I wrote a column recently lamenting the decline in marriage rates, noting that a record half of American adults are now unmarried. As a long-married romantic myself, steeped in statistics suggesting that marriage correlates with happiness, I found that sad.
我最近写了一篇痛惜婚姻率下降的专栏文章，指出有一半美国成年人现在处于未婚状态。我本人是结婚多年的浪漫主义者，知道很多认为婚姻与幸福有关联的统计数据，所以我对这种状态感到悲哀。

My readers, not so much.
我的读者们却不这么认为。

Many women readers in particular dismissed heterosexual marriage as an outdated institution that pampers men while turning women into unpaid servants.
尤其是许多女性读者，她们认为异性婚姻是一种过时的制度，它纵容男性，把女性变成无偿劳动的仆人。

“Marriage is generally GREAT for men,” declared a woman reader from North Carolina whose comment on the column was the single most liked, with more than 2,000 people recommending it. Wives get stuck with the caregiving, she added, and “the sex that receives the care is gonna be happier than the sex that doesn’t receive the care.”
“婚姻通常对男性来说棒极了，”一名来自北卡罗来纳州的女性读者的评论最受欢迎，得到了2000多个推荐。妻子们无法脱身照料他人的职责，她还写道，“得到照料的一方会比没得到照料的一方更幸福。”

The second most recommended reader comment came from a woman who said that when she and her women friends get together, “We all say, ‘Never again.’ Men require a lot of care. They can be such babies.”
推荐第二多的评论也来自一名女性，她说，当她和女性朋友聚会时，“我们都说，‘再也不会结婚了’。男人需要很多照料。他们有时简直就是巨婴。”

I think these skeptics make some valid points — we men do need to up our game! — even as I remain a staunch believer in marriage for both straight and gay couples. But put aside for a moment questions about marriage. The deluge of annoyance among some women readers intrigued me because while it’s anecdotal, it aligns with considerable survey evidence of a growing political, cultural and social divide between men and women throughout the industrialized world.
我认为这些怀疑论者的说法有些有道理——我们男性确实需要改进自己！但我仍坚定地相信异性婚姻和同性婚姻的价值。但我们暂且不谈婚姻问题。一些女性读者对我的文章表达的大量不满引起了我的兴趣，虽然那只是个人之见，但与调查得到的证据大致相符，调查表明，在整个工业化世界，男性与女性在政治、文化和社会方面的鸿沟越来越大。

A poll across 20 countries by the Glocalities research group found “a growing divide between young men and young women” in political and social outlook, while The Economist examined polling across rich countries and likewise found that young women are becoming significantly more liberal as young men are becoming somewhat more conservative.
研究团体Glocalities在20个国家进行的民意调查发现，在政治和社会人生观上，“年轻男女之间的鸿沟正在扩大”。《经济学人》分析了对富裕国家进行的民意调查后也有同样的发现，年轻女性明显变得更为自由主义，而年轻男性则在某种程度上变得更保守。

A study by Pew found that compared with never-married women, never-married men in the United States are 50 percent more likely to align with Republicans.
皮尤研究中心的一项调查发现，与从未结过婚的美国女性相比，从未结过婚的美国男性支持共和党的可能性要高 50%。

One gauge of the rightward drift of young men: In 2014 men ages 55 to 65 were the most conservative group, according to the Glocalities data, while now young men are more conservative than older ones.
衡量年轻男性向右倾斜的一个指标是：据Glocalities的数据，2014年时，55至65岁的男性是最保守的群体，而现在，年轻男性比年长男性更保守。

The backdrop is that boys and men are lagging in education and much less likely than women to get college degrees. Many of these less educated men struggle in the job market, and increasingly some of them seem to blame their problems on feminism. Young men are more likely than older men to tell pollsters that “advancing women’s and girls’ rights has gone too far”; women of all ages disagree.
出现这种情况的背景是，男孩和男人在教育上落后了，他们获得大学学位的可能性远低于女性。许多受教育程度较低的男性在就业市场上苦苦挣扎，他们中有越来越多的人似乎将自己的问题归咎于女权主义。年轻男性比年长男性更有可能告诉民意调查人员“推动妇女和女孩权利的做法过头了”；所有年龄段的女性都不同意这个说法。

A remarkable 45 percent of young men ages 18 to 29 say that in America today, men face discrimination. Older men are less likely to feel that way.
18至29岁的年轻男性中有45%认为，如今男性在美国面临歧视，这个比例引人注目。有这种感觉的年长男性要少一些。

The upshot, polling suggests, is that men are becoming grumpier and more resentful of women’s success, and more drawn to conservative authoritarian populists, from Donald Trump to misogynist internet personalities like Andrew Tate.
这些民调认为，男性变得更加性情暴躁，对女性的成功更加不满，更倾向于保守的威权民粹主义者，如唐纳德·特朗普和厌女网红安德鲁·泰特这样的人。

The Glocalities survey concluded that around the world the “radical right increasingly finds fertile ground among young men, which is already impacting elections.” Representative Matt Gaetz suggested that it doesn’t matter if Republicans antagonize female voters because they can be replaced by male voters.
Glocalities的调查得出的结论是，世界各地的“极右势力正在从越来越多的年轻男性那里找到沃土，这已经在影响选举”。众议员马特·盖茨提出，共和党不必担心激怒女性选民，因为能用男性选民来取代她们。

The gender gap is easiest to measure in politics, but the Brookings Institution warned last week that it “also appears in measures other than politics and points to some deeper and potentially even more concerning issues among young people.”
虽然性别分歧在政治领域最容易衡量，但布鲁金斯学会上周警告，这种分歧“也出现在政治领域以外的其他衡量中，指出了年轻人中一些更深层次，甚至可能更令人担忧的问题”。

“The social bonds of previous generations appear to be eroding among young people, and this has serious consequences for coupling, future birthrates and social cohesion,” Brookings said.
“维系前几代人的社会纽带似乎正在年轻人中逐渐消失，已给结成伴侣、未来生育率以及社会凝聚力带来了严重后果，”布鲁金斯学会表示。

One of the most discussed chasms between the sexes is in South Korea, where nearly 80 percent of young men say that men are discriminated against, and where (male) President Yoon Suk Yeol was elected in 2022 in part on an antifeminist platform. Women have their own complaints, including how unhelpful their husbands are in the house. Some Korean feminists have created the 4B movement, which promotes no marriage, no babies, no dating and no sex. South Korea’s total fertility rate has plummeted to one of the lowest in the world, with the average woman now having just 0.7 children.
媒体对韩国的巨大性别分歧报道得最多，那里有近80%的年轻男性认为男性受到歧视，而现任（男性）总统尹锡悦在2022年赢得大选的部分原因是他反女权主义的政纲。韩国女性也有她们的抱怨，包括丈夫一点家务事都不做。一些韩国女权主义者发起了“四不”运动，提倡不结婚、不生孩子、不约会、不要性行为。韩国的总生育率已降到世界最低水平之一，每名女性现在平均只生0.7个孩子。

Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, suggests in a recent book on marriage that the gender divide in South Korea and other Asian countries may offer a glimpse of what is coming to the United States. He estimates that perhaps one-third of today’s young Americans will never marry, with couples living together not replacing marriages. More people, he says, are simply detached and on their own.
弗吉尼亚大学社会学家布拉德·威尔科克斯最近在一本关于婚姻的书中提出，韩国和其他亚洲国家的两性鸿沟也许能为美国将要发生的情况提供一瞥。他估计，美国今天的年轻人中可能有三分之一永远不会结婚，同居也没有取代婚姻。他说，更多的人只想独居，独自生活。

Some women in America have publicly proclaimed that they are distancing themselves from men, abstaining from sex or going “boy sober.” Nearly 70 percent of breakups of heterosexual marriages in the United States are initiated by the wife.
一些美国女性已公开宣称她们正在疏远男性，放弃性行为或“戒男”。美国近70%的异性婚姻终止是女方提出的。

One window into gender tensions is a viral meme on TikTok in which women discuss whether they would rather encounter a bear in the woods or a man. Many go with the bear.
一个在TikTok上疯传的米姆是观察两性关系紧张的窗口，女性在短视频中讨论她们在树林里宁愿遇到什么：熊还是男人。许多人选择熊。

Young people are not only marrying less and partnering less; they’re also having less sex. Traditionally, older folks worried that young people were too promiscuous; now perhaps we geezers should fret about youthful celibacy.
年轻人不仅更少结婚，更少结成伴侣；他们的性行为也更少。传统上，年长的人曾担心年轻人生活不检点；现在，我们这些老头子们也许应该担心年轻人的独身主义。

Perhaps this gender divide will reverse and fix itself. Or perhaps, as some of those women commenters suggested, it’s not a problem, or else it’s a problem for men alone. But polling finds that both young men and young women across the Western world are deeply unhappy at a time when they seem to be drifting apart and increasingly report that they are “unpartnered.” I’ve written enough about the epidemic of loneliness to be troubled by these divides; social isolation is estimated to be as lethal as smoking.
也许这种性别分歧会逆转并自行修复。或许如一些女性评论者所说的那样，这不是个问题，或只是男性的问题。但民意调查发现，西方世界的年轻男性和年轻女性都深感不快乐，同时，他们似乎正在逐渐疏远，越来越多的人说他们“没有伴侣”。我写过足够多的关于孤独已成为一种流行病的文章，这让我对两性分歧感到不安；据估计，社会孤立感与吸烟一样致命。

To me, the fundamental problem is the struggle of men to adapt to a world in which brawn matters less than brains, education and emotional intelligence. That’s an important topic that we haven’t addressed enough, despite alarm bells like Richard Reeves’s 2022 book, “Of Boys and Men.”
在我看来，根本问题是男性在适应大脑、教育和情商比肌肉更重要的世界上困难重重。尽管已有人敲响了警钟（比如理查德·里夫斯已2022年出版的《男孩和男人》一书），但我们还没有对这个重要话题进行充分的讨论。

Reeves and others have proposed many ideas, including recruiting more male teachers, adding more recess and holding boys back so they start school later than girls. Vocational training programs like career academies and Per Scholas help, too.
里夫斯和其他人提出了许多想法，包括招募更多的男教师，增加更多的课间休息，让男孩比女孩晚上学等。职业学校和Per Scholas等职业培训项目也有帮助。

I worry that gender frictions may grow and add tension to modern life, leaving more people facing the world alone with no one to snuggle up to and provide long-term comfort. I fear that I’m a romantic in a world that is becoming less romantic.
我担心性别摩擦会加剧，给现代生活带来更多的紧张，让更多的人孤身面对世界，没有可依偎的人，没有提供长期慰藉的人。我担心我这个浪漫主义者面对的是一个越来越不浪漫的世界。
(本新闻网址：https://www.geilien.cn/news/2024/nysmarriage.html)

纪思道(Nicholas Kristof)2001起成为时报专栏作家，曾两次获得普利策奖。他最新出版的回忆录名为《追逐希望：一名记者的报道生涯》(“Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life.”)。

翻译：Cindy Hao