【Reporter's Observation】
Guangming Daily reporter Yang Sa
Xiao Jing is 30 years old, has just been married for a year, and his work and life are in Shanghai. Before marriage, he bought a car, did not buy a house, the couple did not have a pregnancy plan for the time being, "now I really haven't made up my mind, I always feel that I am not ready in all aspects." Xiao Jing said that the couple's careers are in a period of struggle, and once they have a child, "to completely contribute a whole labor force", one of the fathers or mothers must put all their energy on the children. He believes that "at present, his own small family cannot afford to have only one labor force working."
"Raising a baby is Fei Ma." Although this sentence is a joke, it also reflects the high requirements of parenting on parents' energy, physical strength and financial resources. Nowadays, parenting is becoming more and more refined, and parents are deeply involved in all aspects of their children's food, clothing, housing, learning, social interaction, etc., which is greatly different from the previous free-range style. This has made many young people discouraged from childbearing. High-intensity work and high-intensity nurturing, becoming a fish and a bear's paw, can not have both.
According to a survey conducted by iResearch consulting in March this year, the era of extensive parenting has become a thing of the past, and the new generation of parents is more advocating high-quality baby raising and scientific baby raising, relying on professions, books, and courses to accompany the baby to grow while they continue to learn to obtain personal growth and parenting skills; when the concept of parenting is divergent, the new generation of parents will choose to believe in the scientific advice of experts, no longer traditional experience. And most parents have begun to learn related parenting knowledge before the birth of their children, and 41% of parents have begun to reserve knowledge during pregnancy.
Surveys show that young mothers and babies after the 90s account for 56% of the total maternal and infant population. Post-90s young parents have higher consumption willingness and spending power in childcare investment, and they are more daring to spend on the purchase of maternal and infant products for their children.
It is worth noting that small-town parents also maintain high time and high financial investment in the process of raising their babies. Third- and fourth-tier cities Bao Mom is more hands-on with the baby, in terms of baby product costs, small town mother and baby people also pursue quality, in the willingness to buy products to invest in the willingness not to lose the first- and second-tier city consumers.
The birth of the second child will correspondingly increase the time pressure and economic pressure of parents, bringing a greater sense of "personal anxiety"; although there is a parenting experience of the first child, parents raising the second child will still have the "parenting anxiety" caused by the poor care of the child, as well as the "choice anxiety" that they do not know how to choose due to the product update iteration.
These findings can be seen in the topics discussed by mothers in the parenting group. From test scores, art education, reading training and other learning problems, to every slight change in the child's body, myopia, height and other developmental problems, from today's social problems such as not talking in school, usually playing with children more and more, to the recent emotional intelligence training such as how to be emotional, treating people and things, everything is a factor of concern for mothers, and anxiety is revealed between their words.
Such parenting anxieties have a more or less impact on young people's willingness to have children. In June this year, the relevant person in charge of the National Health Commission gave a set of data: at present, the people's willingness to have children has decreased. At present, the average number of children intended to have after 90 in China is only 1.66, which is 10% lower than that of the post-80s. According to the 2019 National Population and Family Dynamics Monitoring Survey, less than half of women who intend to have two or more children have had another child. Related economic and social policies such as education, housing, and employment have become the key to influencing family fertility decisions. After the implementation of the comprehensive two-child policy, a considerable proportion of families dare not have children, and the top three reasons are due to the heavy economic burden, the lack of care for infants and young children, and the difficulty of women to balance the relationship between family and work. The survey shows that because of the "heavy economic burden" of 75.1%, "no one with children" accounted for 51.3%, female workers after childbirth wages fell by 34.3%, of which more than half of the decline reached 42.9%.
The economic burden is a problem that cannot be avoided after childbirth. Children are often referred to as "four-legged gold devourers" because they spend a lot of money on their children. In the view of the parent Milu (pseudonym), the cost of the child is abundant and frugal, she calculated an account, and the average cost of their family to the child is about 10,000 to 20,000 yuan a year, and the maximum is not more than 40,000 yuan. Such expenses, she said, are "offbeat." She revealed that the middle-class family she knows spends hundreds of thousands of yuan on their children every year, and even "does not cap it".
"I can't afford to have children and I can't afford to raise them," said Min Min, who was born in 1990, "spending money is on the one hand, on the other hand, raising children is facing great uncertainty, and I don't know if I can raise them well." "Min Min has seen relatives around her become parents, and all the topics revolve around children, reading a lot of parenting books, and practicing the same." Looks tired, heart tired. I haven't lived to understand it myself, can I raise a child to understand? Min Min said.
Despite seemingly spending less money, Milu never relaxed her child's education. "Practice-summary-reflection" is her long-standing baby-raising methodology, which is committed to raising children clearly.
"To lay a good foundation" is Milu's belief, but it is difficult to define whether Milu's behavior is, as she herself said, "cultivating the child's internal drive", or deeply involved in the child's growth. She said that her child can memorize the new concept of English before the age of 10, and she is also very good at Olympiad learning. What she used to like to do was to go to various bookstores to find books for children to read and learn. As for how to "cultivate the child's internal drive", Milu is always reluctant to mention it. To outsiders, she was successful in raising children, but she said, "I love raising children." ”
For the question of whether to have a second child, Milu said that it was not because she was afraid of not raising well, but because she did not have time to consider.
In contrast, Yu Chun (pseudonym) is different. Yu Chun graduated from a "double first-class" college, and when she chose to be a stay-at-home mother, many people felt unworthy for her. "I wish I had more time with my children, but I didn't sacrifice for my children." Now, Yu Chun has always stressed this point, she believes that being a full-time mother is "the best of both worlds", which can accompany the child and "create a better growth environment" for the child.
But at first, Yu Chun still felt that he was somewhat "aggrieved and sacrificed". Influenced by many parenting bloggers, when her son was a child, she was keen to make him a variety of exquisite complementary foods, "After the child is born, she wants to give him the best, snacks to eat the best, buy a lot of toys, eat a set of bowls of complementary foods, I hope he can eat happily." This made Yu Chun all fall into the situation of how to treat his son, "Every day to stage a good mother plot, sacrificing my own comfort and needs, over time it is not a good thing." Later, I realized even more that this was a kind of self-touching, which did not really help. Yu Chun said.
Coming out of making complementary foods, the son is slightly older, and Yu Chun "indulges in enlightenment for children, listens to English and grinds his ears, accumulates the tone of English, and feels the sense of rhythm." After listening to it for more than a year, she found that her son was no longer willing to listen to audio, which was very repulsive. She also tried to pick it up again and again, but she never succeeded and could only give up.
Since then, Yu Chun has begun to reflect on whether the high-intensity parenting premised on self-sacrifice and full devotion to himself really makes sense. "When parents are feeling the stones to cross the river, will it be better?" Wouldn't that be better? Always in a state of uncertainty. For example, children like to write, originally can write 10 words a day, but parents always think about whether they can write more, write 20 words, can't help but intervene. ”
"In the eyes of some parents, the child is not an independent individual, they think that the child is their product, is attached to them, they can make decisions for the future of the child, so they should plan for the child, rather than respect the child's right to choose independently." Sometimes I wonder, children who don't plan their parents' future, the future of the child must be very bad? In Yu Chun's view, only by finding a balance between parenting and self can we jump out of anxiety and uneasiness. Parenting cannot be at the expense of the self, and only by finding the self can we have "leisure and patience" to arrange future birth plans.
Guangming Daily (14th edition, October 12, 2021)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily