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Down the Rabbit Hole
The world of estranged parents’ forums
深入兔子洞 —— 走进被孩子断亲的家长论坛的世界
This page doesn’t apply to all estranged parents, only to estranged parents who are members of estranged parents’ forums. Read why.
本页并不适用于所有被孩子断亲的家长，仅适用于那些身为被断亲家长论坛成员的家长。请阅读原因。
Forum Culture 被断亲家长的论坛文化
Why Are the Members of Estranged Parents’ Forums Different?
为什么被断亲家长论坛的成员会与众不同？
Why are the members of estranged parents’ forums different from other estranged parents? Why have so many of them been estranged from their children for 5, 15, even 30 years? Why are reconciliations so uncommon among the members, and why do they so often prove to be temporary? And why is the forum culture so uniquely toxic? Are the forum culture and the parents’ estrangements related?
为什么被断亲家长论坛的成员与其他被断亲家长不同？为什么他们中有那么多人与孩子断亲长达 5 年、15 年、甚至 30 年？为什么他们很难与孩子达成和解，而且即使有例外，也往往只有暂时的而不是长久的和解？为什么他们的论坛文化有毒得独树一帜？论坛文化和这些家长与孩子的断亲之间是否存在关联？
Absolutely.
答案无疑是肯定的。
There are three factors contributing to the dysfunctional culture of estranged parents’ forums and the failure of these particular parents to reconcile with their children:
以下三个因素导致了被断亲家长论坛有毒的文化，也是这些家长未能与孩子和解的根源：
The "chain of pain," the generational cycle of abuse
痛苦之链：代代相传的虐待循环
Authoritarian follower personality, with the resulting insistence on deference to the parents' authority, double standards for parents and children, and the powerful desire to punish people who resist
威权主义服从者人格：坚信孩子必须服从家长的权威，对家长与孩子树立双重标准，强烈想要惩罚任何胆敢反抗的人
Criticism avoidance, a pattern of deflecting, minimizing, denying, or sometimes even blacking out anything perceived as critical
回避批评：习惯性回避、淡化、否认任何负面反馈，有时甚至对任何被视为批评的话语选择性失忆
The Chain of Pain 痛苦之链
The overwhelming majority of the members tell tales of multi-generational abuse. Their grandparents abused their parents, their parents abused the members, in adulthood the members married abusive men, their own children accuse the members of abuse and are drawn to abusive spouses, sometimes the members even see their children abusing their grandchildren. Members’ divorce rates are sky-high, and many members have divorced more than once when they remarried to another abusive husband. Many members say there were previous estrangements in their families—they may have been estranged from their own parents for a time, aunts and uncles may have quarreled with one another, their own parents may have cut off the rest of the family for a while. Members refer to a “culture of estrangement” and say with regret that they taught their children to estrange, but I think the explanation is simpler: Abuse breaks relationships.
绝大多数论坛成员都讲述了自己家里的虐待如何代代相传。他们的祖辈虐待他们的家长，他们的家长又虐待这些论坛成员本人。成年后这些论坛成员与施虐的伴侣结婚，他们自己的孩子指责这些成员施虐，并被虐待型配偶所吸引。有时这些成员甚至看到他们的孩子虐待自己的孙辈。成员们的离婚率极高，许多人不止一次再婚又离婚，因为她们发现新的丈夫又是一个施虐的伴侣。许多成员说他们的家庭之前也发生过断亲的状况——他们可能曾与自己的家长断亲一段时间，叔伯姑舅之间可能发生过争吵，他们自己的家长也可能一度与家人断绝来往。成员们提到一种“断亲文化”，并心怀悔意地说他们教会了自己的孩子断亲，但我认为正确的解释更为简洁：虐待行为会毁灭亲密关系。
Members all say they tried to be better parents than their own parents, and they succeeded. They can’t understand why their own children say they were abusive when they did none of the things their own parents did to them. In fact, all around them they see really abusive parents—child-beaters, drug addicts—surrounded by circles of devoted children. What went wrong? Why are their own children rejecting them when children who were treated hideously still love their parents? More than one member has asked herself whether she should have treated her own children worse.
所有成员都说他们努力成为比自己家长更好的家长，而且他们确实做到了。他们无法理解，既然他们没有做自己家长曾经对他们做过的那些事，为什么自己的孩子会说他们有虐待行为。事实上，他们看到有那么多家长真的在虐待孩子——打孩子的人、吸毒成瘾者——身边却围着众多对其不离不弃的孩子。到底是哪里出了问题？为什么他们自己的孩子拒绝了他们，而那些被残酷对待的孩子仍然爱着家长？不止一位成员曾自问，她当初是否本该对孩子更坏一些？
What went wrong? Two things. First, the parents identified their own parents’ worst behaviors as abuse and stripped them out of their lives; but they still picked up their parents’ dysfunctional defenses, unchallenged sick beliefs, and bad coping mechanisms. (All children and spouses of abusers pick up abusive traits. They’re called fleas.) These fleas lurk in the parents’ blind spots. A father who prides himself on not beating his children the way his dad beat him may not realize that being dismissive and controlling is doing his children almost as much damage as the beatings did him. When someone points out that he’s being dismissive and controlling, he may see nothing wrong with his behavior because he inherited his father’s ideas about what’s due him as the head of the family, and his upbringing may not have given him the tools to absorb the knowledge that he hurt his children, however unintentionally. He may be far better than his own father, but that doesn’t mean he’s not abusive.
到底是哪里出了问题呢？有两点。首先，这些家长把自己家长最糟糕的行为认定为虐待，也从自己的生活中把这种虐待拔除了；但他们仍然学会了家长那些功能失调的防御机制、未经反思的病态信念，以及糟糕的应对机制（coping mechanisms）。（所有遭受虐待者及其配偶都会学到一些虐待性的特征，人们称之为“跳蚤”。）这些“跳蚤”潜伏在这些家长的盲区里。 一个以没有像他父亲那样打孩子为荣的父亲，可能没有意识到他的冷漠与控制欲同样会对孩子造成几乎与体罚相当的伤害。当有人指出他在表现得过于冷漠、过度控制孩子时，他可能看不出自己行为有何不妥，因为他继承了他父亲关于“一家之长理应获得什么样的尊重”的观念，他的成长环境也可能没有给他工具去接受他无意间伤害了孩子的事实。他可能比自己的父亲好得多，但那并不意味着他就不是一个施虐者。
Most members of estranged parents’ forums have been bitten by their own fleas. That’s the first thing that went wrong. The second thing that went wrong is less common, but it contributes to no small number of estrangements: The members were better parents than their own parents. They raised their children to have a little more self-esteem, a little less enmeshment, better defenses that let the children make healthier friends and see a way to a wider, kinder world. That, combined with a greater understanding of abuse and more support for victims, meant that children were healthy enough to recognize their situation as abusive and escape their parents’ orbit.
大多数被断亲家长论坛的成员都被自己的“跳蚤”所困扰。这是第一个问题。第二个问题较为少见，但也导致了不少断亲的情况：这些论坛成员比他们自己的家长更好。他们把孩子养得自尊心稍强一些、与家长的纠缠（enmeshment）稍弱一些、建立了更好的防御机制，让孩子能交到更健康的朋友并看到更广阔、更善意的世界。再加上公众对虐待的理解增加了，对受害者的支持也变多了，孩子们因此有更高的心理健康程度，足以识别出自己所处的环境是虐待性的，继而从家长的轨道中脱离出来。
So some members are right when they say they were better than their own parents and that their children left because they weren’t as bad. It doesn’t mean the members weren’t abusive.
因此，当一些成员说他们比自己的家长更好、孩子离开是因为他们没那么坏时，他们说得有一定道理。但这并不意味着这些成员就没有虐待行为。
Authoritarian Follower Personality 威权主义服从者人格
The members of estranged parents’ forums would score high on what Bob Altemeyer calls the Right-Wing Authoritarian Scale, specifically the authoritarian follower side of the scale. (I refer to this type as authoritarian followers instead of right-wing followers to strip the misleading political reference from the name.) Authoritarian followers’ central belief, the one that organizes the rest of their personality, is that authorities should be respected and shown deference because they are authorities. Authoritarian followers support this belief with double standards that excuse authorities of wrongdoing, a rigidly hierarchical worldview that keeps people in their place, and powerful resistance to any attempt to question authority. They tend to be black-and-white, us-and-them thinkers with a deep need to punish transgressors.
被断亲家长论坛的成员在 Bob Altemeyer 提出的“右翼权威主义量表”上得分会很高，特别是在“威权主义服从者人格”这一面向上。（我称这种类型为“威权主义服从者人格”而不是“右翼追随者”，以避免名称中产生误导性的政治指向。） 威权主义服从者人格的核心信念，有逻辑地组织起他们人格其余部分的那个信念，就是：必须尊重并服从掌权者，仅仅因为掌权者具有权威（译注：即因权威本身而尊奉权威，而不需要其它任何缘由）。 为了支持这一核心信念，威权主义服从者人格通过对权威的不当行为采取双重标准来为其辩解，认同僵化的等级式世界观以保证所有人各居其位，并且强烈抵触任何质疑权威的企图。他们倾向于非黑即白、敌我分明的思维方式，内心极度想要惩罚胆敢“触犯天条”的人。
All of this is readily apparent in estranged parents’ forums. The members’ worldview is fiercely hierarchical, with one group labeled “estranged parents” (or “grandparents,” “mothers-in-law,” etc.) and one group labeled “estranged children” (“children,” “daughters-in-law,” etc.). Each group is held to radically different expectations, with acceptance and validation of anything “one of ours” says, and rejection of anything “one of theirs” says. This separation between groups is impermeable. Estranged parents are estranged parents, even when they describe being estranged from their own parents; they’re not subjected to the rules imposed on estranged children, even when they talk about being estranged children.
这一切在被断亲家长的论坛中随处可见。论坛成员们的世界观等级分明，一组被贴上“被断亲的家长”（或“祖辈”“婆婆/岳母”等）标签，另一组被贴上“断亲的孩子”（“孩子”“儿媳/女婿”等）标签。 用截然不同的标准来评定不同的群体，对“我方”的任何言论都给予接纳与肯定，而对“敌方”的任何言论则予以否定。群体之间的区分不容置疑。被断亲的家长就单纯是被断亲的家长，即便他们说自己曾与自己的家长断亲 —— 他们不受加于断亲的孩子的规则约束，即便他们谈论自己作为断亲的孩子时也还是这样。
And they’re clear on the need to punish estranged children. (Real estranged children, not themselves back when they stopped talking to their parents.) One of the forums’ primary functions is to act as a safe place for members to vent about their desire to humiliate their children, beat them, shame them, make them hurt as much as they’re hurting their parents.[1] After the pain of rejection, the second most common emotion members express is rage.
他们也明确认为需要惩罚断亲的孩子。（是真正断亲的孩子，而不是曾与家长断联的他们自己。）论坛的主要功能之一是为成员提供一个安全的发泄渠道，使他们可以宣泄那种想要贬低、殴打、羞辱自己孩子的欲望，那种以牙还牙地返还给孩子相等的痛苦的欲望。[1] 排在被拒绝的痛苦之后，成员们表达的第二大常见情绪是愤怒。
Authoritarian followers also have a slippery grasp of reasoning. They compartmentalize, they avoid looking at contrary evidence, they tend to think a line of reasoning is correct if they like the outcome. They also have a loose grasp of facts. As a researcher working with authoritarian followers said,
威权主义服从者人格也不太擅长理性思考。他们会有意孤立某些想法而拒绝把它们用逻辑连接起来（compartmentalize），对与自己信念相反的证据大力回避，如果他们喜欢某个结果便倾向认为导向此结果的思路是正确的。他们也不是很擅长理解和接受事实。 正如一位研究威权主义服从者人格的学者所说：
They could not remember some pieces of evidence, they invented evidence that did not exist, and they steadily made erroneous inferences from the material that everyone could agree on.
“他们记不起某些证据，捏造不存在的证据，并且不断地从所有人都能达成共识的材料中做出错误的推论。”
Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarians, pp. 75-76
Bob Altemeyer 著《威权主义者》，第 75–76 页
Her description could be applied to any estranged parents’ forum. Members recount events in an impressionistic style, cherry-picking details and often telling conflicting versions of events at successive retellings. The other members pay no attention to the inconsistencies, accepting the latest version as the full truth. In mixed forums where members are more likely to question one another’s stories, estranged parents have difficulty keeping all the relevant details in mind, forget inconvenient facts, add new facts, and feel confident about making judgements even when they don’t remember any of the background. When challenged, they may concede that they got the facts wrong, then keep arguing for a conclusion that relies on the facts they just admitted were wrong. In mixed forums, this leads to sulking over being misunderstood and nitpicked to death. In estranged parents’ forums, it leads to a forum culture in which members will happily argue for something one day and against it the next day. In the long run, it impoverishes the forum culture because the members don’t pool their experiences and come up with a coherent understanding of estrangement based on what works. If anything, the members declare that coherence is impossible because estrangement is beyond understanding.
她的描述可以适用于任何被断亲家长的论坛。论坛成员们用印象主义般的方式叙述事件，挑选性地摘取细节，并在前后多次讲述的版本中常常自相冲突。 其他成员对这些不一致之处视而不见，只把最新的版本当作全部事实。 在那些混合型论坛中（译注：包含家长和孩子双方的论坛），成员们更可能彼此质疑对方的故事，被断亲家长则难以将所有相关细节记牢，他们忘记与自己的叙事不符的事实，增加新的“事实”，并在连背景都不记得的情况下仍自信地做出判决。 受到挑战时，他们可能会承认他们弄错了某些事情，但随后仍继续为依托那些刚被承认有误的“事实”而得出的结论辩护。 在混合论坛中，这会导致因为被误解和被吹毛求疵而郁郁寡欢；在被断亲家长论坛里，这会形成一种文化，使得成员可以在某一天愉快地支持某事，第二天又反对同一件事。 长期看来，这会使论坛文化愈发贫瘠，因为成员们没有把经验汇聚起来，基于有效的做法形成对断亲问题的连贯理解。实际上，被断亲家长的论坛成员们坚称达成连贯的理解是不可能的，因为（他们认为）孩子断亲这件事是完全不可理解的。
The beliefs that members hold, teach each other, and try to impose on their adult children are deeply authoritarian:
成员们所持有、互相灌输并试图强加给成年孩子的思想深具威权主义色彩：
Parents are to be respected because they are the parents. Period.
孩子必须尊重家长，因为家长是家长。这就是天理。
Parents who behave badly are still to be respected. (The members' own parents were awful, and they would never have treated their parents the way their own children are behaving.)
行为不当的家长也还是得尊重。（虽然成员们自己的家长很糟糕，但他们绝不会像孩子对待他们那样对待自己的家长。）
The parent is the arbiter of what "respect" means.
家长单方面决定什么叫做尊重。
The parent sets the terms of the relationship. A child's attempts to set terms are an attempt to control the parent.
家长决定亲子关系中有什么规矩。如果孩子试图参与规则的制定，就等于孩子试图控制家长。
Parents should control children. Children must not be allowed to control parents.
家长应当控制孩子。孩子绝不许控制家长。
Making decisions a parent disagrees with is a sign of immaturity. Doing as a parent says is a sign of maturity.
做出令家长不同意的决定是幼稚的表现。对家长言听计从是成熟的表现。
Other people's reasons have no validity unless the member agrees with them. Invalid reasons are nonexistent reasons.
除非该论坛成员本人同意，否则他人的理由是无效的。理由无效就等于理由根本不存在。
Children have no right to break off relationships with their parents.
孩子无权与家长断绝关系。
Refusing to have having a relationship with a parent is abusive.
拒绝与家长维持亲子关系就是一种虐待行为。
Members spend a lot of time lamenting that their children don’t hold these beliefs, that the people around them won’t help the members impose the beliefs on their children, and that society in general is moving away from these beliefs. For many of them, the magical solution to estrangement that they’re searching for is a way to corner their child and force these beliefs on them. Unsurprisingly, they’re unlikely to reconcile, so over time less authoritarian members either reconcile with their children or leave for less authoritarian forums, and the concentration of authoritarian members stays high.
论坛成员们总在哀叹他们的孩子的思想与他们不同，他们周围的人也不会帮他们把这些思想强加给孩子，而且整个社会正与这些思想渐行渐远。 对于许多人，他们所寻找的解决断亲的灵丹妙药就是：设法把孩子逼到墙角，强迫孩子接受这些思想。 那就难怪他们不太可能跟孩子达成和解了。 因此随着时间的推移，那些不那么威权主义的论坛成员要么与孩子和解，要么转向威权主义程度更低的论坛，而本论坛威权主义服从者的浓度仍然很高。
Criticism Avoidance 回避批评
The culture of estranged parents’ forums is built around the members’ resistance to criticism. The members question one another with exquisite gentleness, or not at all; they believe whatever another member chooses to tell them; and they spend a great deal of time comforting one another when the outer world dares to be less kind. One of the more important functions of the forums is offering relief to people who feel misunderstood, attacked, maligned by the outside world for things they believe are beyond their control.
被断亲家长论坛的文化中心是：论坛成员对一切负面评价的抗拒。 成员们以极其温和的方式互相提问，或者根本不对彼此提出问题；他们相信其他成员选择告诉他们的任何事； 当外界竟敢对他们不太友善时，他们花大量时间互相安慰。 论坛的一个重要功能是，慰藉那些感到自己由于被孩子断亲而被外界误解、攻击、诋毁的人 —— 他们相信被孩子断亲这件事是超出自己控制的。
Some of the mechanisms members use to avoid criticism are:
成员们用来回避批评的一些机制包括：
Inability to remember criticisms. "She was screaming and screaming at me," members say, but they won't be able to recall what she screamed.
记不住批评的具体内容。“她不停地对我大喊大叫，”论坛成员们说，但他们无法回忆出她到底喊了些什么。
Minimization of the criticisms members do remember. A list of grievances is boiled down to "He accused me of eating his Halloween candy one year" or "He was angry because I made him do chores in high school." Whatever the members repeat is so petty or reasonable-sounding that it can't be taken seriously.
对记得的批评内容大事化小。长长的不满清单被浓缩为“某年他指责我吃了他的万圣节糖果”或“他因为我在高中让他做家务而生气”。成员们反复提及的事情如此琐碎或听起来如此合情合理，以至于无法被严肃对待。
Unwillingness to repeat criticisms. Members don't post the "letters full of abuse" their children send them, rarely post texts from their children, and often avoid saying what the substance of an argument was.
不愿意复述批评的内容。成员们不会在帖子里贴出孩子寄来的那些“充满恶语的信件”，也很少贴出孩子的短信，并且常常有意避免说出争吵的具体内容。
Refusal to accept criticisms that they themselves don't agree with. If their daughter says she can't put up with their disapproval of her boyfriend, but the parents think their disapproval is perfectly legitimate because she could do so much better, then their daughter is not estranged from them because they gave her grief about her boyfriend. The parents conclude that she hasn't told them the real reason, therefore she hasn't told them any reason, and they wish she would tell them so they can heal the estrangement.
拒绝接受他们自己不同意的批评。如果女儿说她无法忍受家长对她男友的不赞同，而家长认为他们的不赞同完全正当（因为她本可以找到更好的男友），那么在家长看来，女儿并不是因为他们为她的男友责备她而与他们断亲。家长得出的结论是：女儿没有告诉他们真正的理由，因此她根本没有给出任何理由，他们希望她能告诉他们究竟为什么断亲，这样他们才能修复关系。
Hypersensitivity to negative emotions aimed at them. Any criticism at all is interpreted as an attack, unhappiness is interpreted as rage, calm speech is remembered as screaming. Their children aren't hurt or upset, they're "filled with hatred." Other people's reactions are perceived as being so powerful that nothing could justify them, and so painful that no sane person would willingly withstand them.
对针对他们的负面情绪高度敏感。任何批评都会被解读为攻击，不满被解读为愤怒，平静的话语被记成尖叫。他们的孩子没有受伤也没有难过，而是“满怀仇恨”。别人的反应在他们的感知中被放大到不可理喻的程度，让他们感到任何理智的人都不可能自愿承受的痛苦。
The members’ criticism avoidance mixes with their authoritarian-follower disinterest in facts to create a distinctive approach to reality. Members have difficulty integrating details into a coherent whole. Their stories are generally vague and focused on the emotions they experienced during the episode, lacking information about what led up to the event and often related with a timeline so mangled it might have been run through a blender. Estrangement comes at them like a punch in the dark: Their son was happy and then he cut them off the day after the wedding, the picnic was wonderful and then their daughter-in-law came up to them and started screaming. Members see nothing odd or missing in these accounts. So many of them have been through the exact same thing, after all.
论坛成员们对批评的回避与他们作为威权主义服从者对事实的漠视混合在一起，形成了一种独特的现实观。 成员们难以将细节整合成连贯的整体。他们的叙述通常很模糊，专注于他们在事件中体验到的情绪，缺乏关于事件前因的资料，而且时间线常常被弄得一团糟，仿佛被搅拌机搅成了一团乱麻。 对他们而言，孩子跟他们断亲简直是无妄之灾：他们的儿子以前很幸福，突然在婚礼后的第二天就跟他们断绝了关系；野餐本来开开心心，突然儿媳开始向他们大喊大叫。 论坛成员们并不认为这些叙述有什么奇怪或缺失之处。毕竟他们中有许多人经历过完全相同的情形。
If an estranged parent comes to a mixed forum, another member may ask for more details. At that point, one of two things happens. Either the parent explodes, saying she came here for support, not to be questioned, and why are you interrogating her, anyway? Don’t you believe her? Are you a parent or a child? She wants to speak only to parents, because they can understand, so you can go away and take your insults with you.
如果一位被断亲的家长来到一个亲子混合型论坛，另一位论坛成员可能会要求提供更多细节。此时会发生以下两种情形之一。 情形一： 这位家长怒火爆发，声称她来这里只是为了寻求支持，不是来被质问的，然后质问你为什么要盘问她？你不相信她吗？你是家长还是孩子？她只想与家长交谈，因为只有家长能理解她，所以你还是带着你的侮辱之词圆润地滚开吧。
…Or the parent reveals that despite what they said, they have all the puzzle pieces. “My daughter-in-law was rude and selfish and wouldn’t let anyone hold the baby at the baptism—we were so hurt” becomes “The baby was premature and at risk for RSV, and it was flu season.”
情形二： 最后事实证明，尽管他们之前说自己不知道为什么被断亲，但他们其实已经掌握了全部线索。刚开始帖子说的“我的儿媳粗鲁自私，在洗礼时不让任何人抱宝宝——我们很受伤”会变成“宝宝早产并有感染呼吸道合胞病毒（RSV）的风险，当时又是流感季节。”
Members’ ability to keep the facts corralled varies according to how they’re feeling. A woman who visits her son and daughter-in-law frequently says she knows her daughter-in-law dislikes her visits, but the member will keep visiting because her son would never let her daughter-in-law turn her away. Six months later the same member says that she and her daughter-in-law had such a good relationship, and now the daughter-in-law made her son cancel a visit, and the member has no idea what’s happening.
论坛成员们理解现实的能力随着其情绪起伏而变化。 一位经常去探望儿子和儿媳的家长说，她知道儿媳不喜欢她去探访，但她仍会继续去，因为她的儿子绝不会让儿媳把她拒之门外。六个月后，同一位成员又说她和儿媳的关系原本很好，而现在却是儿媳让她的儿子取消了探访，而论坛成员根本不知道为什么会这样。
Criticism avoidance guarantees that people will have strained relationships. No one wants to be around someone who can’t bear to talk out problems, who can’t remember being told anything she doesn’t like, who goes around saying she has no idea why people are so mean to her. It also guarantees that if the solution to a problem is “See what you’re doing wrong and fix it,” the problem will never be solved. It’s no surprise that criticism-avoidant people end up divorced and estranged more often than the general populace.
回避批评注定会导致人际关系紧张。 没有人愿意与那种无法承受讨论问题、记不得任何不合她意的话、到处喊着“我真搞不懂为什么别人对我这么坏”的人在一起。 它也注定了如果问题的解决方案是“看看你做错了什么并纠正这个错误”，那么该问题将永远无法被解决。 回避批评的人比一般人更经常离婚和被断亲，这实在是意料之中。
Once you know the pattern, it’s also no surprise that criticism-avoidant people cry that their children cut them off suddenly for no reason. As far as they’re concerned, there was no reason. (At least, no reason they can remember, apart from all the abuse their children screamed at them, and something petty about eating their Halloween candy.) They so want to reconcile with their children, but when they ask what they can do, their children only scream more abuse at them, or tell them they know what the problem is, or give more petty reasons that no one can understand… so the parents offer to go to counseling with the children, but counseling fails, or the child refuses and tells the parent to go on her own and work on herself first, only the parent can’t work on herself if she doesn’t know what’s wrong, so she has to wait until her child calms down and hope that someday, someday, her child will tell her what the real problem is.
一旦你识别出这种模式，也就不奇怪为什么那些回避批评的人哭诉说，孩子们无缘无故突然切断了关系。在他们看来，确实没有理由。 （至少，没有他们能记住的理由，除了一些孩子对他们喊出的所谓“辱骂”，以及关于偷吃万圣节糖果之类的琐事。） 他们非常想与孩子和解，但当他们问自己能做什么时，孩子们只会对他们喊出更多的谩骂，或者说他们自己明明已经知道问题是什么，或者给出更多无人能理解的琐碎理由…… 于是家长提出愿意与孩子一起去做心理咨询，但心理咨询失败了，或者孩子拒绝跟家长一起去心理咨询，并告诉家长先独自去心理咨询改进自己，然而家长如果不知道问题所在就无法自我改进，于是不得不等待孩子冷静，希望有一天、总有一天，孩子会告诉他们真正的问题所在。
Interactions 三个因素的相互影响
Generational abuse, authoritarian follower personality, and criticism avoidance are intimately entwined. The authoritarian parenting style isn’t inherently abusive, but it’s the style of choice for abusers. Authoritarian upbringing tends to create authoritarians and abusive upbringing tends to leave children with poor parenting skills, so people brought up in abusive, authoritarian households tend to bring at least some of their parents’ abusive, authoritarian behavior into their own parenting. Abusers are intensely criticism-avoidant, so they don’t teach their children healthy ways to handle criticism, and their authoritarian punishments fill their children with such a sense of shame and powerlessness that some children grow up unable to admit to any wrongdoing without being flooded with shame and powerlessness all over again. At the heart, abuse is authoritarianism is criticism avoidance.
代代相传的虐待、威权主义服从者人格、对批评的回避，这三个因素紧密纠缠。 威权主义的教养方式并非必然等同于虐待，但这恰好是施虐者极为偏好的教养方式。 威权主义的教养方式倾向于培养出威权主义者，虐待孩子的的教养方式常常使孩子缺乏良好的育儿能力，因此在存在虐待和威权主义的家庭中成长的人往往会在自己的育儿方式中带入家长的一些虐待行为和威权主义式行为。 施虐者极度回避批评，因此他们没有教孩子如何健康地处理批评，他们的威权主义式惩罚给孩子带来了强烈的羞耻感与无力感，以致有些孩子长大后在承认任何错误时都会再次被羞耻与无力感淹没。从根本上说，虐待 = 威权主义 = 回避批评。
Not all members of estranged parents’ forums show all three traits. A sizable minority weren’t abused as children, and, separately, a minority aren’t authoritarian followers but still find the forums congenial. However, all the established members are criticism-avoidant. It’s impossible to be estranged “for no good reason” without criticism avoidance; and members who know what the problem is and who have the fortitude to look it in the face go elsewhere, to forums that directly address their issues.
并非所有被断亲家长论坛的成员都同时表现出这三种特质。相当一部分人成年前并未遭受虐待，另有少数人并非威权主义服从者，却仍在这些论坛待的安安稳稳。 然而，所有资深成员都有回避批评的特征。如果他们没有回避批评的问题，就不可能出现所谓“无缘无故”被断亲的情况；那些知道问题所在并有勇气面对问题的成员会去别处，去那些直接处理他们问题的论坛。
Conclusion 结语
Most members of estranged parents’ forums belong to a group of people who are at high risk of poor relationships: People who were abused as children, who unconsciously absorbed some of their parents’ abusive behaviors and, despite their best efforts, passed the abuse on to their children. They also resist criticism so strongly that it alters their perceptions, making it impossible for them to absorb and act on the issues their children have with them. Unconsciously, it’s easier for them to bear the pain of estrangement—pain so intense that some estranged parents commit suicide—than to bear the pain of being wrong.
大多数被断亲家长论坛的成员属于人际关系破裂的高风险群体：他们在童年受到虐待，在无意识中吸收了家长的一些虐待行为，尽管他们尽了最大努力，仍把虐待传递给了自己的孩子。 他们也极力抵抗批评，以至于这改变了他们的感知，使他们无法接受并处理亲子关系中出现的问题。 潜意识中，他们宁可承受被断亲的痛苦 —— 这种痛苦有时强烈到一些被断亲家长选择了自杀 —— 也不愿经受承认自己错误的痛苦。
What can be done? I don’t know. Lifelong patterns are hard enough to break when the sufferer is willing to break them. When someone can’t even see that there is a pattern, when breaking the pattern feels like taking a sledgehammer to their very soul, change isn’t going to happen.
有什么出路吗？我不知道。 即使当事人愿意改变，持续终生的行为模式也很难打破。 如果当事人连自己的行为模式都没能意识到，而打破这种模式的感觉就好比用大锤砸碎自己的灵魂，那么改变就不可能发生。
But what I do know is: Change can still happen, a link further down the chain. If you’re an estranged adult child, you too were raised by an abusive parent who was probably an authoritarian follower. You too are trying to do your best by your own children. And you too learned some of your parents’ abusive behaviors, where they’re hiding in your blind spot. You’re at risk of estrangement from your own children, not because you’re “teaching your children estrangement” or whatever nonsense the flying monkeys toss at you, but because it’s human nature to get fleas. No matter how good a parent you are, find a therapist and do some heavy drilling. Turn the lens on your blind spots. Have the courage to face yourself, even the broken, jagged, armored parts you don’t want to exist. Because if you don’t face them, your children might have to.
但我所知道的是：改变仍然可能发生，但它只能发生在链条中的下一环。 如果你是与家长断亲的成年孩子，你也曾被一位很可能是威权主义服从者的、虐待你的家长养大。 你也在尽力对自己的孩子做到最好。你也学到了家长的一些虐待性行为，它们藏在你的盲点里。 你有可能被自己的孩子断亲，这并不是因为你在“教孩子断亲”，或者任何你从被虐待者指使的人那里听到的瞎编的原因，而是因为人性会有“跳蚤”（译注：如上文，“跳蚤”指的是受害者在被虐待时发展出的、在正常关系中不再合适的行为模式）。 无论你多么称职，都应找一位治疗师，去进行深入的自我挖掘。把镜头对准你的盲点。鼓起勇气面对自己，即便是那些你不愿意承认其存在的破碎、参差、被防御机制包裹的部分。 因为如果你不去面对它们，你的孩子可能不得不去面对。
[1] Contrast this with forums for estranged adult children, where discussions about wanting to hurt, humiliate, or punish their parents are almost nonexistent.
[1] 与之形成对比的是针对与家长断亲的成年孩子的论坛，在那些论坛中，关于想伤害、羞辱或惩罚家长的讨论几乎不存在。
Updated 3/24/2015
更新于 2015 年 3 月 24 日
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Image source: Screenshot from What Remains of Edith Finch, originally posted on Morbid Instinct.