In the context of the birth rate falling below the warning line, the era of encouraging fertility and advocating "two children and three children" has come. However, "no one with a baby" is a threshold in front of childbearing. At this year's national "two sessions", the care services for young infants and young children and the reduction of family parenting costs have become hot spots in people's livelihood, and the re-development of young childcare has become the trend of the times.
Text | lot
| Tianyue
01
A small family of post-90s with a baby's dilemma
The morning rush hour of Beijing Subway Line 5 is comparable to the legendary Tokyo Subway. From Tiantongyuan, the "largest community in Asia", to the Guomao office building, Liu Yun was swept into the carriage by a crowd of people carrying a lunch box, and no one noticed that she was a seven-month pregnant woman.
After the Spring Festival, Liu Yun, who was becoming more and more inconvenient to move, searched for almost all the childcare institutions in Tiantongyuan, and none of them accepted children aged 0-2. These institutions have been devastated by the pandemic, and are in turmoil, hardship and even on the verge of closure.
Liu Yun and her husband consulted more than 40 kindergartens in one go. Without exception, only children over 3 years old are accepted. Several high-end international kindergartens accept a small number of 2-year-old children, and the childcare fee is as low as 8,000 or 9,000 per month, and as much as 200,000 a year. At the same time, the starting salary of the sister-in-law and nanny is 7000+, and it is required to live in a separate room. The white-collar couple sighed: Nanny Yuejie is an invisible rich man, and we are an invisible poor person.
Who brings the child after maternity leave? If you have been a stay-at-home mother for two or three years, will you still be eligible to return to the workplace at the age of 35? Looking for a babysitter or sending your kids back home? "Thinking about this, my head is about to explode!" Liu Yun, now 31, is anxious.
After Liu Yun became pregnant, her mother-in-law came to Beijing twice by high-speed rail from the village at the foot of Mount Taishan in Shandong Province, always carrying a large basket of free-range eggs and a few chickens and ducks that were slaughtered. The mother-in-law comforted them in a dialect that Liu Yun could hardly understand, and when she was young, she focused on work, and the child was born and sent back to her hometown, and they were old and brought.
Liu Yun's eyes appeared with two heartfelt pictures: his child's dark skin and red face, flower cotton jacket open crotch pants, full of dialect, biting a bite of Shandong pancake roll scallions, bar click small mouth; and her own childhood, her parents went south to work, she and her grandmother stayed in the desolate town in the northwest. Lack of money and love, and unfamiliarity with her parents, are the most bitter memories of her childhood.
Therefore, she gritted her teeth and made a choice: she would rather quit her job than let her children repeat the mistakes of the past and become a new generation of "left-behind children". Liu Yun's husband quoted a sentence from the hit drama "The World of Man": "After being bitter, I can only chew and swallow by myself."
Compared with Liu Yun, Wang Qian, a post-90s mother whose child has just turned 1, has slowly become accustomed to facing her inner struggle peacefully. She resigned from the Shenzhen Internet factory and went north, leaving her child in the eighteenth-line small town of her hometown, and the child became a left-behind child.........
Looking at the friend's advice on the mobile phone: "Children need to be accompanied by their parents before they are 3 years old", Wang Qian helplessly smiled bitterly: If there is a way, who wants to separate flesh and bones? Life and career dilemma! The family is faced with three mountains of "mortgage, car loan, and gold devouring beast", and she does not have the courage to lose her job.
At the end of the maternity leave, in order to facilitate breastfeeding, Wang Qian took out all her monthly income to rent a house near the "goose factory". With the financial support of her in-laws, she also hired a nanny and carefully kept her job.
When her husband was sent to Beijing, she resigned from Tencent's headquarters to join an entrepreneurial team in Beijing in order to have the energy to accompany her children in the future. However, the housing prices, cost of living, and work rhythm of the imperial capital are even less likely to take into account the raising of children and careers.
Wang Qian found that Beijing could not find formal childcare at all. Assuming there was a small "childcare center" near the company, she wouldn't dare send her children. The shadow of child abuse in institutions such as "red, yellow and blue" is still there, and there are many bankruptcies, running away, and frequent "thunderstorms"... In Wang Qian's view, the reputation of "young childcare" collapsed, and there was no sense of security to speak of.
Helplessly, the parents took the child back to their hometown.
Wang Qian knows that children are at least safe around their parents. Even if she doesn't see her for a few days, the child is estranged from her; even if the mother and daughter are separated, the child has a fever; even if the child is used to shouting "mother" at the video camera.
In the days of the North Drift, Wang Qian tried to appease herself and accept the fact that the child had become a left-behind child. She went to work every day to bring food, save money for vacations, just to go back to see her children more.
Wang Qian said that she was most fortunate to have the understanding of her in-laws and was supported spiritually and financially. Even if she is thousands of miles away, her in-laws respect her parenting philosophy. However, the first time the child speaks, the first time he learns to walk, all kinds of naughty and cute moments... She missed it after all.
▲The old man with the baby
02
The mansion "Black Nursery" treasures the deep feelings of the neighborhood's suffering
"The TV series 'Thirty Only' distorts and uglys the mothers in the high-end community to the point of drunken fans, which is not true!" Taiwanese mother Zhuo Yan said. She ended the North Drift to accompany her three children to the United States to study for many years, and her home in the high-end community of Beijing's second ring road left too many memories for the post-70s mother. The failed entrepreneurial experience in "family childcare" has won her a neighborhood love that she has cherished for a lifetime.
"I used to think I had the ability to help working moms settle their worries!" At that time, Zhuo Yan and her husband who came to the mainland to do business settled in Beijing from Taiwan with their three children, and bought a house in an upscale community within the second ring road. The new home is adjacent to financial street, Xinhua News Agency, top three hospitals and other large institutions. A large number of outstanding talents in the financial, media, and medical fields also live here.
Zhuo Yan's family quickly integrated into life in Beijing. Her family has become a "base" for community mothers to exchange parenting experiences and turnover of maternal and infant products. As her interaction with her mothers deepened, she witnessed the wanderings and struggles of these wealthy families raising babies — frequently changing nannies and old people drifting north with their babies, although temporarily relieving the pressure of these workplace couples, at the same time hurting and tearing apart their small families.
A mother complained to Zhuo Yan, the child was born only one year ago, the family has changed no less than 15 nannies, what happened in the middle completely subverted her life experience - the nanny yelled at the child, reprimanded the mother-in-law, hid the dirty clothes to the horns and did not wash, fed the child with lard stir-fried bibimbap, lost control of emotions and cried to herself, suddenly fainted when working to send 120 first aid, her necklace and watch disappeared and flew...
One day, Zhuo Yan went to her house to see the child, and the 1-year-old boy sat alone on the living room floor and cried. Toys, food scraps, clothes, garbage, the huge luxury living room has nowhere to go. One nanny cooks in the kitchen, another nanny cleans the toilet, and grandma runs back and forth between the kitchen toilets. The little couple is not even willing to go home, relying on overtime to escape the days of chicken flying and dog jumping.
What makes Zhuo Yan most distressed is her mother Xiao Jia, who works in the mainstream news media. Xiao Jia repeatedly cried bitterly while pouring out her encounters to Zhuo Yan late at night. Xiao Jia's child was born less than half a year ago, her husband traveled frequently, and she ended her maternity leave to work at the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and the Beijing Olympic Games. "The earth does not explode, the news does not take a holiday" describes the state of media work at that time.
Xiao Jia's mother-in-law came to Beijing to help, but brought her new husband who had recently remarried to her house. Xiao Jia left work late at night, and the strange man drank beer with his bare arms and watched the TV series "Country Love" with his mother-in-law and sang: "Who is your bride, who is your groom". And the child is lying alone in the corner of the sofa...
Xiao Jia reminded her mother-in-law that it is not convenient to leave strange men at home, especially in the summer, wearing less clothes, not to mention that the child's father is not at home during this time. However, the mother-in-law's rhetorical question completely angered Xiao Jia: What? Afraid that he will do something to you and insult you?
Xiao Jia went to great lengths to find a nanny with a good reputation, so that her mother-in-law and her newlywed husband could return to their hometown. The day after the nanny arrived at work, Xiao Jia received an urgent business trip. When she got home, only a gaunt nanny was left coaxing the child.
The nanny told her that the mother-in-law took the old man to travel to other places after she arrived at the post, did not hand over the precautions for taking the baby and housework, and even forgot to leave the door key, but locked the door before leaving. The nanny could not go out, trapped at home, and could only guard the refrigerator to eat the few remaining cucumbers and "old dry mother" mixed with rice, boil some white porridge for the child, and barely carry it for a week.
"I see that the child is small and no one has brought Keling, nor do I dare to call and disturb the two of you on business, so I can only wait for you to come back and then resign." I don't have a dish to eat for a week, what if my child runs out of milk powder? The babysitter said with a full of grievances.
Zhuo Yan witnessed the unfortunate encounters of several neighbors: an enthusiastic Beijing aunt who came from the suburbs to help her daughter with her children died of a heart attack in her daughter's home; a mother who resigned with a baby was diagnosed with cancer; a baby with a baby caused a war between her mother-in-law's family, a small beijing local couple, the child was less than two years old, divorced...
Every time she hears this, Zhuo Yan thinks that if there is a trusted childcare center in the community, perhaps the pressure between husband and wife and family conflicts caused by the baby can be avoided a lot. After several thoughts, Zhuo Yan boldly proposed: instead of spending a lot of money to hire a reliable nanny, unable to find formal childcare, and the elderly can not count on it, it is better to put the child in my home for 24 hours!
In everyone's eyes, Zhuo Yan's family has all the conditions for running a "family nursery": Taiwanese mothers have a novel parenting concept, they raise three children by themselves, a large room with a small garden, toys, books, and pianos are readily available. The grandmother who lives with me is a retired doctor, and the nanny and part-time workers in the family are also carefully selected and reliable.
Xiao Jia's children first became "new members" of Zhuo Yan's family, opening a good story that "distant relatives are not as good as close neighbors". The female doctor next door to Zhuo Yan also received her help. Every time the female doctor received an urgent surgical task, she temporarily sent the child to Zhuo Yan's house for temporary residence.
Zhuo Yan has gradually become a solid backing for working mothers in the community. Sisters can send their children to her home for care, whether they work overtime, travel on business trips, if the nanny is out of gear, or if the child is left from school and no one is cooking. A group of children eat, live and play together, the older child helps the baby feed the bottle, the sister teaches the younger brother to sing, just like the big family with many children in the past, such a picture is scarce and warm in the metropolis of Beijing. In this regard, Zhuo Yan came up with the idea of starting a family childcare, "This is a good opportunity for full-time mothers to start a business!" ”
Unexpectedly, in the process of preparation, one "century problem" followed. Registered capital, office space, employees, each of which can not meet the standard. Private houses are not allowed to do childcare, and legal representatives must have a Beijing household registration...
She turned to the Internet for help but found that several foreign mothers in the embassy district and Korean mothers in the Wangjing area also had the feelings and ability to start community care, but they all encountered the same problems and finally gave up.
Zhuo Yan even wanted to pay to join the chain of early education institutions in the mall and play "edge ball" operation. However, the franchise project cannot run a park in the community. After her entrepreneurial dream was shattered, she took her three children to the United States to study, and finally ended up shaking.
03
The community's 11-year "net red" childcare center is no return
"Little baby, I use the rainbow to agree with you, the sun will smile after the wind and rain..." Lady, a post-80s education entrepreneur and senior preschool tutor, every time she passes by the "Happy Home" community near Chongwenmen in Beijing, this song "Rainbow's Engagement" will always travel through time and space, haunting her ears. She looked like she was more than a decade ago—she sang the song and danced with a group of toddlers.
In 2006, Lady and her "YMCA International Youth Association" founded the Happy Home "American Switzerland" childcare center, rooted in the community clubhouse, and worked for 11 years.
YMCA has nearly 100 years of community parking history around the world, with childcare centers in Hong Kong, China and around the world. This "small foreign enterprise" airborne community has attracted a number of outstanding young kindergarten teachers majoring in art, music, English and early childhood health care to join.
"We accurately hit the pain points of local families!" Lady recalled that at the beginning of the establishment of the childcare center, it was the peak of the fertility of the "Golden Pig Baby" and the "Olympic Baby". The childcare needs of children under 3 years of age are extremely urgent. Although there are many large public and private kindergartens in the surrounding area, according to the policy at that time, the age of admission was strictly limited to 3 years old or older.
One- and two-year-olds also need early education and care, and two- to three-year-olds also need to over-adjust before entering kindergarten. "We've relaxed the enrollment age to one and a half years!" Lady said excitedly.
The 3-year-old girl talked about the picture book and coaxed the one-and-a-half-year-old little brother to sleep; the 4-year-old "big brother" held the two-year-old little sister for a group photo. The eldest children gathered around the teacher's piano and sang "Bugs Fly". The song spread to the "doll's house" in the corner, and the children staged the "afternoon tea" with the rag dolls. Every year, children welcome children, parent volunteers and foreign teachers from YMCA from all over the world. The concept, environment, teachers of international kindergartens, the price of ordinary private kindergartens, children 'mixed age' play, warmth and joy. This is probably an important reason why the "American Switzerland" childcare center still occupies the memories of local post-70s and post-80s mothers.
▲Lady Director with YMCA "Beautiful Switzerland"
Children at the childcare center perform the program
▲Foreign teacher volunteers from overseas YMCA to "America and Switzerland"
Childcare Centre services
epilogue
In the 1970s and 1980s, female employees had only 56 days of maternity leave. However, at that time, it was an era of "all-round childcare" and "childcare without dead ends". Whether it is a factory, a school, a hospital, or a bureau or a bureau, there are basically staff nurseries and kindergartens. In addition, there are nurseries in the streets and communities. At the same time, the grandmothers, grandmothers, and old ladies next door who have no jobs are very keen to help people with children full-time or part-time.
▲Nursery school in the 1970s and 1980s
Female employees who spend 56 days of maternity leave can send their children to the nursery of the unit. Nurseries accept children between 56 days and 3 years old, and children from 3 to 7 years old enter kindergarten and preschool.
The expenses of the nursery are paid by the unit, and the childcare workers are also employees of the enterprise. There are only a few dollars a month to pay, and everyone can afford it. The staff and workers of some units work three shifts 24 hours a day. Nurseries and kindergartens also cooperate with the work rhythm of employees, providing night care and long-term care accommodation to ensure that the families of employees have no worries.
In 1980, according to incomplete statistics from 22 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, the number of urban and rural infants and young children enrolled in nursery was more than 34 million, and the childcare rate reached 28.2%. In 1988, the enrolment rate of urban children in childcare rose to 38.9 per cent. This growth trend peaked in the mid-1990s, when in 1995 there were nearly 270,000 nurseries of all types at all levels in the country.
However, after 1995, a large number of nurseries and kindergartens were separated from enterprises, gradually marketized and industrialized, and the number of private kindergartens soared. However, young childcare is affected by policies and profits, and is gradually marginalized and in a precipice period. A variety of social phenomena have emerged: a large number of elderly people have become "Ben Xiao clan" influx into big cities with babies; a large number of professional women have resigned to become full-time mothers; young couples have declined their willingness to have children...
At this year's national "two sessions", the care services for young infants and young children and the reduction of family parenting costs have become hot spots in people's livelihood, and the re-development of young childcare has become the trend of the times.
* All respondents in this article are pseudonyms
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