Don't want to have a baby, just because of "lack of money"?

Instead of extending maternity leave and establishing parental leave, it is more important to investigate clearly: Why are today's young people reluctant to have children? What exactly are they worried about? What kind of support can external forces provide for families for the cost of parenting?

Photo/People's Vision

Wen | Reporter Jin Yilong of Caijing

Editor| Zhu Tao

On January 8, economist Ren Zeping posted on Weibo, "As soon as possible to establish a fertility encouragement fund, the central bank printed 2 trillion yuan more, with 10 years of society to give birth to 50 million more children, to solve the problem of population aging and low births, so that the future is more vibrant, and does not increase the burden of the people, enterprises and localities, we believe that this is the only way to be the most pragmatic and effective now." ”

This view has sparked great controversy and heated discussion, with both support and opposition.

But neither the supporters nor the opponents can deny the reality that a major reason why people are increasingly reluctant to have children comes from the pressure of birth and maintenance costs.

It's hard to say how much time is spent 24 hours a day on Casey's own.

After getting up at 7 a.m., she dressed her 1-year-old twin sons, watched 5-year-old Dabao go to kindergarten, and rushed to the company before 9 a.m. After arriving home from work, when her husband accompanies the twin sons to play games, she will spend 1-2 hours telling stories to Dabao, and after putting the children to sleep, it is already 10 o'clock at night, and she will deal with the rest of the day's work.

"There is no way, the road you choose yourself, you have to walk on your knees." 33-year-old Jiaxi, a working mother, lamented that after having three children, the family has to pay not only time, but also the cost of education and the hidden opportunity cost in the workplace, which is far more difficult than raising a child.

China's one-child policy has lasted for nearly 40 years, and now the story is going in a different direction. Following the "single two-child" and "comprehensive two-child" policies, in May 2021, China once again relaxed its fertility policy, allowing a couple to have three children. This policy change is based on reality: China's low birth rate and slowing population growth.

In order to enhance people's willingness to have children, various places have increased the welfare related to fertility. According to statistics, more than 20 provinces have carried out a new round of revision of the "Population and Family Planning Regulations" (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations"), and parental leave and paternity leave have been generally added in various localities, and maternity leave has been extended, and local direct rewards for "real money and silver". The effectiveness of the incentives remains to be verified. In fact, how to boost fertility is not a problem unique to China, and other countries in the world have experienced or are experiencing similar difficulties.

At present, the "post-80s" like Jiaxi are considered to be the group most affected by fertility policy. They belong to the first generation of only children in China, their parents are aging, and they are in the golden period of career development, under the multiple pressures of "old age" and "young dependent", "birth" and "rise", how should they choose with their families? When you are three children, who will share the cost of parenting?

Sweet burden

"Choose what you like, then you have to give all your enthusiasm, be sure to think clearly before making a decision, and be responsible for your own choices, the same is true for raising children." 」 This is the deepest feeling that Carriesy has felt since becoming a mother of three children.

Jiaxi, a native of Dalian, Liaoning Province, and her husband, both "only seedlings" in their respective families, married in 2015, and two years later, Dabao was born. Since then, the family has revolved around this one child, when the "comprehensive two-child" policy has been implemented, whether to have a second child, Jiaxi and her husband repeatedly weighed.

When Dabao reached the age of 3, Jiaxi began to realize: "If there is something to discuss in the family one day, and we as parents are not around, the child actually needs to have a person with the same root to make up his mind together, so as not to let him bear the pressure alone." This was Cathy's original idea for having a second child.

In February 2020, When Cassie was found to be pregnant with twins, she described the mood at the time: "Very desperate. After getting the results of the examination, the parents of both sides had a fierce argument, and the elders' consideration was: the first child is already a son, add another pair, can you afford to raise it?

Raising three children is a costly and little-rewarding "investment." The once popular phrase "The son is the Construction Bank" expresses to some extent people's concerns about the cost of parenting.

"Children who are accompanied by brothers and sisters grow up with a more sunny and healthy personality." Cauchy always thought so. She grew up envious of the lively scenes of multi-child families, but also enjoyed the sweetness of holding the child in her arms, with the support of her husband, in November 2020, Cacy gave birth to her second child. Since then, the young mom has truly experienced the sweetness of heaviness.

This is The second confinement of Jiaxi, the average price of the local monthly sister-in-law has risen to 12,000 yuan -18,000 yuan per month, if you choose the confinement club, it will take 20,000 yuan to start, some people think that confinement is not worth paying so much money, but Jiaxi firmly believes that let professional people do professional things, after all, the old man in the family has no experience in how to care for the two new lives that come at the same time, and she and her husband are "feeling the stones to cross the river". After weighing, she asked an acquaintance to introduce a sister-in-law and bid 15,000 yuan, which saved 1,000 yuan in intermediary fees.

"We have more than one child in our family, yes two, and the cost of raising is definitely significantly higher." Jiaxi remembers, "After weaning, Dabao has been eating 300 yuan a can of imported milk powder. But when it was the twins' turn, she was only willing to spend 200 yuan on a slightly inferior brand.

For ordinary families, the arrival of three children is not only a simple addition of the number of people, but also an unclear economic account. Jiaxi estimated that a baby would drink a can of milk powder a week, change 6 tablets from morning to night, double the amount of two babies, and spend at least 3,000 yuan per month on these two fixed consumables. After the twins were born, they also changed to a new house of 120 square meters, and now they have a loan of more than 10,000 yuan per month, which is not a small pressure for ordinary white-collar workers like Jiaxi.

It can't be open source, it can only work throttling. Jiaxi took out the clothes that Dabao wore during his infancy and reused them, and many of his relatives were boys, and he could also provide some of them. She also plans to keep Dabao's current toys and books, and wait for the twin brothers to grow up to "relay".

"After having three children, my husband and I have been more harsh on ourselves and now we have to spend more money on our children." Cassie said.

Two generations of bondage

In addition to the economic account, whether you are willing to have children depends on a key factor: whether the elderly in the family can help with children - a problem that has long plagued many dual-career families.

Liu Tian (pseudonym), a native of Hubei, got married and started a family in Wuhan in 2011, and now works in a college and university, eight to five, and she likes to record the happy moments of the family in the circle of friends. When her son was 6 years old, Liu Tian unexpectedly found herself pregnant again, at that time, her mother-in-law was in her early 60s, her body was still tough, and after comprehensive consideration, she had a second child. "The old man can also move the child, I think, then it is not bad to have another one, the two babies can still have a companion in the future."

In Liu Tian's narration, the reason why she still has the courage to give birth, a condition that cannot be ignored is that she and her husband are from multi-child families, and the pension pressure of the four elderly people in the future does not have to be all pressed on one family, which allows her to spend more energy on the daily care and education of her children.

At the 1990 CCTV New Year's Day gala, the sketch "SuperNatural Guerrillas" impressed a generation, and for a long time, the rural and floating population was considered to be the group that contributed the most to fertility. However, after years of studying marriage, family, and population issues, Xu Qi, an associate professor at the School of Sociology of Nanjing University, found that the situation has changed, compared with women working outside the system, young female workers in party and government organs, public institutions, schools and other systems are the main group of people who currently have two or three children.

"The working environment within the system is more friendly to women's fertility, and the unit will strictly implement the national maternity leave system, and women can better balance work and family after giving birth." In Xu Qi's observation, these women are generally middle-class in the city, have a stable life, have received higher education, have their own career aspirations, for them, children should not only be raised, but also raised well, and their material conditions and resources can also meet their expectations for children.

But after all, having one more child, invisible pressure will run through every detail of family life. Specific to the individual, Liu Tian obviously felt that the family's hands were more tense. She recalled that when there was only half a month left before giving birth, the mother-in-law was sick and hospitalized, the father-in-law was involved in a traffic accident when crossing the road, and the two old people were hospitalized for a month before and after, although in the end it was not a big problem, but it still made the whole family nervous, and the husband who worked in the field could not open his body, and he needed to take care of his son who was in kindergarten, and finally invited his sister to come to help, and liu tian's pressure was less.

Liu Tian, who works in the field of education, knows that the child's father is usually not around, and she needs to devote more energy to the child's education. When Liu Tian's second child was four or five months pregnant, her son still refused to sleep at 11 o'clock one night, crying and making noise to play with blocks, she did not say anything more, directly turned off the lights, at this time the son made a fuss towards her: "Mom, do you know? In fact, I don't like the children in your belly, I just want you to like me, and I only like myself. The next day, Liu Tian asked his son again what he really thought, but he changed his mouth, "I didn't say this." After the birth of the second child is a girl, the son also bought a gift for his sister, which makes Liu Tian very relieved, since then, she also knows more about taking care of the child's psychological needs, so that a bowl of water is flat.

The "Finance" reporter and Liu Tian's telephone interview was about 5:10 p.m. one day, but only chatted for more than 20 minutes, and a little girl's voice came from the earpiece - Liu Tian was leading her 3-year-old daughter to pick up her son from school, and her mother-in-law would cook dinner in this gap. The next night, waiting for Liu Tian, he tutored his son in his homework and taught his daughter to read...

"In addition to going to work and sleeping, my time is fragmented, especially when I have a second child, I basically have no space for myself, and the social interaction of my children is my social." Liu Tian quipped.

Although most of the energy is tied to the child, among the mothers of the second child, Liu Tian's pressure is light - the work in college has winter and summer vacations, almost synchronized with the vacation of the two children, and she will use this time to accompany extracurricular reading, or take the children to the city where her husband works. With the help of her mother-in-law, in general, Liu Tian can do both work and family.

This is a major annoyance faced by many families working outside the system. Liu Tian's friend Li Bin (pseudonym) is a second-child father, he and his wife are working in the enterprise, if busy, they have to work overtime until eight or nine o'clock at night, or even longer. The wife's work time is a little earlier, but the company is far away and may not be able to arrive before the end of the 6 o'clock care of the big child elementary school. The only person at home is Li Bin's mother, and after the old man picks up the second child from the kindergarten, he will start to prepare dinner and have no time to pick up the eldest child. In the absence of surplus manpower, the eldest child can only follow the parents on the way home in the vast army of pick-up babies. In the winter and summer vacations, Li Bin and his wife had no time to take care of their children, so they had to return to their rural hometown for "free range".

"After the founding of New China until the early days of reform and opening up, China's urban society is organized through units, in terms of infant care, many factories, state-owned enterprises, public institutions prevail in self-run nurseries and kindergartens, there are special personnel responsible for supervising 0-3-year-old preschool children, services may not be complete, but breastfeeding and basic care are not a problem, now it is different, after the disintegration of the unit system, state-owned enterprises have been reformed, the original self-run nurseries, kindergartens were cut off on a large scale, We have not established an effective socialized infant and young child care system, resulting in the responsibility and cost of care for preschoolers now returning to the family. Xu Qi said.

The old man went to the city to take the baby, which became a lot of choices for families like Liu Tian and Li Bin to share the cost of raising. According to data released by the National Health Commission, in 2015, there were nearly 18 million "elderly people who moved with them" in China, accounting for 7.2% of the country's 247 million floating population, of which 43% came to take care of the younger generations.

At the same time, when the extended family tilts human and capital to the new family, the generational gap in the concept of child-rearing is playing out in small families. Li Bin often told his mother to give her children less sugar and snacks, but he found that his mother listened to it at that time, but the daily routine was still the same, "The old people always feel that how to make the child happy, how to get it, try to save their minds." "After returning to his hometown, the children are even more addicted to television, the conditions in their hometown are limited, and the interest class of the eldest child can only be interrupted."

Li Bin understood that his mother was getting old day by day, and sooner or later she would have to take care of her brother's children living in her hometown county. Li Bin is mentally prepared, and when the time comes, he will have to find a competent nanny - this is the actual situation after the "dual-career" family has two or three children, relying only on self-regulation in the limited space within the family.

Parenting anxiety

Li Bin is a year older than his 38-year-old wife, and he initially hesitated about "not having a second child" and "when to give birth", because he was worried that he was too old to catch up with his children's future education consumption. But the wife likes the children in her heart, and he has repeatedly weighed the family's financial strength, and raising two children at this stage does not seem to be impossible. But in just a few years, Li Bin's original educational anxiety shone into reality.

Li Bin's second child is less than 4 years old, he recently found a kindergarten, the annual tuition fee of 15,000 yuan, plus more than 5,000 yuan of food expenses. "The boss was in kindergarten at that time, and the tuition fee was only a little more than 10,000 a year, and there was only a gap of five or six years in between, and the price increased, which was just a very ordinary kindergarten." Li Bin sighed.

In fact, Li Bin's Wuhan, the gap between kindergarten fees is huge, he went to the kindergarten in the next community to inquire, the annual tuition fee is as high as 20,000 yuan, Liu Tian also heard, "Some babies go to kindergarten for a month tuition of 5,000 yuan." "It is difficult to enter the public office, and many families can only invest double the money to go private and buy a peace of mind." At this time, convenience is the first consideration.

The two children's education expenses, family living expenses, mortgages, etc., spend at least 25,000 yuan per month - under the premise of not pursuing school district housing, Li Bin and his wife's income is just balanced. "Now you can't have any accidents and mistakes at home, otherwise you really don't know what to do." Li Bin said that in this new first-tier city, he does not dare to pursue a slightly quality of life.

Despite the pressure, Li Bin still insisted on enrolling the eldest child in two interest classes, one is badminton, every Friday class, the other is dance, every Saturday class for 3 hours, a year about seven or eight thousand yuan. "It's all children's favorite, and dance has been learned from kindergarten to the present." Li Bin said.

According to the "2019 New Middle-Class Household Consumption and Financial Management Report" jointly released by Tencent Wealth Management and the 21st Century Economic Research Institute, in 2019, in terms of the expenditure structure of China's new middle class, children's education is one of the three areas with the largest expenditure, 55% of the education expenditure of children of new middle-class families accounts for between 10% and 30% of total expenditure, and 9.9% of the education expenditure of children of families accounts for more than 50% of total expenditure. The higher the family's annual income, the greater the investment in the education of their children.

"Some families let their children go to various tutoring classes and interest classes on Sunday, which cost more than 100,000 yuan a year, from cultural classes to music and dancing, these children get up very early and go out, and they are outside all day, which was very common before the double subtraction, and now it is better." This is what a second-born mother in Shanghai observed.

For the pressure of parenting, Xu Qi believes that part of the reason is that Chinese generally have high expectations for the next generation. He said: "Under the influence of Confucian culture, East Asian countries always hope that there will be more than one generation, everyone emphasizes a competition in everything, no one wants their children to lose at the starting line, this parenting concept not only causes psychological pressure on children, but also brings economic burdens to parents, in the past few decades, parents have spent too much time and too much money on their children, which is simply a bottomless investment." ”

At this point, Gassy felt the same way. She would receive calls from various children's educational institutions every three to five years, and when Dabao was 2 years old, she enrolled in a preschool education class for the first time, originally wanting to let the children learn to make friends and establish a sense of order, but she found that after walking through it, it was just like that. "Some of the little life skills taught, such as how to use scissors, are actually natural for children to reach a certain age."

In her opinion, the boy's physiology is relatively late, in fact, there is no need to spend money on it too early, but the preschool education institutions constantly recommend evaluations, render various anxieties, so that Jiaxi is inevitably wrapped up in it.

Between "birth" and "ascension"

Many times, "earning money" and "raising a family" are closely linked, but after becoming a mother of three children, Jiaxi had to think about the balance between the two. "Having children and taking care of children is a great obstacle to women's career development, and they can only self-regulate." Cassie sighed.

After four months of maternity leave, in March 2021, Jiaxi went back to work. Her profession is headhunter, daily communication with candidates for interviews, busy regardless of time and place, and as a partner of the company, she also has some client relationships to maintain, because many businesses have moved online, and she is more acutely aware of this job market change than the average job seeker. During that time, a pair of twins had not yet been weaned, and for the sake of their children's rations, she became a "nursing mother", squeezing time in the cracks of work every day, hiding in the company's conference room to store milk, and taking it home at night. This state of affairs continues until the child is 1 year old.

"Caijing" reporter combed and found that in the new round of regulation revision, most provinces will adjust the number of maternity leave (including maternity leave) days to 128 days to 188 days, Hebei, Zhejiang, Inner Mongolia need to be treated differently, the birth leave of the second child, the third child is longer than the first child. In addition, many places stipulate that before the child reaches the age of three, the husband and wife can enjoy 5 or 10 days of parental leave per year, and the parental leave in Chongqing can be taken for up to one year.

Xu Qi is also concerned about these policies, but he worries that it may have a reverse effect. "According to the relevant regulations, the wage treatment during the maternity leave can not be less, after the extension, the enterprise will have labor cost considerations, will it be more afraid to hire women? Although some places have introduced male paternity leave and parental leave, but compared with women's maternity leave, the number of days is not long, if men are not willing to use this holiday, and there is no one in the family to take care of children, then for a family, either ask for a sister-in-law, or the woman personally brings, which is easy to lead to female employment difficulties, making people more afraid to have children. ”

But then again, even if the maternity leave is extended, how many people are really willing to take it? The sales employee of an Internet factory revealed: "Our company stipulates 180 days of maternity leave and 1 month of caesarean section, but most people will end the holiday early, especially the manager level with the team, afraid of being replaced, will return to work in advance." This is the invisible opportunity cost in the workplace.

In 2017, Lin Yanling, a professor at the China Institute of Labor Relations, presided over the ministry of human resources and social security's topic "The Impact of Female Employees' Holiday Settings on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests and a Comparison of International Experience". In this study, the research team found that extending maternity leave not only fails to achieve a win-win situation for labor administration, but also increases the labor cost of enterprises, and enterprises seem to have various ways to digest this cost.

"The wage structure of some of the surveyed enterprises is generally composed of basic wages, performance, and bonuses, and when employees take maternity incentive leave, they are only given basic wages, which accounts for 20% to 30% of all salaries. Lin Yanling mentioned that she and the research group have interviewed some salesmen, because the main salary of this group is commission, and if they stop working due to childbirth, they can't even afford to buy their children's milk powder.

A survey of 7,642 people in 25 provinces released by the School of Sociology of Huazhong University of Science and Technology showed that the marginal opportunity cost of having a second child was higher for families compared to the one-child birth behavior. Having one child reduces a wife's chances of employment by about 6. 6%, total household labor market income fell by about 5. 6%; Continuing to have a second child, the wife's chances of employment again dropped by about 9. 3%, total household labor market income fell again by about 7. 1%。

Lin Yanling said that the employment rate of Chinese women is almost the highest in the world, but now some women will withdraw from the labor market after giving birth, the reasons here are many, she once contacted a woman, the other party originally had a full-time job, but after childbirth to take care of children, and finally chose to sell maternal and infant products online, and this phenomenon is very common in fourth-tier cities.

The impact of childbearing on employment status and income levels is not limited to women. For more "post-80s" urban middle class, having one more child means that both husband and wife must "step on the tightrope" between careers and families, "either you enter, or I retreat.".

Li Bin is currently engaged in IT work in a private enterprise. Unlike traditional manufacturing, this industry pursues innovation and has a simple and free atmosphere. He is very skilled, but found that many times all rely on experience to make decisions, after having a second child, there is also a career crisis, "all kinds of new technologies update iteration is too fast, you have to admit that your learning ability is worse than that of young people." "If you don't transition to a management position, you may have limited room for development."

Unlike Li Bin's career trajectory, his wife entered a state-owned enterprise as soon as she graduated from college, and it has been 15 years since she and her husband are the heads of their respective departments. But Li Bin feels that under the downward pressure of the economy, the prospects of the state-owned enterprises where his wife works are better, but the interpersonal relationship is more complicated, suffering from the lack of rising resources, and now that the children are still young, there must be someone to maintain the status quo.

Many foreign studies believe that mothers will spend their main energy on taking care of their children after childbirth, which will reduce their labor productivity, which will lead to a decline in wage income, and the father's experience is the opposite, not only rarely encounter employer discrimination, but will be considered to have a lot of excellent qualities after having children, get better wages.

Based on the relevant tracking data of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) from 1989 to 2015, Xu Qi found in the study that the positive impact of childbirth on Men's wage income in China gradually decreased, and became less significant after 2000, and showed a certain degree of negative impact after 2009.

"The disintegration of the unit system and the shift to refinement of child rearing are two important factors that have led to the gradual disappearance of the father's salary premium. Against the backdrop of the return of child-rearing responsibilities to the family and the rising economic and time costs of parenting, men are no longer able to fully stay out of the way and have to share a portion of the caregiving, making it difficult for them to enjoy the fertility dividends as they have in the past. Xu Qi wrote in the study.

Who will share the pressure of nurturing?

How to relieve parenting stress? What incentives can boost reproductive confidence? Countries around the world have given different answers to these questions.

Ma Chunhua, director of the Family and Gender Research Office at the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out in a previous paper that in traditional societies, children are private goods, and the cost of parenting is also regarded as the responsibility of families and parents. But with the advent of industrialization and urbanization, more and more young couples began to refuse to bear the responsibility of "old-age care", this problem has gradually attracted the attention of many European and American countries, since the fruits of child rearing are shared by the whole society, then the cost of child rearing should also be shared by the whole society; since parental labor is a public service, the salary for childcare should also be provided by the state; by the whole society to take care of children, the future children may take care of the people who need to be taken care of by the whole society.

As a high-welfare state, Sweden's experience is that legislation comes first. As early as the mid-1970s, Sweden became the first country in the world to replace maternity leave for mothers with parental leave, stipulating that parents share 6 months of parental leave together. Since then, countries such as Norway, Denmark and Finland have followed Sweden's parental leave system.

However, when the policy was first introduced, less than 1% of the "wet dads" who actually took parental leave were not the norm for women to take care of children. In 1995, the Swedish government introduced a new policy that stipulated that 30 of the 480 days of parental leave could not be transferred to the woman, and by 2016, the share of parental leave for "daddy" was further increased to 90 days, that is, the mother could only take 390 days of parental leave at best. When parents use parental leave together, they also receive a "gender equality bonus" of 5 euros per day.

In this way, the father can also be as involved in the care of the newborn as the mother, will not be absent because of the need to work, and when both men and women need to take care of the newborn, the employer will not be biased towards men when hiring new employees. "It can be seen that these initiatives in Sweden are aimed at encouraging husbands and wives to share parental leave more equally." Xu Qi analyzed.

An important guarantee for the 480 days of parental leave is that the State pays for a "parental allowance" for the parents of a newborn, of which 390 days represent 80 to 90 per cent of the original salary income, and the remaining 90 days are paid at a fixed rate of 20 euros per day. Nowadays, walking in Swedish public places, "daddies" who take care of infants and young children while drinking coffee can be seen everywhere.

In addition, Sweden provides high-quality pre-school education for all children aged 1-6 years, the only condition is that at least one of the parents (or single parents) is working, or that unemployed parents are participating in re-employment training.

The changes brought about by this series of policies are obvious: in 2013, the employment rate of mothers aged 15-64 in Sweden was as high as 83.1%, compared with the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries average of only 66.8% in the same period.

It should be noted that in the 1970s, the fertility rate in Western Europe and Northern Europe took the lead in falling below the replacement level, and in the following decades, Sweden's fertility rate showed "W-type" fluctuations, falling to a minimum of 1.5 in 1998, stimulated by increasing fertility policies, Sweden's fertility rate rebounded twice, of which in 2010 it rose to 1.98, close to the replacement level of 2.1, although it has declined in recent years, but the total fertility rate remains at about 1.8.

For these changes, Xu Qi believes that Sweden does not only encourage childbearing, but advocates gender equality, encourages women to enter the labor market, and guides men to participate in childcare through the way the state shares the responsibility for childcare. When women see that they have not given up their careers because of their families, but have also created wealth and obtained good career development prospects, at this time, the family will not worry about the parenting pressure of their children, and the willingness to have children will be improved.

"In traditional society, there is an old saying in China, male and female, in this division of labor model, most families are women taking care of children and families, not only In China, but also in other countries in the world, women generally undertake child support and care work without compensation, and now, Sweden has changed the concept of childcare through a generation, boosting the fertility rate, which is a revelation for our East Asian region."

In East Asia, Japan and South Korea were the first countries to suffer a decline in fertility and face a crisis of "low birthrate". Judging from the practice of the two countries, the introduction of supporting fertility support measures is the basic solution to boost the fertility rate, but the effect is not ideal.

Since 2006, the South Korean government has promulgated more than 100 birth incentive policies, including the construction of free nurseries, maternity allowances for female employees, shortening working hours, subsidizing enterprises to grant paid "paternity leave" to fathers, increasing the welfare of women among dual-career workers, increasing the supply of public rental housing, halving the purchase tax for newlyweds who buy their first home, and even arranging collective blind dates.

However, data released by the Korea Statistics Agency shows that in 2020, south Korea's population naturally decreased by 33,000 people, and for the first time, the number of deaths was greater than the number of births, and the total fertility rate was 0.84, which has been below 1 for three consecutive years. Years ago, David Coleman, a professor of demography at Oxford University, even predicted that South Korea would be the first country to disappear from the face of the earth due to a depopulation.

In order to promote the problem of low birthrate, Japan encourages more men to take parental leave. According to media reports, the Japanese government has previously proposed that it plans to increase the leave rate of male parental leave to 13% by 2020 and further increase to 30% by 2025. However, statistics show that as of 2018, the proportion of Japanese men taking parental leave is only 6.16%, which is still far from the Japanese government's goal.

According to the latest estimates of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, as of December 1, 2021, the total population of Japan is about 125 million. Japan's new birth population in 2020 was about 840,000, the lowest since statistics began in 1899. According to the latest forecast of the Japanese government, the number of new births in Japan in the whole of 2021 is likely to be 805,000, which is lower than in 2020.

Shen Jie, a professor at the Department of Social Welfare of Japan Women's University, wrote that Japanese scholars analyzed that the dual responsibilities and double evaluation standards borne by Japanese women are the main reasons why women are prohibitive of childbearing. The first is that the concept and social norm that it is the responsibility of women to be responsible for housework and childcare are still deeply rooted, and employed women must devote themselves to work as much as men, and they must also undertake housework and childcare, making it difficult to balance the dual roles of parenting and career. Second, the Japanese labor market lacks flexibility, and women who marry and have children interrupt their careers find it difficult to obtain better treatment and positions when they re-enter the labor market. In the workplace, pregnancy, childbearing and parenting of women are often a negative evaluation, often affecting women's career advancement or making them face the crisis of job loss.

How can we get out of the "ultra-low fertility" dilemma? Shen Jie mentioned a point of view in the article: all sectors of Japanese society unanimously agree that promoting the "work-parenting balance" and expanding public services for childcare is the only way out of the predicament. This policy respects the individual subjectivity of each individual in the choice of "work-childcare balance", regardless of gender, and provides institutional arrangements for the provision of life security and public services for the individual's choice and achievement of his or her goals.

Shen Jie quoted relevant scholars as pointing out that South Korea had implemented a mild birth control policy from 1960 to 1980, and in a short period of time, it transitioned from birth control policy to incentive birth policy, encountered various problems in policy operation, so in policy transformation, it lost the best opportunity to adjust with the "work-parenting balance" policy. China's current fertility decline challenge bears much in common with the impact of low births faced by Japan and South Korea, and the lessons of Japan and South Korea may be a cautionary tale.

In response to the situation in China, Ma Chunhua suggested that the state should share the direct proportion of the direct cost of child rearing, and some researchers have calculated that the minimum proportion should not be less than 25% of the direct cost of child rearing, or based on intergenerational justice is not less than 40% of the government's burden of pension premiums.

"A lot of things can't be copied directly. Rather than extending maternity leave and establishing parental leave, we should first investigate clearly: Why are today's young people reluctant to have children? What exactly are they worried about? What kind of support can external forces provide for families for the cost of parenting? This is a social issue worth studying and thinking about. Xu Qi said.