Text | Xu Qiaoli
Edit | Tao Ruo Valley
"It's a cool thing not to give birth"
"Do you want a sister?" The 50-year-old father threw this sentence to Huang Yiming.
It was an ordinary Saturday at the end of June last year, and the cicadas chirped outside the house and the heat drifted through the screens. In front of the TV, Papa Huang lay on the chaise longue, brushing the cute babies babbling in Douyin, showing a heartfelt smile. Huang Yiming sat on the sofa next to him, thinking that what he heard was a joke.
"How old are you?" Huang Yiming also replied to him like a joke. Huang Yiming was a junior at Zhejiang University of Technology, and when he came home during the summer vacation, he found that his father always brushed some cute baby videos. He thought that the short video made his father have this idea. Dad got older, suddenly started fitness exercise, and his personality became a little wordy. Why is it necessary to have one more sister that means a radical change in the family structure that has lasted for more than 20 years?
After his mother who worked overtime got off work, he learned from his mother that this thought, Dad chanted in front of his mother many times, "He's not joking." But Huang Yiming still felt too hasty.
With this in mind, a family meeting was held at home. "Who will be born and who will raise?" Huang Yiming thought more than his father, "One is whether your mother's age is suitable for childbirth, and the other is that you are still office workers, whether you have the energy to bring children, and you can't go to grandmother, grandparents to raise." Mother Huang expressed support. In the face of these questions, Father Huang, who was sitting across from them, did not say a word.
Huang Yiming felt that in the eyes of the previous generation, it was like melons ripening and naturally falling and grass naturally bearing seeds, "Having children seems to be such a casual thing." But he had a hard time understanding this view of fertility. For him, whether to give birth or not to give birth is a matter of repeated trade-off - "From the moment you want to have children, you have to bear a kind of responsibility, if you do not make all possible predictions of the future, simply do not get married, do not have children." ”
He was born in 2000, comics and novels grew up with him, he had a mobile phone in high school, just watch Weibo, shop for posts, and his favorite is the B station, and the users inside "the same frequency". As an only child, he was born in an enlightened environment, and in junior high and high school, his mother advised him to fall in love more, and he also tried several romances.
"I feel like I'm an independent and complete individual, with my own ideas, and not bound by my family." He has been working against his father since he was a child. When he was a child, his father would assign him Olympiad problems, and if he couldn't do it, he would be scolded or even beaten, and he didn't say a word. In junior high school, he hung out with friends and often argued with his controlling father. In college, he gave up his father's choice of pharmacy in favor of liberal arts.
Every time he was chased and beaten by a hanger and scolded "why are you so stupid", he would feel, "This kind of relationship between you and me is completely a burden of life." ”
One year during the Spring Festival, his grandfather earnestly told him to "let me hold my great-grandson early", and he coped with it, and when he walked with his parents in the evening, he suddenly asked them, "Can you accept that I don't get married or have children." He remembers that his parents' first reaction was "this is not normal", but remembering his rebellion, he changed his words and said "whatever you want".
Like Huang Yiming, his friends of the same age feel that childbirth is not necessary. Their perceptions reflect the fertility intentions of the new generation. In 2020, a survey by the Third Population and Development Forum showed that the average number of children intended to have after 00 as the main body of fertility was only 1.48, which was lower than that of the post-90s. A "2021 Guangzhou Fertility Intention Survey Report" shows that the fertility intention of women of childbearing age has a tendency to decrease with age, with the lowest post-00s. After 00, who gradually entered the age of marriage and childbearing, they began to choose to "voluntarily have fewer children, give up more children, or even not have children".
●A maternity brochure in a street in Hangzhou. Photo courtesy of the narrator
As a post-00s girl, Yiwu native Li Fangfei feels, "It's a cool thing not to give birth." ”
Now in her junior year, she is an eccentric girl with fine-rimmed glasses on her fleshy face, a black explosive head wig for 10 yuan, and a four-square photo in the circle of friends.
The idea of "not giving birth" originated in high school. At that time, the English teacher had studied abroad, and in his daily classes, he would emphasize that "girls must have financial ability, do not get used to relying on other people" and "academic vision is more secure than boyfriends". That was Li Fangfei's first contact with women's ideological trends and the concept of equal rights for men and women.
After going to college, she began to construct imaginations about marriage and family. The classmates and friends around them all experience the "bitterness" of love instead of "sweetness". Emotional control, anger for not returning messages, irresponsibility... After listening to more, she felt that falling in love was indeed a very energy-consuming thing.
Especially in the present day of getting more and more volumes. Take the example of studying abroad, "If you want to apply for a better school, you will be required to have an average score of 90 or more, and you will also be required to do scientific research projects, publish papers, have internship experience, competition experience, and preferably have a little academic identity." "There is no time to care about love, marriage, let alone childbearing.
In 2016, the year the comprehensive two-child policy was implemented, Li's mother removed the birth control ring that had remained in her stomach for more than ten years. Soon after, Li Fangfei had a younger brother who was 15 years younger.
The father is away all year round, and the mother alone takes on all the upbringing tasks - picking up the children after work, picking up the children to cook, eating and sending interest classes, doing housework, playing with them, tutoring homework, and putting them to sleep. "Once, she woke up in the middle of the night to find her brother with a high fever. She accompanied her mother to the hospital, and it was 4 a.m. Mom didn't sleep all night and still went to work on time the next day.
She witnessed this hardship and wondered even more, "What are the social factors behind the parents' dedication to their children and the contradiction or paradox that young people are not willing to give birth to now?" ”
Like her, Huang Yiming also tried to clarify how to understand his father's idea of having a second child? Out of their own confusion, the two joined the study of fertility intention surveys to try to find answers.
The ideals and realities of a generation
Yang Yan is the initiator of this research and a post-00 generation. In December 2021, she came across two papers by demographer Mu Guangzong and found that China's fertility rate has been declining, and the fertility rate of women of childbearing age has been declining, "really stepping into a society with a low birthrate." ”
One day, she saw a piece of news. At the wedding, the bride threw the bouquet high to the unmarried female guests, unexpectedly, everyone dodged, and no one was willing to take it, "Why is it that especially after 00, not giving birth has become a trend?" ”
Before that, she had never paid attention to fertility topics. Yang Yan is 22 years old, with long curly hair, in the eyes of her peers, responsible and hardworking, many people who join the fertility survey say it is out of trust in her. In the eyes of her parents, she is a good child, with excellent grades and sensibility. When asked how many children she plans to have in the future, she will say, "One man and one woman, make up a good word." "A gratifying answer.
Yang Yan's world is pure and perfect. She is the only child in the family and bears the expectation of her parents to hope for their daughter Jackie Chan. Because she is the youngest granddaughter, she has not experienced the patriarchal treatment of her grandparents.
But beneath the smooth façade there are still details that are "not right". In the distant era when the population was used as labor, a grandmother in a distant mountain village in Anhui gave birth to four boys. At the age of 6, she followed her parents to Hangzhou, and before buying a house in high school, the family of three rented a one-bedroom house, she slept in a small bed, and her parents slept in a big bed. The classmate came over and widened his eyes, "Why is your family like this?" ”
The forced space that does not belong to her is also Yang Yan's impression of Hangzhou. "When I was a child, I was quite rebellious, but after I arrived in Hangzhou, I became very well-behaved and curly." As she grew up, the other end of the scale was the biggest weight her parents could give. Whenever her parents teased whether she wanted a younger sibling, she would reply, "Can you afford it?" ”
It's also hard to walk into an intimate relationship. She does not reject love, but the quarrels and cold violence experienced by her friends around her will make her raise her standards repeatedly. "Marriage difficulties are a common phenomenon." She saw that Mu Guangzong mentioned in his paper, "Social transformation has led to a sharp increase in the cost of childbirth, and the actual role of raising children to prevent aging has been weakened, all of which have led to the emergence of 'fertility fear'." ”
The shell of the perfect world is shattered, the details of "something wrong" are all exposed, and she gets a glimpse of the more realistic face of society.
●Yang Yan is doing an interview. Photo courtesy of the narrator
Her mentor encouraged her to do a survey. The reason is very simple, for the needs of competitions and achievements, the college will give each student a chance to conduct scientific research. Before officially signing up for the scientific research project, Yang Yan found 6 graduate students and did preliminary interviews.
For the first time, she found that there were so many unmarried and non-married people around. Among the 6 senior sisters, 3 do not want to fall in love, and 1 can talk about it or not. 3 people don't want to get married, and the remaining 3 people only say that "I want to get married from the bottom of my heart and then get married" and "I can't get married if I don't meet the right one". When it comes to childbearing, it is said, "It is willing to marry, but not to have children." ”
She found a few more office workers. A senior at a foreign company in Shanghai told her, "People who come to Shanghai basically come to work hard, the social relationship chain is more fragile, and they will pay more attention to the development of personal careers." Most people choose to get married after they have a house. ”
There are also some people who are trapped in the difficult problem of birth and non-birth, knot and unknotted. She remembers that a senior studying anthropology in the UK is recognized as an "independent woman", with a toned body, traveling to London and Paris alone, and also expressing some feminist opinions in the circle of friends.
In the interview, she insisted on non-marriageism, arguing that "the socialization of reproductive behavior is a specific mechanism of sex-centered knowledge and power formed since the development of modern capitalism." But in the interview, she wrote, "I am still quite suitable for marriage, influenced by my mother, I am actually a person who is more willing to worry about the family, willing to do some manual work, and even ready to become a full-time wife." But on the other hand, there is always a desire to remain an independent woman, so she is immersed in contradictions and dilemmas. ”
This sense of contradiction is understood by Yang Yan as the "ideal and reality" of this generation: ideally, I want everything to be my own master, and have a firm conceptual choice; In reality, they are struggling with a compromise with tradition and family. And all this senior has done is escaping the part of her own tradition.
During that time, she was a little shaken, "Is this the general situation in society now?" "On the contrary, the self who wants to give birth has become a minority in society?
Trans-class yearning, coexist with son preference
In front of this group of young people, a corner of reality was lifted little by little. Since April 2022, 8 people have participated in the survey. They collected 1,500 questionnaires and interviewed more than 80 people to try to understand why young people don't have children. I also visited communities, streets, hospitals, and kindergartens in my hometown to understand how institutions face the reality of low fertility.
A 31-year-old man working in Hangzhou mentioned that in the face of the anxiety of buying a house, the child is like a speedster. At the time of the interview, his wife was nearly four months pregnant. Originally, the couple planned to get married, and both parties worked together, accumulated savings, and then found a good house. But the child can only wait 10 months, the house has become a matter to be solved in 10 months, and then training courses, tutoring classes, a series of expenses will also rush.
"Within a few months of the birth of a child, he had to take thinking classes and logic classes, tens of thousands of classes, and several years of training courses, which was very different from when he got married." The man said.
Having a child means being a "house slave" and "car slave" at the same time, and the most fundamental thing is "child slave". In the questionnaire, 812 data showed that nearly 70% of people regarded the economy, living conditions, and the cost of raising children as the first and second factors affecting fertility.
However, at the foot of the cost of parenting, questionnaires also reflect gender differences in childbearing. Women who are willing to marry after the age of 30 are 6 percentage points higher than men; In the face of childbirth, women's consideration of physical condition is also 20 percentage points higher than that of men.
"At the beginning, I envisioned that people were not willing to have children, and they should not be able to afford it financially." Yang Yan said, "But then I will gradually find that women are thinking about the issue of how to protect their rights and interests in the workplace, career, and family upbringing, while men are more concerned about the economic pressures of school district housing and childcare costs." ”
She came into contact with a mother of a second child and felt that marriage was very unsatisfactory to her expectations - in the upbringing of children, the husband did not share a share, and she had to work while raising the baby, "Tired of raising children, tired of educating children, and spending money to raise children." ”
After having children, many women choose family in the trade-off between work and family. A working woman working in an investment bank, after giving birth to her second child, quit her job to become a full-time mother. In the first four years, she was caught in the gap between quitting the workplace and "chicken dolls" all day, and her children's poor grades became her biggest difficulty, after which she began to turn to psychology, hoping that she could accept the reality that she was no longer successful.
Even when children grow up and women return to the workforce, they will find that the world has completely changed. A 36-year-old mother of a second child became a childcare worker in order to give birth to her second child. She thinks being a stay-at-home mom is boring and frustrating, and wants to go back to work. After the second was 7 years old, she became a kindergarten teacher, because educating children is the only thing she is good at at now. Her father was dissatisfied with this, "I finally graduated from college, but I went to be a kindergarten aunt, and my son-in-law (her husband) was in a suit." ”
Tired, derailed from society, revolving around children... None of the people who have experienced this want to have another one. A post-80s father concluded that the current fertility trend is "not too much in the fine". Taking himself as an example, the only child will hope that the child still has a companion, one can't do, two are just right, if you give birth to three children, "can't eat this life." He inherited the family business, money was not a problem, had the capital to have two children, but also gradually felt difficult, because to buy a school district house, despite dissatisfaction with Hangzhou's examination-oriented education, he moved from Shanghai to Hangzhou.
● Team group discussion. Photo courtesy of the narrator
First-tier cities are not suitable for raising children, let alone having children. Stress is on young people long before they give birth.
One of Yang Yan's senior sisters works as a media worker in Beijing, and photos with stars can often be seen in the circle of friends. She does not reject childbirth, but also loves the company of children, in her imagination, at least two children, the ideal childbearing age is 32 years old. But now, at the age of 33, she still feels unstable at work, anxious about her figure and appearance, and has repeatedly postponed childbirth. "Coming back after giving birth, maybe it's a problem to be in this position."
Unlike big cities, in county towns, childbearing itself becomes a hard work. At the age of 26, she was admitted to the civil service in Jinhua, and as soon as she graduated, she got married and had children, and she was very satisfied with her current situation. One interviewee mentioned the shock he felt in a remote area, "Having five or six children in my life, I am too envious, I am already very unhappy to have one myself, so many of them are still born." ”
Why do they have many children in those places, but in big cities, people are reluctant to give birth? After interviewing more than 20 people, Yang Yan tried to explain the social picture behind it——
"Big city people have a very high idea of going up across classes, marriage and childbearing become obstacles. In the town, family is the biggest career of his life. Behind fertility is the refraction of structural problems. Yang Yan said that horizontally, urban and rural flows have caused different views on fertility; Vertically, the transformation of fertility policy has also led to a conflict in intergenerational fertility views.
Li Fangfei's aunt is a good sample. She is in her 60s, is a rural hukou, and during the family planning period, she can give birth to "one and a half children" (rural farmers whose first child is a woman, and are allowed to have a second child after a gap of 4 to 5 years). After giving birth to a daughter, another one, still a daughter. She did not die, secretly pregnant with the third child, hid in the countryside, but was still caught by the superbirth team and sent to the hospital to be beaten.
Whether the child was male or female, the aunt did not know. But the idea of having a son became an unfinished obsession that haunted her for decades — until her two daughters were also of childbearing age.
A daughter gave birth to a son in her first child, "already giving birth to a son, then it is not mandatory for her to give birth, it is better to have another one." "A daughter gives birth to a daughter," then another son must be born. ”
This is where this daughter's conflict with her mother lies. Because she knows the dependence and companionship of her siblings, she does not reject the idea of a second child, but she resists her mother's obsession with boys, "I am a girl, and I gave birth to a girl, what's wrong?" ”
Li Fangfei had never thought before, "This is the 21st century, and there is still the problem of son preference." "The point is, it's also happening around you. After a year-long study, the team members felt that "fertility does not seem to point to personal problems, but to social, deeper problems." ”
See your neighborhood
When I first came into contact with this group of 00s, it was difficult for me to define it as a "normative" sociological study. It seems like a group of young people with some kind of innate impulse, spent a year, interviewed a lot of people around them, nothing more. No research questions, no theoretical dialogue.
But those interviewed senior sisters, fellow villagers, and aunts reminded me of the community security guards, vegetable market vendors, and courier brothers mentioned by Xiang Biao. These "most familiar strangers" around them seem to have brought this new generation living in the online world into contact with a new "neighborhood".
Childbearing is probably the thing people take for granted. But Li Fangfei tried to record the grass snake gray line around him.
It was this winter break, and her investigation was in the final stages. In a lively bazaar in the countryside, she looked up and saw a red sign, curly and dusty corners, embedded in the second floor of a dilapidated "small bungalow," that read: "Family planning, the husband's responsibility." "The money is paid by the township people's government.
The imprint of the era is engraved around everyone—the era represented by this plaque that created her aunt, even her daughter, and influenced generations of fertility. Li Fangfei photographed it.
●Photo courtesy of the narrator
After the investigation, Li Fangfei has a sharper sense of these. "To put it simply, what used to be an abstract problem in the mind has become a more concrete example."
Among the research team, there is a Wenzhou girl, Wang Ran, who also grew up under the slogan "Boys and girls are the same". These slogans have shaped her view of gender to some extent, "Where are girls not as good as boys?" There are many "siblings" around her, including herself. The reason given by parents is always, "a man and a woman, make up a good word".
In this survey, a female classmate confided in her that her brother's grades were not good, his parents would spend money to send him a good university, and his younger brother was comfortable accepting everything, and if he wanted to study abroad, he would feel indebted to his parents. When they were in school, they wouldn't talk about it, but this interview made her realize that those "sibling" combinations are the result of gender bias. Her mother's friend, who gave birth to a son, felt "mission accomplished." In contrast, the aunt who gave birth to a daughter, 47 years old, will be told by relatives to have another son.
In the past, she was a person who spent most of the day on the Internet, and many concepts and ideas were constructed through the Internet. The people and things around them are like a fog. "Our generation will be more panicked about childbirth and marriage." But this investigation, like throwing a buoy in the waterway of his hometown, made Wang Ran really think about this place - "Why is Wenzhou's patriarchal concept more serious than other places?" What is the reason for this idea? ”
This feeling of "touching" the real and perceptible world, for Yang Yan, is "theory shining into reality". She told me that after research, she got to know some second- and third-child families in her community. There is a close friend of parents, in 2008, they gave birth to a second child, a daughter, in 2012 paid a fine of 20,000, and gave birth to another son.
Mom told her that the family had always wanted a boy. She remembered the data she found when she searched for information, that three children are often the most gender-imbalanced children, and the seventh population census in 2020 showed that the sex ratio of three children was 132.9, while the internationally recognized and reasonable sex ratio was 103-107. She understood the choice of three children, but she was helpless to such a reality.
Li Fangfei is also broadening the breadth of "nearby". Communities, hospitals, kindergartens and even secondary schools tell them that behind the low fertility rate is a society that is struggling to debug. The doctors of the local women's and children's insurance hospitals in Wenzhou felt that compared with the comprehensive second child, after the opening of the third child, their work was idle. To increase competitiveness, these hospitals have replaced sofas, renovated wards and improved production processes. However, the trend of population decline cannot be avoided.
When she was tutoring her junior high school junior, Yang Yan knew that due to the lack of students, the next junior high school would cut 3 classes. In order to circulate the source of students, the local high school entrance examination is no longer divided into districts.
It's not just institutions that are making these efforts, but stay-at-home mothers in a community have set up a "stay-at-home mom reading club" to read each other's Tao Te Ching and pour out the bitterness of life. On the day of Yang Yan's interview, a mother in her 40s had just had a big fight with her husband over the education of her children. When sharing, she could not calm her mood and shed tears. Yang Yan found that the other mothers were still listening very carefully, patting her on the shoulder from time to time, and when she finished sharing, they gave her some ideas. In these more than ten full-time mothers, she felt the close and concrete communication between individuals.
Yang Yan felt that this feeling had even been absent for a long time. "Now, we are used to connecting with distant places through the Internet and social media, and the most basic emotional communication between people is often overlooked."
● Community-organized stay-at-home mom reading clubs. Photo courtesy of the narrator
Fight back after 00
A video camera was set up between Li Fangfei and her mother, and the interview began. Mom's eyes were a little dodgy, and Li Fangfei's heart was also quite delicate. It was very, very hot outside the house, and in the office, except for the conversation of two people, only the sound of the air conditioner remained.
In this interview, Li's mother was pulled to "make up the numbers". Since many samples are needed, Li Fangfei's first thought is to start from the side. In life, my mother does not suppress her emotions, and she calls her husband in a foreign country once a day, and she has to complain about her grievances and grievances. When she gave birth to Li Fangfei, she couldn't give birth smoothly, and then transferred to a cesarean section, thinking of that taste, and sometimes shedding tears.
When Li Fangfei was in high school, her mother gave her sex education classes, discussing love, sex, and childbirth with her mother, just like chatting about qi. She thought it was just a chat with a camera "supervising." The truth is similar to what I expected, but in the end, when asked what you think about the future fertility of your children, Li's mother replied: I hope that when you look for a husband in the future, you must find someone who can be around and can participate in the family's efforts, and don't look for someone like your father who travels every day and doesn't go home all year round.
For the first time, she caught a glimmer of her mother's regret. "It turns out that the mother is also aware of the inequality in childbirth." In previous exchanges, the two often quarreled over fertility views, Li Fangfei said that she would not have children and wanted to get married after the age of 30, and Li's mother would strongly oppose it. But after this interview, my mother will talk to people again, and will calmly say that my daughter wants to get married at 30 and have children at 35. In the "late marriage and late childbearing", the mother and daughter have a little tacit understanding.
Today, the cycle of fertility intention research has ended. Compared to a year ago, almost everyone feels that childbearing is a more cautious thing. "Very few people can decide that I don't want children, I will be alone for the rest of my life, and this also requires great courage and spiritual world. It's pretty cool to actually make that decision. ”
Over the past year, his father's phrase "do you want to have a sister" has always surrounded Huang Yiming's heart. What if I really have a sister? A family of four people, will it be more lively than it is now? When interviewing families with two and three children, he always couldn't stand this idea.
This Spring Festival, at a seemingly random time, he and his father revived the idea of having a sister. Dad explained that this idea came about to make up for his toughness in his son's education. Remembering his policy of visiting his hometown, he asked his father, "Did you know that there is parental leave for men?" When he researched, he found that although this parental leave existed, no one used it, or even heard of it.
"Childbearing is not a one-sided matter, it is a matter for both men and women." Huang Yiming said, "You can't think about things from your own perspective. ”
When he heard his father say, "I think too idealistically," he realized that his father finally stopped thinking that having children was a random thing.
However, there are parents who do not compromise. After sensing the specific and real fertility pressure, Yang Yan changed her "one man and one woman" to "only one child". Hearing this, Mother Yang was taken aback, "I see you guys are just too lazy." "For the first time, my daughter became unbehaved. Even one day, Yang's mother and daughter were drying clothes on the balcony, mentioning that Hangzhou would reward 20,000 yuan for three children, and her daughter suddenly shouted excitedly, "Having a child is a very complicated matter, it has become a custom at the cultural level, what can the bonus solve..."
Feeling annoyed, Mother Yang made up her mind and turned to leave: "I see that you are reading stupidly." ”
(At the request of the narrator, the characters in the text are pseudonyms)
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