The question of money is always central. Pension is also part of family income, more a source, family affairs, there is more room for discussion, on the contrary, without this support, such as duckweed, can only float with the trajectory of children.
Text | Li Qingyang Shi Zhenfang
Edit | Golden Turn
Operations | chestnut
A call for help
Before sending the "help" text message to his mother Xu Li, Wang Zhaoyu had been hesitating for two months.
She is 36 years old, lives in Beijing and has a young daughter. Like many typical middle-aged couples, she and her husband are dual-career workers and rely more on the help of both parents to watch the children. Her mother-in-law has been in Beijing for nearly two years, and she can see that people are getting more and more tired, and Wang Zhaoyu also needs a respite, and she desperately longs for the arrival of her mother Xu Li.
Xu Li, 55 years old this year, works in the canteen of an enterprise in a small town, responsible for the employees' three meals a day. The rhythm of each day is intense, starting from five o'clock in the morning to six or seven o'clock in the evening to end the lights. The meals of more than a dozen people are large, the pots and pans are all oversized, and sometimes "I don't even have the strength to pick up a large spatula and stir-fry in the pot."
But Xu Li is still satisfied with this. The food she cooks is often praised by employees, which makes her feel needed and valued. But more importantly, this is a "regular job", although it is a non-staff member of the enterprise, but after signing a contract, it will strictly pay medical and pension insurance, and after continuing to work until the age of 60, you can also receive a good pension.
Wang Zhaoyu understands that for a mother, having a pension money after retirement is a way not to rely on her children, and a guarantee for her later life; But once her mother came to Beijing, it meant that she had to quit her job, lose her income, and cut off her pension insurance contributions.
In the end, on a night of conflict with his mother-in-law, Wang Zhaoyu was still ruthless and sent the WeChat message to Xu Li: "Can you help me?" I'll pay you the pension insurance. ”
Xu Li lives in a small city, normal payment of pension insurance, if she retires on time, her pension is about 1,000 yuan per month, and there may be growth later, but for many elderly people living in rural areas, there are only two or three hundred yuan per month of new agricultural insurance (new rural social pension insurance), there is no pension, so it is very important to have a job, a job that can give income and provide more future pension security.
The first time Ruge found her mother secretly out to work with the three siblings behind her back was during a video chat when she saw her wearing an orange reflective vest.
In the face of Ruge's angry questioning, her mother replied in a deliberately relaxed tone: "I came to work as a cleaner, very easily, and I made money in a walk." ”
This easy job for my mother is to sweep the floor on the highway leading from the village entrance to the town, spending several hours a day, holding a broom and garbage basket, cleaning up the road again, and earning 1,000 yuan a month.
Ruge was particularly angry, "How dangerous is it for cars to come and go on the highway?" She deliberately said something ugly, and calculated an account with her mother: "If something happens to you, now earn 1,000 yuan, maybe I will treat you for 2,000 yuan, and post 1,000 yuan, which is cost-effective?" The mother on the other end was silent.
When he was a child, Ruge's father failed in the coal business, and the family came from Henan to Guangdong to make a living. In order to raise her three children, her mother worked in a factory during the day, worked overtime until 10 p.m., and got up again at three or four o'clock in the morning to set up a breakfast stall, sleeping only three hours a day. Breakfast was over, and my mother would push a tricycle and pick up discarded bottles on the side of the road.
In Ruge's memory, her mother was "like an iron man", she suffered everything, and when she was most bitter, the family couldn't even make up the money to buy bags of salt. After work, Ruge and her brother each give their parents 10,000 or 20,000 a year, and this money covers the cost of living in the countryside is not a problem. She opposed her mother going out to work and hoped that she would spend her old age in peace, but her mother always had her own considerations for her future retirement life.
▲ Figure / Visual China
There is no confidence
In the end, Xu Li did not hesitate and rushed to Beijing from her hometown. But in the two months since she arrived, her daughter Wang Zhaoyu discovered a strange phenomenon: Xu Li almost never went out with the old ladies in the same community.
The mother and daughter live in a sub-new community outside the North Fifth Ring Road, and the old ladies around them basically come from their hometown to help their children bring their grandchildren, and the children go to the community kindergarten at 7 a.m. and do not end until 5 p.m. Some old ladies will meet in groups, change into uniform clothes, wear scarves of the same color, go to different attractions every week, take photos and have dinners, and post them in the circle of friends or on TikTok.
There was never Xu Li in those photos.
Wang Zhaoyu once asked her, why not go together? Her mother's answer surprised her a little: it cost money. Buy clothes, eat, tickets, this day's itinerary, may have to spend hundreds of yuan, mother is a little reluctant. Wang Zhaoyu was a little sad, she really didn't think about this. She comforted her mother, "I will come out with the money, you can rest assured to play", but her mother then shook her head: "Those old ladies who go out to play have enough pensions." ”
Most of the old ladies mentioned by Xu Li are from cities in the northeast, such as Harbin and Shenyang, where the industrialization process began earlier and to a higher degree, they worked in some factories and mines and enterprises when they were young, and the pension insurance paid sufficiently, and now they are retired, and they can get a pension of four or five thousand yuan a month.
At that moment, Wang Zhaoyu suddenly discovered a fact that made her sad: whether there is a pension or not is becoming a "standard" for dividing the elderly group.
In the community, the elderly who do not have a pension generally spend time in the public activity space, fighting landlords, playing mahjong, "not spending a penny, it is to entertain themselves", and there are also security guards in the community, picking up waste, sharpening scissors, to earn money to subsidize the family; And the elderly with pensions, the activities are much richer, travel, go to the university for the elderly, "spend money is very confident" - the mother does not have this confidence.
In Wang Zhaoyu's memory, her mother Xu Li has had a bumpy life in this life, opened a small shop selling curtains, worked various odd jobs, and never had a formal job, until she entered this enterprise, life can be regarded as settled. In his later years, he had to give up his pension because of his daughter's needs, thinking of this, Wang Zhaoyu felt very guilty in his heart: "I made her life unconfident." ”
This phenomenon is not uncommon. Also in Shenzhen, 30-year-old Yahui is also a dual-income family that needs the help of the elderly with their children. Yahui always listened to her mother-in-law who did not have a pension and said that she is also helping her children with grandchildren, parents with pensions in the community, if they feel that their health is not good, they can use their pension to hire a nanny to help their children's small family. "They don't need to reach out to the child, they don't need to look at the child's face, and there will be a lot less friction."
To some extent, the presence or absence of a pension can even change the power structure of a family.
Yahui's friend Peng Guang told her his own story: Peng Guang is the eldest in the family, his father is nearly 70 years old, no longer able to make money, his mother was a sister-in-law in Guangzhou before, after the age increased, she was also dismissed by the housekeeping company and lost her job. Peng Guang's father was a hot-tempered, fierce and disregarding family person when he was young, and now he is counting on his son's old age, "like a changed personality", submissive, flattering, and changing his tricks every day to cook and cook soup for his son. Peng Guang never imagined, "Dad will be like this one day."
The question of money is always central. Pension is also part of family income, more a source, family affairs, there is more room for discussion, on the contrary, less this support, such as duckweed with water, floating with the trajectory of children.
▲ Figure / Visual China
No stopping
Zhao Yaohui, a professor at the National Institute of Development at Peking University, who has been leading the "China Health and Pension Tracking Survey" since 2007, pointed out that after the implementation of the new rural insurance in 2009, the vast majority of rural hukou people entered the social security system, and began to receive pensions after the age of 60, but the amount of this money is too small, depending on the money paid in the early stage, the minimum is about 100 yuan per month, and the highest can get 800 to 1300 yuan, it is difficult to really survive.
The project's survey data also show that in order to make up for the lack of pensions, the employment rate of rural registered elderly people over 70 years old still exceeds 50%. In order to live, they are very active in part-time work, "as long as they can work", like footless birds, there is no resting day.
Such is the case with Ruge's mother. Persuaded by her daughter, she quit her job sweeping on the highway, but soon found a job in a toy factory.
Her village is dotted with manufacturing factories, from toys to clothing to pickles, and products are exported overseas, backed by cheap local rural labor. When Ruge returned home for the New Year, her mother rode an electric car to take her to the streets, and dozens of factories crouched on both sides of the road like chess boxes, reminding her of the industrial agglomeration areas she saw in Guangdong when she was a child, the buildings that looked like two-story buildings were actually several meters high, and her mother spent many years in those factories.
In 2008, when the global financial crisis hit many factories in Guangdong closed, my parents moved from Guangdong to Beijing to make a living. At that time, Ruge went to school in her hometown, and her mother worked as a childcare sister-in-law, nanny, and supermarket picker in Beijing. In 2018, my father was diagnosed with uremia and had to live on dialysis three times a week, so my parents had to move back to my hometown.
The mother took care of her father while bringing her young grandson. When the grandson went to kindergarten, the mother began to look for work. The toy factory is paid by the hour, standing and working, 8 hours a day, always supervised, slow work will be criticized, is a double consumption of physical and mental strength. Ruge was angry with her mother again, "I knew that I was going to stand and work, and I was stunned and insisted that she resign."
For going out to work, the mother always has various reasons - one moment is "I'm dying at home", one is "the foreman calls me to say to rush the goods, I will help", and the other is "it's good to sit and chat with the little sister there, it doesn't matter if you do more or less, don't seek to earn money, ask for fun". The number of times he went out, the little nephew would even "complain" to Ruge: "Aunt, grandma went out to work again." ”
In the past six months, my mother went to a garment factory with relatively free working hours, paid by the piece, and was responsible for the counting and buttoning of clothes. Her mother told Ruge that the co-workers around her were sisters of similar age, and when they were free, they would take a small video together to relax. But in fact, the work in the factory is over, and my mother has to do laundry and cook when she comes home. After a long period of work, she suffered from tenosynovitis, and a large bag bulged out of her wrist, "and she always rubbed it with her other hand from time to time to feel better."
▲ The garment factory where Ruge's mother works. Figure / Courtesy of respondents
The situation faced by Lin Lin's father is also very similar. He is 62 years old, an awkward age for a job search.
In the past two years, my father was in charge of guarding the machinery in a mine in Inner Mongolia, eating and wrapping, and then frequent inspections from above, and the mine began to lay off people, and my father, who was over 60 years old, was the first to be laid off. After returning to rural Hebei, for his father, finding a job became the most important thing on his mind.
In order to have a job, my father asked people to inquire in every possible way, and finally heard that there was a garbage sorting job near Xisanqi, Beijing, and immediately packed up three packages of luggage and rushed over. The working environment is not good at all, living in the basement, the canteen is built near the garbage station, the summer is scorching, and you have to endure high temperatures every day to sort garbage, and you have to take photos and upload them, which is a cumbersome process. On the second day of work, a sudden intestinal obstruction sent my father to the hospital.
My father spent three days in the emergency ward. He had ulcers on the corners of his mouth and lay on a hospital bed, often facing the wall without saying a word. My mother called, and my father's first words were, "I've let you down again." When the illness broke out, his father did not dare to tell Lin Lin directly, and even the matter of coming to Beijing was only told to his daughter after the work was confirmed. He was careful not to cause trouble, but the disease easily shattered the situation he had worked so hard to maintain. "He felt that he delayed me to work and cost me money, which was very faceless and guilty." Lin Lin understood her father's feelings.
In the past, my father was the breadwinner of the family and worked in the mines for more than a decade to support the family. For as long as Lin Lin can remember, her father had an income every month, and after being laid off, he returned home to do odd jobs, planting peanuts, picking garbage, picking cherries, and was idle for a moment - until he was 60 years old.
Work is getting harder and harder to find, at the beginning of the year, my father even went to dye his hair on purpose, in order to appear spirited and young, but age stuck him like a ruler, and he returned discouraged after being rejected for odd jobs, muttering: "I'm not too old at 62, why don't you want me?" ”
Wang Zhaoyu knew that her mother was facing the same fact, once Xu Li left her previous post, it would be difficult to go back. Age is like a sieve, and as the numbers go up, there are fewer and fewer jobs available. Xu Li used to work as a tally clerk in a supermarket, which is much more tiring than the work in the canteen, but she is also worried that in the future, "she may not even be able to find this kind of work."
In many stories, parents struggle from the countryside to the city when they are young, children take root in the city, and the parents' generation of old-age is supported by both pensions and children. If you look back to the countryside, in many places, parents do not have pensions, and may not even have this support.
Wang Zhongxing, 53, grew up in rural Hunan and left his hometown at the age of 20 to work everywhere. In the early years, he learned sewage treatment technology in Jiangsu, and with this ability, he chased a better salary, went to Shandong, ran through Henan, and finally settled in Hebei, staying for seventeen years. The work takes place in the countryside, far from the city, with only a few buses a day to the city, eight hours a day, and only four days off a month. He almost never spends on entertainment, with a salary of 9,000 yuan a month and nearly 100,000 yuan a year, while supporting his parents in the countryside and providing for his three children's education.
9,000 yuan, does not include pension insurance, "where there are these things, you can do it if you want, and someone will do it." ”
The concept of pensions doesn't mean much to him. He knows that if he pays pension insurance, he can be guaranteed when he is old, but he has insufficient spare energy, "Now three children, can't take care of life, how can I have this spare money?" ”
In Zhao Yaohui's research, this is a special group of people. Due to the regional segmentation of the social security system, there is insufficient motivation for highly mobile people to pay social insurance. And 28% of the salary is handed over, of which 20% goes to the overall planning system and 8% goes to the personal account, when migrant workers choose to change places, which means that most of the societies that have been handed over are reserved for the local area. Instead of paying social security, they prefer to give it all to themselves. This further leads to the fact that when these people are old, they still cannot have a pension insurance system that can be backed up.
▲ Japan's population is aging, and elderly workers can be seen everywhere on the streets of Tokyo. Photo / Visual China
Helping
The meager pension and the need to save for old age are the reasons why many elderly parents insist on working a job. But there is a more invisible reason, which is to help the child's small family.
Ruge and her two older brothers are carrying heavy mortgages, and the mother always hopes that she can do something for her children.
Many times, Ruge feels that the job her parents are looking for is not cost-effective, but for the sake of their children, they can always endure it. When her mother was in the garment factory, Ruge couldn't help but count while buying her painkillers: "The body has suffered, and it is five or six hundred yuan to buy a few boxes of painkillers casually, exhausting, why bother?" But her mother's answer made her red eyes: "I just want to reduce your pressure, you see that you will get married soon, I also want to save some money to buy you some furniture, buy you a few quilts." ”
Wang Zhaoyu is not opposed to her parents going out to work, in her view, parents need to "feel that they are valuable." She would prefer her parents to do "less tiring work" than not work, but most of the time, this is more of a luxury wish.
Wang's father, 58, got a job as a driver at a pharmaceutical factory in his hometown last year, picking up and dropping off employees. This job is open all year round, leaving early and returning late, and meals are irregular. The father suffers from high blood lipids, and he needs to pay attention to diet and life rules. This time her mother came to Beijing, Wang Zhaoyu thought that her father could come together, but her father felt that he could save a little more money while he could still work.
His father's hukou is in the countryside, and he also pays new rural insurance, and when he is 60 years old, he can receive a pension of several hundred yuan every month. Wang Zhaoyu also has a brother seven years younger than her, who is married and has no children. She understood that her father's reluctance to give up his work now was partly for her brother. "When my brother gives birth to a child, do you have to subsidize some? If the ability of the small family is not enough, should it also help in the future life? "It's not the end for children to start a family, they always think further.
Caring for oneself and nurturing one's children is a double yoke that is carried on them.
Every time Wang Zhaoyu thinks that her mother Xu Li has quit her job now and come to Beijing to help her take her children, when her brother has a child, she will be like a migratory bird, and then go to her brother's city to help him bring up the child, which is particularly uncomfortable. "Mothers do not have much autonomy in this matter, and can only migrate with the situation of their children and change all kinds of things."
Lin Lin also has a younger brother, who bought a house and has a loan of 5.6 million yuan. The younger brother's job is to rent out, and the income is not high, and his parents are always worried about helping his younger brother fill some loans. In the eyes of Lin Lin's parents, it is humiliating to let their children spend money on themselves, and it is natural to spend money on their children.
From seeing a doctor to a meal, Lin Lin's parents were unwilling to let her and her brother pay. On the day Lin Lin took her father to the emergency room, the doctor told another patient that "the deposit will be 30,000 yuan first", and his father thought that it was for him, "frightened him, and said on the spot that we would not watch it". And whenever he was sick, one of the words that my father often hung on his lips was, "It's too expensive, don't treat me." ”
Unlike other parents who can only do basic manual labor, Yahui's father is 55 years old and runs a small manufacturing company with about 10 people in Shenzhen, and her mother helps in the company, and the two earn about 20,000 yuan a month. Starting your own business as a small boss, time is relatively free, and there is no risk of "being laid off when you are old", but the pressure on Yahui's parents is still not small - they want to buy a house for Yahui's brother in Shenzhen.
Yahui's younger brother, who is five years younger than her, has just graduated and started a job, and her parents' attention is more focused on her younger brother than her older sister, who has already started a family. However, it is really difficult to have a monthly salary of 20,000 yuan to cover a down payment in Shenzhen, but if you smash all your savings into the house, plus there is no sufficient pension to support it, then "reluctant to eat, reluctant to wear", the quality of life will be greatly reduced.
My father sometimes joked that if the family was not in Shenzhen, they could retire early and return to the countryside to live an idyllic life. My father planned to work until he was at least 60 and then think about retirement.
▲ Figure / Visual China
Really old
Her father's work could not continue, but Lin Lin was a little lucky. After leaving the hospital, she accompanied her father back to the dormitory to pack her bags. In the basement of the old community, many small rooms are crowded together, like a winding maze, and behind each small room, there are couples who work together, or old people who live alone like their fathers. The room was humid, there were no windows, the air was dull, Lin Lin felt depressed, after packing her luggage, she quickly ran out and took a breath of fresh air.
Lin Lin knew that if she hadn't been sick, her father would have lived here and continued to work. This time he was sick, his father suffered a big blow, he never admitted that he was old, but this time he said: "If you don't accept old age, you can't be stubborn anymore." ”
There was Lin Lin who did not realize that his father was aging. In her mind, she had never seen her father sigh. "When he used to be in a particularly good state, nothing was in his sight." At the age of 26, Lin Lin broke up with her boyfriend at the time, this age, in the rural area where her parents lived, is a pressure, her mother is worried, but her father told her: "There must be a road before the car reaches the mountain, don't worry about things that are too far, just focus on the present." ”
After the father fell ill, the daughter and the identity of the father fell off, this time sent to the hospital, the father needed an enema, Lin Lin was called in by the nurse, "there was no time to think about anything in her head", mechanically helped her father take off his pants and wash his body. In hindsight, she herself was surprised: "I never thought I could do these things before." ”
The father is sick, so that the matter of aging is really in front of two generations, and the frustration of aging and the pressure of old-age are approaching not only parents, but also children.
This year's New Year, Yahui and her husband returned to their hometown in Tianjin, she chatted with her husband's cousin, her cousin's parents are teachers in the system, talking about the elderly, the cousin seemed relieved: "Fortunately, parents have jobs, pension does not need to cost money, and will definitely subsidize our small family." ”
In contrast, Yahui and her husband are much more difficult. They are all working hard in enterprises, and the four elderly people in the family have no pension. She described herself as "a man with no way back", fearing that the sword of Damocles would always hang over her head, and "if the old people had enough pensions, I might be more resilient to risks".
She made an analogy, the current family structure is a small boat, no wind and no waves, can drive smoothly, but once the wind and waves appear, there is no sail such as a pension to resist, there is a possibility of capsizing.
And she herself is worried about future pensions. Compared with the system, Yahui's company paid relatively little five insurances and one housing fund, and her friends pulled her to buy commercial insurance to protect her old age life, but Yahui felt confused and did not act. "Now many young people are unwilling to pay five insurances and one housing fund, and I don't know how much money I can get in the end after paying for decades in the case of inflation?"
Wang Zhaoyu is different, she still bought a commercial pension insurance for herself, and when she is 55 years old, she can receive a pension of about 2,000 yuan a month. The money, she decided to leave to her mother, Xu Li, went directly to her account every month — as compensation for "depriving" her of her pension.
▲ June 2023, Beijing, an old man sitting in a park. Photo / Visual China
(At the request of interviewees, except for Zhao Yaohui, the characters in the article are pseudonyms)
The article is original by Daily People, and infringement must be investigated.