判刑；身为一个总统和一个州长的弟弟，在上世纪80年代由于储蓄和贷款丑闻而受牵连，并因最期在一封2002年的信件曝光被人们流言蜚语的布什弟弟内尔.布什--在信中他对和自己分居的妻子说：”我已经失去了被拿来和两位兄长比较的耐心“。

Welcome to a very big club, Bro. It can't be easy being a runt in a litter that includes a President. But it couldn't have been easy being Billy Ripken either, an unexceptional major league infielder craning his neck for notice while the press swarmed around Hall of Famer and elder brother Cal. It can't be easy being Eli Manning, struggling to prove himself as an NFL quarterback while big brother Peyton polishes a Super Bowl trophy and his superman stats. And you may have never heard of Tisa Farrow, an actress of no particular note beyond her work in the 1979 horror film Zombie, but odds are you've heard of her sister Mia.

  兄弟们，欢迎来到这个庞大的俱乐部。在家中有一个将成为总统的孩子堆里面做一个小萝卜头肯定不容易。可要做Billy Ripken一定也不容易。这位美国职业棒球联盟普普通通的内野手当他的长兄，进入名人堂的Cal被媒体包个水泄时要自己伸长了脖子来招人注意；做Eli Manning一定不容易：这位有着拿到了超级碗奖杯和拥有巨星地位的大哥Peyton,自己还要在国家橄榄球联盟以四分卫身份努力拼搏；或许你没听说过 Tisa Farrow---一位除了出演过1979年的一部恐怖电影《僵尸人》之外就不值得特别一提的女演员。但是，可能你听说过她的姐姐Mia Farrow(美国著名女演员)。

Of all the things that shape who we are, few seem more arbitrary than the sequence in which we and our siblings pop out of the womb. Maybe it's your genes that make you a gifted athlete, your training that makes you an accomplished actress, an accident of brain chemistry that makes you a drunk instead of a President. But in family after family, case study after case study, the simple roll of the birth-date dice has an odd and arbitrary power all its own.

  在一切塑造我们身份的事物中，能有比出生顺序更具随意性的东西算是寥寥无几。也许是基因让你成为了一名天资运动员；也许是因为训练让你成为一名卓著演员；也许是因为脑部化学物质上一个意外让你成为了一名酒鬼而不是一名总统。可人们在对一个个的家庭，进行一次次的案例研究后发现出生顺序的“色子”却有一股完全属于自己的奇怪的“独断权”。

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2007-10-28 04:30 PM

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hly_123
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The importance of birth order has been known—or at least suspected—for years. But increasingly, there's hard evidence of its impact. In June, for example, a group of Norwegian researchers released a study showing that firstborns are generally smarter than any siblings who come along later, enjoying on average a three-point IQ advantage over the next eldest—probably a result of the intellectual boost that comes from mentoring younger siblings and helping them in day-to-day tasks. The second child, in turn, is a point ahead of the third. While three points might not seem like much, the effect can be enormous. Just 2.3 IQ points can correlate to a 15-point difference in sat scores, which makes an even bigger difference when you're an Ivy League applicant with a 690 verbal score going head to head against someone with a 705. "In many families," says psychologist Frank Sulloway, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and the man who has for decades been seen as the U.S.'s leading authority on birth order, "the firstborn is going to get into Harvard and the second-born isn't."

  人们很久就知道了-至少是“怀疑了"--出生顺序的重要性。但如今越来越多的证据正在表明它的影响力；例如：根据今年六月份挪威的研究人员所公布的一项研究表明，第一胎往往要后面出生的任何孩子都要聪明。和第二胎相比第一胎孩子的平均智力商数要高三分。这也许是因为第一胎孩子对较年轻的弟弟妹妹们进行辅导教育，帮助他们完成每天任务中取得了智力提高的缘故。而第二胎又要比第三胎智商数高一分。虽然三分看上去没多少，但影响却很大。可能智商数上的两三分就关系到SAT考试中分数15分的差距。如果你申请一所常青藤学校时是690的口语分数，要去和某位有705分的人竞争较量，这时的区别就更加大了。加州大学伯克利分院的访问学者、心理学家弗兰克.苏洛威（Frank Sulloway）说：”很多家庭中第一个孩子能进哈佛，第二个则不能“。几十年来，弗兰克.苏洛威一直都被人们视为是美国的出生顺序领域的顶尖权威人士。

The differences don't stop there. Studies in the Philippines show that later-born siblings tend to be shorter and weigh less than earlier-borns. (Think the slight advantage the 6-ft. 5-in. [196 cm] Peyton Manning has over the 6-ft. 4-in. [193 cm] Eli doesn't help when he's trying to throw over the outstretched arms of a leaping lineman?) Younger siblings are less likely to be vaccinated than older ones, with last-borns getting immunized sometimes at only half the rate of firstborns. Eldest siblings are also disproportionately represented in high-paying professions. Younger siblings, by contrast, are looser cannons, less educated and less strapping, perhaps, but statistically likelier to live the exhilarating life of an artist or a comedian, an adventurer, entrepreneur, GI or firefighter. And middle children? Well, they can be a puzzle—even to researchers.

  区别不单是这些。根据菲律宾进行的研究表明，越晚出生的孩子们往往要比早先出生的孩子们身高更矮、体重更轻。（想想升高1米96的Peyton Manning比1.93的弟弟Eli在当把球丢过双臂张开的前锋时候的优势吧)较年少的孩子获得预防接种的可能性比年长的孩子要小。有时，这个可能性在最晚出生的孩子和最早出生的孩子之间会相差一半。高收入职业里的长子/女数往往占着过大比重。相比之下，弟弟妹妹们则是“不羁”、教育程度较低、块头不那么大。也许从统计学角度来看，他们更有可能成为一名艺术家、喜剧演员、冒险者、企业家、士兵或消防员，过着快乐的生活。那么在“中间”出生的孩子们呢？呃，他们--连研究者们看来--可能是一个迷。

For families, none of this comes as a surprise. There are few extended clans that can't point to the firstborn, with the heir-apparent bearing, who makes the best grades, keeps the other kids in line and, when Mom and Dad grow old, winds up as caretaker and executor too. There are few that can't point to the lost-in-the-thickets middle-born or the wild-child last-born.

  对于家庭来说，任何这些差别都不奇怪。大多数大家庭当说道家中哪个孩子成绩最好、会管其它孩子、父母上年纪后可以照顾他们并处理后事的推定继承人时，都会说是第一个出生的孩子；当说道"不出头"时都是中间出生的孩子，当认为哪个是很野的孩子时总会说是最小的孩子。

Indeed, to hear families tell it, the birth-order effect may only be getting stronger. In the past, girls were usually knocked out of the running for the job and college perks their place in the family should have accorded them. In most other ways, however, there was little to distinguish a first-, second- or third-born sister from a first-, second- or third-born brother. Now, with college and careers more equally available, the remaining differences have largely melted away.

  的确，听到各个家庭对出生顺序影响怎么说之后，只会说明这个影响会更强。在过去，女孩往往被排除了本来可以因为自己在家中的地位而带被给予的工作竞争和上大学机会之外。但在其它大多数方面，出生第一、第二或第三位的女孩对应出生第一、第二或第三出生的男孩之间区别很少。现在，随着两个性别获得大学和工作的机会都相同，剩下的区别已大大减少了。

"There are stereotypes out there about birth order, and very often those stereotypes are spot-on," says Delroy Paulhus, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "I think this is one of those cases in which people just figured things out on their own."

  温哥华大不列颠哥伦比亚大学心理学教授Delroy Paulhus说：“关于出生顺序，传统说法有很多，经常都被它们说中了，我想，这就是一种由人们来自己琢磨的东西”

But have they? Stack up enough anecdotal maybes, and they start to look like a scientific definitely. Things that appear definite, however, have a funny way of surprising you, and birth order may conceal all manner of hidden dimensions—within individuals, within families, within the scientific studies. "People read birth-order books the way they read horoscopes," warns Toni Falbo, professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas. "'I'm a middle-born, so that explains everything in my life'—it's just not like that." Still, such skepticism does not prevent more and more researchers from being drawn to the field, and as they are, their findings, and the debate over them, continue to grow.

  琢磨出了吗？在种种“可能认为”累计到足够多之后，它们看上去就像是具备了科学真实性。不过，那些看上去真是的东西会让你吃惊方式会叫你感到可笑；而且出身顺序也许把所有因素都隐藏了起来--个体内、对家庭内、个科学研究内。德克萨斯州立大学教育心理学教授Toni Falbo警告人们”人们看出身顺序书籍时就像在看占星术书。‘我是出生顺序排在中间，所以我生活中发生的一切其实都是顺理成章的‘--不是那回事“ 不过，这类批评并没挡住越来越多的研究人员们被吸引到这一领域中。同样，对它的发现和争论也不断在增加。

2007-10-28 04:41 PM

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Humans aren't alone
If you think it's hard to manage the birth-order issues in your family, be thankful you're not an egret or an orange blossom. Egrets are not the intellectual heavyweights of the animal kingdom—or even the bird world—but nature makes them remarkably cunning when it comes to planning their families. Like most other birds, egrets lay multiple eggs, but rather than brooding them all the same way so that the chicks emerge on more or less the same day, the mother begins incubating her first and second eggs before laying the remaining ones in her clutch. That causes the babies to appear on successive days, which gives the first-arriving chick the earliest crack at the food and a 24-hour head start on growth. The second-hatched may not have too difficult a time catching up, but the third may struggle. The fourth and beyond will have the hardest go, getting pushed aside or even pecked to death if food, water and shelter become scarce. All that makes for a nasty nursery, but that's precisely the way the mother wants it. "The parents overproduce a bit," says Douglas Mock, professor of zoology at the University of Oklahoma, "maybe making one more baby than they can normally afford to raise and then letting it take the fall if the resource budget is limited."

人类并不“孤单”

  要是你认为在你家关系出生顺序的问题很麻烦，你当谢天谢地幸好自己不是一只白鹭或一朵橙子树上的花。论智商，白鹭别说在动物王国，即便在鸟类王国也算不上是佼佼者。但大自然让它们对”计划生育“一事上“很狡猾”。白鹤和大多数其它鸟类一样会产多个蛋，但它的孵蛋方式和让全部幼鸟基本同一天破壳而出的孵化方式不同。在产完剩下的蛋前.白鹤妈妈就已经开始孵化第一颗和第二颗蛋。从而幼鸟会在接连的几天数出壳，因此，第一个出壳的小鸟能第一个尝到食物，在成长方面要领先24个小时。第二批出壳的小鸟也许要赶上它不会太困难，可是第三批也许就要努力才能赶上。到了第四和再后面出壳的小鸟就面临最大的困难，当食物、水和庇所缺乏时，可能它们就会被挤在一旁甚至被啄死。这一切都让抚育成为了一件不光彩的行为，可这恰恰是白鹤妈妈想要的结果。来自俄克拉何马州大学的动物学教授,道格拉斯.默克称：“白鹤父母会多生一些，也许是较抚养能力多出一只。之后资源紧张的话，就让那一个夭折”

Orange trees are even tougher on their young. A typical orange tree carries about 100,000 pollinated blossoms, each of which is a potential orange, complete with the seeds that are potential trees. But in the course of a season, only about 500 oranges are actually produced. The tree determines which ones make the cut, shedding the blossoms that are not receiving enough light or that otherwise don't seem viable. It is, for a tree, a sort of selective termination on a vast scale. "You've got 99% of the babies being thrown out by the parent," says Mock. "The tree just drops all the losers."

  橙子树对”子女们“更无情。一颗普通的橙子树上有大约有10万朵授粉花，每花都是潜在一只橙子，每朵花中的花籽都是潜在的橙子树。不过，在一个季节后，只能产生大约500个桔子。橙子树要决定哪些花将结成橙子，放弃那些阳光量吸收不足或可能不会结果的花朵。对一颗树来说，这就是在进行一次大规模有选择性的”堕胎“。默克说：”树木父母扔掉的是它们99%的孩子，所有的弱者都会凋零“

Even mammals, warm-blooded in metabolism and—we like to think—temperament, can play a similarly pitiless game. Runts of litters are routinely ignored, pushed out or consigned to the worst nursing spots somewhere near Mom's aft end, where the milk flow is the poorest and the outlook for survival the bleakest. The rest of the brood is left to fight it out for the best, most milk-rich positions.

  在新城代谢和--我们喜欢看成是--的脾性方面是温血哺乳动物中也上演着类似无情的故事。一窝幼仔中的小不点总是受忽视、排挤。或者要屈身于靠近母亲最身后的一个最差的抚育位置上，那里母亲的奶产量最弱；它的成活前景最黯淡。其它幼仔要去争夺最好、产奶最丰富的位置。

Humans, more sentimental than birds, trees or litter bearers, don't like to see themselves as coming from the same child-rearing traditions, but we face many of the same pressures. As recently as 100 years ago, children in the U.S. had only about a 50% chance of surviving into adulthood, and in less developed parts of the world, the odds remain daunting. It can be a sensible strategy to have multiple offspring to continue your line in case some are claimed by disease or injury.

  人类比鸟类、树木或产多仔的哺乳动物更有感情。不愿把自己也看做是来自具有同一种抚育行为的种群。但是，我们人类也面临着许多同样的压力。近在100年前，在美国儿童的成年率仅是50%，在世界发达程度较低的地区，这个数字依然触目惊心。要沿袭后代、防止疾病、受伤造成的死亡而生育多个后代是一个理智的做法。

While the eldest in an overpopulated brood has it relatively easy—getting 100% of the food the parents have available—things get stretched thinner when a second-born comes along. Later-borns put even more pressure on resources. Over time, everyone might be getting the same rations, but the firstborn still enjoys a caloric head start that might never be overcome.

  在一方面过多的兄弟姐妹中的最年长的孩子会相对比较宽松--拥有父母全部食物--但是在第二胎出生时后，资源就少了。再后面出生的孩子又会对资源带来更大的压力。一段时间后，每个孩子也许获得的就是等量的供给，不过那样，第一个出生的孩子在最初“热量”上的领先从而永远都不可能被超过。

Food is not the only resource. There's time and attention too and the emotional nourishment they provide. It's not for nothing that family scrapbooks are usually stuffed with pictures and report cards of the firstborn and successively fewer of the later-borns—and the later-borns notice it. Educational opportunities can be unevenly shared too, particularly in families that can afford the tuition bills of only one child. Catherine Salmon, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Redlands in Redlands, Calif., laments that even today she finds it hard to collect enough subjects for birth-order studies from the student body alone, since the campus population is typically overweighted with eldest sibs. "Families invest a lot in the firstborn," she says.

  资源不仅仅只是食物一种。父母投入的时间、注意力以及感情上的滋养。一个家庭里面的剪贴簿中会塞满的经常是第一个出生孩子的照片、成绩卡，而较晚出生的孩子的则会要少，这不是平白无故。同样，接受教育的机会也可能会不均等，尤其当家中只能承担一个孩子的学费时。来自加州Redlands，Redlands大学的心理学助理教授Catherine Salmon感慨说，从纯学生群体中为出生顺序研究找到研究对象现在竟然还是很难的一件事。因为校园人口中家中最年长的孩子数目过多。她说:”家庭对第一个孩子的投资很大“

2007-10-28 05:05 PM

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All of this favoritism can become self-reinforcing. As parental pampering produces a fitter, smarter, more confident firstborn, Mom and Dad are likely to invest even more in that child, placing their bets on an offspring who—in survival terms at least—is looking increasingly like a sure thing. "From a parental perspective," says Salmon, "you want offspring who are going to survive and reproduce."

  偏袒的行为都可能成为”自动强化“。随着父母的放纵会让第一个孩子能变得更健康、聪明、更自信，父母也就可能对他/她做出更多投资。父母们把他们的”赌注”压在了这个看上去越来越有出息的这名孩子身上--至少从生存角度。Salmon说：”在父母看来是希望有一个将会存活并繁殖的后代“

Firstborns do more than survive; they thrive. In a recent survey of corporate heads conducted by Vistage, an international organization of ceos, poll takers reported that 43% of the people who occupy the big chair in boardrooms are firstborns, 33% are middle-borns and 23% are last-borns. Eldest siblings are disproportionately represented among surgeons and M.B.A.s too, according to Stanford University psychologist Robert Zajonc. And a recent study found a statistically significant overload of firstborns in what is—or at least ought to be—the country's most august club: the U.S. Congress. "We know that birth order determines occupational prestige to a large extent," says Zajonc. "There is some expectation that firstborns are somehow better qualified for certain occupations."

  第一个孩子不但能存活；他们还能发达。在国际首席执行官组织Vistage进行的一项对企业首席管的调查中，在董事会上座头把交椅的有43%是长儿/女；33%是次儿/女，23%是三儿/女。根据斯坦福大学心理学者Robert Zajonc，从事医生和拥有MBA的人群中那些长儿女们的比重也同样过多。  最近的研究发现在这个所谓是（或至少被认为是）国家最威严的俱乐部---美国国会，第一胎出生的人数巨大。Zajonc说：”我们知道出生顺序会大程度地决定一个人的职业名望。一些观点认为头胎胜任特定的职业要更有资格些“

Little sibs, big role

小亲戚，大角色

For eldest siblings, this is a pretty sweet deal. There is not much incentive for them to change a family system that provides them so many goodies, and typically they don't try to. Younger siblings see things differently and struggle early on to shake up the existing order. They clearly don't have size on their side, as their physically larger siblings keep them in line with what researchers call a high-power strategy. "If you're bigger than your siblings, you punch 'em," Sulloway says.

  对于做大哥大姐们的孩子来说，这是一比很“划算”的买卖。要改变家庭制度对他们来说并没太多好处，所以通常往往他们都不会去改变。可年轻的弟弟妹妹们看法不同，他/她们很早就开始努力要打乱现有次序。显然他们不占块头上的便宜，因为有体型更大的长兄/姐们使他/她们服从一个研究者称之为“高权者策略”。Sulloway说：”要是你比他们块头大，就会去揍他们“

But there are low-power strategies too, and one of the most effective ones is humor. It's awfully hard to resist the charms of someone who can make you laugh, and families abound with stories of last-borns who are the clowns of the brood, able to get their way simply by being funny or outrageous. Birth-order scholars often observe that some of history's great satirists—Voltaire, Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain—were among the youngest members of large families, a pattern that continues today. Faux bloviator Stephen Colbert—who yields to no one in his ability to get a laugh—often points out that he's the last of 11 children.

  不过也有”低权者策略“，其中最为有效一个就是幽默。一个让你大笑的人的魅力是很难去抵挡的。最后一个出生的孩子是孩子们中的“小丑”。这样的家往往充满了他们的故事。他们仅凭者幽默或“放肆”就能度过生活。出生顺序的学者们常常发现在历史上有一些伟大的讽刺作家--伏尔泰，乔纳森·斯威夫特,马克吐温--都是一个大家庭中的年纪最小的成员。这一规律持续到现在。在让人大笑方面当人不二的斯蒂芬.库伯特(Stephen Colbert)常常称自己是11个兄弟姐妹中排名最后。

Such examples might be little more than anecdotal, but personality tests show that while firstborns score especially well on the dimension of temperament known as conscientiousness—a sense of general responsibility and follow-through—later-borns score higher on what's known as agreeableness, or the simple ability to get along in the world. "Kids recognize a good low-power strategy," says Sulloway. "It's the way any sensible organism sizes up the niches that are available."

  这类例子也许有充其量不过算是名人轶事。但是，性格测试显示出虽然第一胎在性格评分上的得分优异，即：所谓的“尽责”--拥有一种被称之为总体责任和坚持到底的感觉。晚出生的孩子在“随和”或者说与世界相处的能力上得分更高。Sulloway称：“孩子们都认可的是一种‘低权政策’。这正是任何一个有机体对。。。的方式“

Even more impressive is how early younger siblings develop what's known as the theory of mind. Very small children have a hard time distinguishing the things they know from the things they assume other people know. A toddler who watches an adult hide a toy will expect that anyone who walks into the room afterward will also know where to find it, reckoning that all knowledge is universal knowledge. It usually takes a child until age 3 to learn that that's not so. For children who have at least one elder sibling, however, the realization typically comes earlier. "When you're less powerful, it's advantageous to be able to anticipate what's going on in someone else's mind," says Sulloway.

  另人印象更加深的是年纪较小的孩子很早就会培养所谓的“精明”。儿童在很小的时候很难区分什么是他们知道的，什么是别人知道的。一个初学走路的孩子在看见成人把他/她的一件玩具藏起来后会去希望任何进到房间里的人也会知道在哪里找到那件玩具，他们认为一切的知识都是全体人的知识。一般来说，儿童要到3岁时才会知道实际不是那样。可对于有至少一位长兄/姐的孩子来说，他们在这方面的领悟力往往获得地要更早。Sulloway说：”当你的权利不那么大时，能够估测别人想什么就是一种优势“

Later-borns, however, don't try merely to please other people; they also try to provoke them. Richard Zweigenhaft, a professor of psychology at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., who revealed the overrepresentation of firstborns in Congress, conducted a similar study of picketers at labor demonstrations. On the occasions that the events grew unruly enough to lead to arrests, he would interview the people the police rounded up. Again and again, he found, the majority were later- or last-borns. "It was a statistically significant pattern," says Zweigenhaft. "A disproportionate number of them were choosing to be arrested."

  不过，晚出生的儿童并不光只会去取悦别人；他们还会去激怒别人。曾揭露在国会里第一胎出生人数比例过重现象，来自北卡罗莱那州位于格林斯博罗Guilford大学的心理学教授 Richard Zweigenhaft对劳动示威人群进行了类似的研究。在出现了的情况但还不够引起逮捕的示威中，他采访了被警察包围的人们。他一次又一次次地发现大部分的人是家里面的晚出生孩子或是最小的孩子。 Zweigenhaft说:”从统计学上说，这是一个重要的规律。他们在寻求被捕的人数中占到的比例过多”

2007-10-28 05:08 PM

练习翻译？遇到难题？快来翻吧

hly_123
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Courting danger

”寻求”危险

Later-borns are similarly willing to take risks with their physical safety. All sibs are equally likely to be involved in sports, but younger ones are likelier to choose the kinds that could cause injury. "They don't go out for tennis," Sulloway says. "They go out for rugby, ice hockey." Even when siblings play the same sport, they play it differently. Sulloway is currently collaborating on a study of 300 brothers who were major league ballplayers. Though the work is not complete, he is so far finding that the elder brothers excel at skills that involve less physical danger. Younger siblings are the ones who put themselves in harm's way—crouching down in catcher's gear to block an incoming runner, say. "It doesn't just hold up in this study but a dozen studies," Sulloway says.

  晚出生的孩子也同样愿意去用身体安全去冒险。虽然兄弟姐妹们参与体育运动的可能性一样大，但是越年幼的孩子越可能选择参与可能会引起身体伤害的活动。Sulloway说：“他们不会去打网球；会去打橄榄球、冰上曲棍球，即便大家参加的是同一种体育运动，他们各自进行的方式也不一样。 Sulloway目前正参与进行一项对在美国职业棒球联盟打球的300名兄弟进行的研究。虽然研究还没完成，但是目前他已经发现哥哥们在身体危险性越小的技能上比弟弟们强。而弟弟们则会将自己置于危险中---戴着捕手的器械蹲下挡住冲来的击跑员。Sulloway说：”这一说法不光在这一研究而且在了十来个研究中是都成立的“

It's not clear whether such behavior extends to career choice, but Sandra Black, an associate professor of economics at ucla, is intrigued by findings that firstborns tend to earn more than later-borns, with income dropping about 1% for every step down the birth-order ladder. Most researchers assume this is due to the educational advantages eldest siblings get, but Black thinks there may be more to it. "I'd be interested in whether it's because the second child is taking the riskier jobs," she says.

  人们不清楚在择业上是否也存在这样的行为。但是，让美国加州大学的经济学副教授Sandra Black感兴趣的是第一胎比晚出生的人往往赚钱更多。出生顺序排在后一位在收入上约下降1%。大多数的研究着估计其中原因是最长子/女获得了教育上优势。但布莱克认为不只是这个原因。她说：”另我感兴趣的是到底是不是因为后出生的孩子所从事的工作要更具冒险性“

Black's forthcoming studies will be designed to answer that question, but research by Ben Dattner, a business consultant and professor of industrial and organizational psychology at New York University, is showing that even when later-borns take conservative jobs in the corporate world, they approach their work in a high-wire way. Firstborn ceos, for example, do best when they're making incremental improvements in their companies: shedding underperforming products, maximizing profits from existing lines and generally making sure the trains run on time. Later-born ceos are more inclined to blow up the trains and lay new track. "Later-borns are better at transformational change," says Dattner. "They pursue riskier, more innovative, more creative approaches."

  布莱克即将要展开的研究就是要去回答这个问题。但是，纽约大学行业及组织心理学教授、商业顾问Ben Dattner的研究表明即便在对后出生的人拥有的是一份较保守的工作，在工作中他们仍会去冒险。例如，作为第一胎的首席执行官们当负责公司累计改善方面的工作时会最得心应手：削减表现的产品清除、把已有的产品线的利润最大化。往往要让事情按步就搬；而在家中晚出生的首席执行官们更愿意把规则打乱，建立自己新的规则。Dattner说:“后出生的人更擅长于"转型式"的改变，他们的最求的方式风险性更大、更具创新、更具创造性“

If eldest sibs are the dogged achievers and youngest sibs are the gamblers and visionaries, where does this leave those in between? That it's so hard to define what middle-borns become is largely due to the fact that it's so hard to define who they are growing up. The youngest in the family, but only until someone else comes along, they are both teacher and student, babysitter and babysat, too young for the privileges of the firstborn but too old for the latitude given the last. Middle children are expected to step up to the plate when the eldest child goes off to school or in some other way drops out of the picture—and generally serve when called. The Norwegian intelligence study showed that when firstborns die, the IQ of second-borns actually rises a bit, a sign that they're performing the hard mentoring work that goes along with the new job.

  如果说最年长的哥哥姐姐们是一心奋斗的人，那么是顽强可以说是赌徒和梦想者。在中间的孩子呢？定义中间出生的孩子相当难。这大部分原因是很难定义在成长中他们是什么样的角色：他们开始是家中最年幼的孩子，直到有了弟弟妹妹；他们即要当“老师”又要当“学生”；既是“保姆”，自己又是一个被照顾的人；把长子/女那样的“特权”给他们，他们的年纪太小了；把最小孩子的自由给他们，他们的年纪又太大了。处在中间出生的孩子在年纪最大孩子入学后或以其它方式退出除了这个”舞台“候--通常是在被招唤时提供服务。这项挪威智力研究表明在他们的长兄/姐去世后，第二个出生的孩子的智力实际中会稍稍上升，这暗示他们正担当新工作中随之而来艰苦教育工作。

Stuck for life in a center seat, middle children get shortchanged even on family resources. Unlike the firstborn, who spends at least some time as the only-child eldest, and the last-born, who hangs around long enough to become the only-child youngest, middlings are never alone and thus never get 100% of the parents' investment of time and money. "There is a U-shaped distribution in which the oldest and youngest get the most," says Sulloway. That may take an emotional toll. Sulloway cites other studies in which the self-esteem of first-, middle- and last-borns is plotted on a graph and follows the same curvilinear trajectory.

  中间出生的孩子们被夹在了中间座位上，在获得家庭资源上，也是缺乏。中间的孩子也不像他们的大哥大姐至少能在一段时间里是唯一一个最大的孩子；也不像最小的弟弟妹妹能足够久时间成为唯一一个最小的孩子，中间的孩子从来不是一个，从不会获得父母100%的时间和金钱的投资。Sulloway说：”在父母资源的分配上是按U型分布，最年长的和最年幼的孩子都可获得最多资源“ 他们在情感方面遭遇的损失也一样。根据Sulloway举出的其它研究，位于第一、中间和最后出生的人们的自尊心用图描述时也一样符合这U型曲线。

The phenomenon known as de-identification may also work against a middle-born. Siblings who hope to stand out in a family often do so by observing what the elder child does and then doing the opposite. If the firstborn gets good grades and takes a job after school, the second-born may go the slacker route. The third-born may then de-de-identify, opting for industriousness, even if in the more unconventional ways of the last-born. A Chinese study in the 1990s showed just this kind of zigzag pattern, with the first child generally scoring high as a "good son or daughter," the second scoring low, the third scoring high again and so on. In a three-child family, the very act of trying to be unique may instead leave the middling lost, a pattern that may continue into adulthood.

  一种称之为”去身份化“的现象也会对中间出生的孩子不利。想在家中冒尖的兄弟姐妹们往往会观察比他们大一的哥哥姐姐在做什么，然后去”背道而行“。如果老大成绩好，校外打工，那么老二也许会走“懒虫”路线。到了老三这里则会被”去-去身份化“，选择--甚至会用他们更加不同寻常的方式--去“勤奋刻苦”。上世纪九十年代的一份中国研究就显示这种“Z”字形规律，第一个孩子往往是做“好儿子、好女儿”，学习分数高，次子/女的成绩差，老三成绩再次拔高，以此类推。在三个孩子的家庭中，想”与众不同“的行为可能就会让中间孩子“失败”，这个规律可能会持续到成年。

2007-10-28 05:53 PM

练习翻译？遇到难题？快来翻吧

hly_123
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The holes in the theories
理论的漏洞

The birth-order effect, for all its seeming robustness, is not indestructible. There's a lot that can throw it out of balance—particularly family dysfunction. In a 2005 study, investigators at the University of Birmingham in Britain examined the case histories of 400 abused children and the 795 siblings of those so-called index kids. In general, they found that when only one child in the family was abused, the scapegoat was usually the eldest. When a younger child was abused, some or all of the other kids usually were as well. Mistreatment of any of the children usually breaks the bond the parents have with the firstborn, turning that child from parental ally to protector of the brood. At the same time, the eldest may pick up some of the younger kids' agreeableness skills—the better to deal with irrational parents—while the youngest learn some of the firstborn's self-sufficiency. Abusiveness is going to "totally disrupt the birth-order effects we would expect," says Sulloway.

  尽管出生顺序影响的理论似乎是很坚固，但它并非无懈可击。有大量因素都可使它不成立--尤其在出现家庭机能不良时。在一份2005年的研究中，英国伯明翰大学研究者们仔细研究了400个受虐儿童的案件历史和795个那些所谓的。。儿童。大体上看，研究者发现当家庭中仅出现一个孩子被虐待，那么往往是最年长的做“替罪羊”；当一个年纪较小的孩子被虐待，那么其他部分或全部孩子都会遭虐待。如果父母对任何一个孩子虐待，那么他们都和最大的孩子的关系往往会破裂，最大的孩子会从一位父母的盟友转变为一位弟弟妹妹的保护者。同时，他/她可能从弟弟妹妹的身上获得一些”随和“技巧来更好应对不讲道理的父母--而最年幼的孩子会从大哥/大姐身上学到自足。按Sulloway的话说虐待行为“完全打乱了人们预期中的出生顺序影响”

The sheer number of siblings in a family can also trump birth order. The 1% income difference that Black detected from child to child tends to flatten out as you move down the age line, with a smaller earnings gap between a third and fourth child than between a second and third. The IQ-boosting power of tutoring, meanwhile, may actually have less influence in small families, with parents of just two or three kids doing most of the teaching, than in the six- or eight-child family, in which the eldest sibs have to pitch in more. Since the Norwegian IQ study rests on the tutoring effect, those findings may be open to question. "The good birth-order studies will control for family size," says Bo Cleveland, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State University. "Sometimes that makes the birth-order effect go away; sometimes it doesn't."

  家庭中的兄弟姐妹数量目效果也会优先于出生顺序的影响。布莱克发现在两个相邻出生的孩子之间存在的1%收入差距线往往会随着年龄辈份后移而平稳，即:第三个孩子和第四个孩子之间的收入差距要比第二个和第三个孩子之间的收入差距小。同时，在小家庭中，最大的孩子给弟弟妹妹提供辅导中获得自身智力提升的效果要相对在六或八个孩子的大家庭要少，因为两三个孩子的父母自己会承担大部分的辅导工作。而在六、八个孩子的家庭中，最大的孩子必须更多挑起辅导担子。由于这项挪威的智商研究会受辅导行为的影响，所以其结果可以值得人们去质疑。来自宾夕法尼亚州人类发展和家庭研究助理教授Bo Cleveland说: “好的出生顺序研究会控制家庭大小，这个大小有时会让出生顺序影响消失，有时却不会“

The most vocal detractors of birth-order research question less the findings of the science than the methods. To achieve any kind of statistical significance, investigators must assemble large samples of families and look for patterns among them. But families are very different things—distinguished by size, income, hometown, education, religion, ethnicity and more. Throw enough random factors like those into the mix, and the results you get may be nothing more than interesting junk.

  人们对这类研究的批评针对研究方法方面的要比针对科学内容方面的更多。要获得”统计中的显著性“（ statistical significance)，研究者们就必须对大批的家庭采样、从中寻找规律。但家庭是千差万别的--有着不同的大小、收入、家乡、教育、宗教、种族等等。一旦把足够多的任意因素放入后，那么你得到的就无非是一堆有趣的垃圾数据。

The alternative is what investigators call the in-family studies, a much more pointillist process, requiring an exhaustive look at a single family, comparing every child with every other child and then repeating the process again and again with hundreds of other families. Eventually, you may find threads that link them all. "I would throw out all the between-family studies," says Cleveland. "The proof is in the in-family design."

  另一个方法被研究人员称为的”家庭内部“研究，这是一个更加“点描”的过程，需要对每一个家庭做出详尽的观察：把每个孩子同其他每个孩子做比较，在数百个家庭上反复这一过程。最终也许就会找到能”穿起“所有这些数据的规律。Cleveland说：”我会丢弃所有的”家庭间式“研究。（因为）证据是在”家庭内“研究当中“

Ultimately, of course, the birth-order debate will never be entirely settled. Family studies and the statistics they yield are cold and precise things, parsing human behavior down to decimal points and margins of error. But families are a good deal sloppier than that, a mishmash of competing needs and moods and clashing emotions, better understood by the people in the thick of them than by anyone standing outside. Yet millenniums of families would swear by the power of birth order to shape the adults we eventually become. Science may yet overturn the whole theory, but for now, the smart money says otherwise.

  最后，当然对于出生顺序的争论将永远不会完全平息。这样的争论中产生出对家庭的研究和统计是客观、准确的东西，它们把人类行为拆解到了小数点和误差允许范围。不过家庭远比这要“松散”得多，它是“竞争需求”、情绪、冲突感情在一起的混合物。”局内人“总是要比”局外人“了解得更多。不过，还是会有无数个家庭在塑造我们最终长大成人中，将笃信这种会出生顺序的力量。学还可能推翻整个理论，但就目前而言，”专家们“还没那样看。

2007-10-28 06:20 PM

练习翻译？遇到难题？快来翻吧

donaldluke
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每天学习一下，不错

2007-10-29 08:04 AM

练习翻译？遇到难题？快来翻吧

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