2017英语专业八级作文话题：关注留守儿童

　　“与年轻父母一起生活的孩子更聪明，”李改娥说。她抱着自己一岁大的孙子，孩子穿着中国农村地区仍很常见的传统开裆裤。“我不识字。我可以喂他吃饭，但教不了他。我能做的就是让他在家里玩，”她说。不过，这个家显然不缺爱：在李改娥接受采访的时候，她的丈夫正在隔壁屋里抱着另一个孙子哄他入睡。当小孙子醒来时，他轻轻地亲了一口他的额头。两位老人看起来一刻也不愿放下自己的孙子。

　　“Kids living with young parents are smarter,” says Ms Li, holding her one-year-old grandson, dressed in the traditional split trousers still common in Chinese rural areas. “I am illiterate. I can feed him but I can’t teach him. All I can do is let him play around the house,” she says. Still, there is obviously no shortage of love in this home: as Ms Li speaks, her husband naps cuddled up with the other toddler in an adjoining room, and plants a kiss on the top of his head when he wakes. Both grandparents seem reluctant to put their grandchildren down.

　　对于由祖父母抚养会对孩子在教育、身体发育方面造成多大影响——甚至是否真的存在负面影响——专家们众说纷纭。

　　Experts are divided on how much children being raised by grandparents are hurt, in terms of educational or even physical development — or even if there is a negative impact at all.

　　斯坦福大学(Stanford University)经济学教授、农村教育行动项目(Rural Education Action Program)联合创始人罗思高(Scott Rozelle)说，有家人外出打工的家庭要做一番权衡取舍。近10年来，农村教育行动项目一直在收集中国偏远农村地区儿童的数据。罗思高对中国农村儿童(包括父母在身边以及不在身边的)所做的研究是迄今规模最大的相关研究之一。

　　There are trade-offs involved in having a migrant in the family, says Scott Rozelle, professor of economics at Stanford University and co-founder of the Rural Education Action Program, which has been collecting data on children in China’s remote rural areas for a decade. He conducted one of the largest studies so far of the state of China’s rural children, both with and without parents.

　　这项研究的结论与普遍的看法完全不同。“留守儿童并非中国农村地区最脆弱的群体，”研究报告的作者写道，他们“在我们所监测的健康、营养及教育指标上的表现与那些有父母陪伴的儿童相当，甚至更好”。

　　The study’s findings go against the conventional wisdom. “Left behind children are not the most vulnerable in rural China,” the study’s authors write, adding they “perform equally or even better than children living with parents on the health, nutrition and education indicators we examine”.

　　罗思高的意思并不是要强调留守儿童生活得还不错，而是要说明农村地区有父母陪伴和没有父母陪伴的儿童都属于弱势群体，而增加政府资源以帮助留守儿童的措施——如“代理家长”计划——有可能会被滥用。

　　Mr Rozelle’s point is not that things are just fine for left behind kids — but that both kids living with and without parents in rural areas are vulnerable, and that increasing government resources targeted to helping left behind kids, such as surrogate parenting programmes, may be misspent.

　　关于心理问题，如孤独、焦虑、抑郁甚至自杀倾向，大多数研究发现，留守儿童在这方面承受的痛苦要超过那些有父母陪伴的儿童。然而，即使在这方面，证据也并不确凿。

　　When it comes to emotional distress, such as loneliness, anxiety, depression and even suicidal tendencies, most studies find that left behind kids suffer more than those that live with their parents. Yet even here, the evidence is unclear.

　　任强与唐纳德礠雷曼(Donald Treiman)2013年所做的一项研究发现：“父母一方或双方都外出打工或者跟父母一方或双方一起迁居外地对孩子的心理健康影响不大”，因为这些孩子并非父母离婚或者遭到亲生父母遗弃的受害者，他们是“社会关系完整的家庭”的成员，父母仍对他们尽责——即使他们不住在家里。

　　A 2013 study by Qiang Ren and Donald Treiman found that “being left behind by one or both parents or migrating with one or both parents has little effect on emotional health”, because these children are not victims of divorce or parental abandonment, they are members of “socially intact families” where the parents remain committed to them, even if they do not live at home.

　　科技拉近距离

　　Tech bridges the miles

　　将孩子留在豆家村的王军锋与杨信鸽夫妇希望他们的孩子们也能这么想。他们在约1500公里之外的上海工作，每年只能回老家一次。但他们使用微信(WeChat)——一款中文移动讯息服务——至少每周与孩子们联系一次，并通过网络监督孩子们的家庭作业。实际上，正是由于孩子们学习非常好，他们才决定到离家乡更远的地方打工，因为这样才能挣到足够的钱供他们上大学。

　　Wang Junfeng, and Yang Xinge, whose children are back at Doujia village, hope their children will see it that way. They work about 1,500km away in Shanghai, and only go back once a year. But they use WeChat, the Chinese mobile messaging service, to keep in touch at least once a week and monitor children’s homework online. In fact their children are such good students that they decided to migrate even further from home, so they could earn enough to put them through college.

　　“多亏了科技，我不觉得远离孩子对他们有很大影响，”王军锋说，“我可以通过微信面对面与孩子交流，询问他们在学校的表现、平时的生活以及家里发生的事，”他说。但他也注意到，妻子每次看到微信上孩子们的照片时都会暗自流泪。

　　“Thanks to technology, I don’t think that me being away has a big impact on the children,” says Mr Wang. “I can have face-to-face contact with my children via WeChat, and ask about their performance at school, their daily life and what’s happening in the family,” he says. But he notes that every time his wife looks at the children’s photos on WeChat, she cries.

　　不过，像大多数外出务工者一样，这对夫妇也认为必须这样做。他们要供孩子上大学，要为新房还贷，还要赡养老人。他们愿意为了让自己的孩子过上更美好的生活而牺牲传统的家庭生活。中国劳动力迁徙奇迹或许正在走向尽头，但这仍是农村人触摸中国梦的最佳途径——不论是否带着自己的孩子。

　　Still, like most migrants, the couple agree: it had to be done. They have kids to put through university, a new house to pay off and elders to support. They are willing to sacrifice traditional family life for a better life for their children. The migrant miracle may be ending, but it is still the best way for rural people to access the Chinese dream — with or without their children.

　　拉家带口

　　Extended family

　　倪美红(音译)说她无法忍受把孩子留在农村，于是就把他带到了大城市生活——但这意味着要把孩子的外婆也带过来。

　　Ni Meihong says she could not bear to leave her baby in the village, so she brought him to the big city to live — but that meant bringing Grandma too.

　　她9岁的儿子周倪军(音译)出生在位于崇明岛的农村老家，这里距离上海只有两个小时车程。三个月大的时候，他和外婆叶是英来到了宝山与倪美红夫妇同住。位于上海市郊的宝山是来自崇明岛的务工人员偏爱的落脚地。中国政府去年公布的一份报告显示，越来越多的外出务工人员带着孩子一起来到城市。但这样做相当不易。这对夫妇不得不花费20万元人民币(合3.1万美元)——对普通农民工而言是一笔巨资——在宝山买了一套房，只有这样，她的儿子才能在当地上学。“如果没有房产，就不可能进入当地的学校，”她说。

　　Her nine-year-old son, Zhou Nijun, was born in her rural village on Chongming Island, two hours from Shanghai. When he was three months old, he and his grandmother Ye Shiying came to live with Ms Ni and her migrant worker husband in Baoshan, a suburb popular with Chongming migrants. More migrants are bringing children along, according to a government report published last year. But it is far from easy. The couple had to spend Rmb200,000 ($31,000) — a vast sum for the average migrant worker — to buy a flat in Baoshan so that her son could go to school there. “If you don’t have property, it is not possible to get into school there,” she says.

　　倪美红与自己开出租的丈夫代表着政府官员所说的中国劳动力迁徙的“新阶段”。中国国家卫计委(NHFPC)流动人口司司长王谦去年表示，外出务工的夫妻已经开始带着自己的孩子一起生活。“最初是劳动力的流动，接着到夫妻两个带着孩子流动，再往后是老人跟着流动，”他说。

　　Ms Ni and her husband, a taxi driver, represent what government officials say is a “new stage” of labour migration in China. Wang Qian, head of the migrant population department at China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, said last year that couples are starting to move their children to stay with them. “It starts with the migration of an individual, then the couple, then the children and later on it will be the elderly people,” he said.

　　但大多数农民工无法负担得起这样做。他们大都希望尽可能住得便宜些，有可能的话住在公司宿舍，有的甚至住在建筑工地的简易房中，以便把省下的每一分钱都寄回家。即使他们有钱把孩子带出来，也没有财力让孩子的祖母一起过来。研究人员称，随着在城市中长时间工作的父母一起生活的流动儿童受忽视的程度往往与被留在农村老家的儿童相同，或者更甚。

　　But that takes money most migrants do not have. Most prefer to live as cheaply as possible, in company dormitories where possible, or even in prefabricated housing on building sites, to save every renminbi to send back home. And even if they had the money to bring baby, they do not have the funds to bring grandma too: migrant children who live with parents who work long hours in urban areas are often just as neglected, or even more so, than they would be back home, researchers say.

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