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價，把一批環保塑膠地板運至位於法國南部的別墅，原因是擔心在暑假期間，她蹣跚學步的孩子會在石板地上摔傷。雖然一代代法國孩子可能就是在同樣的石頭地上跑、摔、玩、睡，而且平安長大成人，但這並未阻止她要確保安全的決心。我認爲，這極端體現了我們這輩人的普遍臆想：我們能夠控制孩子，讓孩子的成長環境完美無缺。在這種爲孩子營造理想環境的奇怪而又徒勞的想法背後，暗藏着更爲奇特、也更爲徒勞的理念：培養理想化的孩子。