2024 Homecoming Observation | Do college students need to charge for making up classes for their relatives and children when they go home for the Chinese New Year?

Research and Evaluation Center for Rural Revitalization in the Yellow River Basin, Northwest A & F University

Not long after returning home from the holiday, my parents mentioned that a relative was interested in asking me to make up for their daughter's lessons. I have no impression of this relative. We had a disagreement on the issue of remuneration: parents thought that helping acquaintances was a matter of affection, and if the other party wanted to, they would naturally express it, but if they took the initiative to ask for money, it would seem to be unusual, but I thought that being a tutor requires time and energy, and it is natural to receive corresponding remuneration, otherwise I will not suffer too much. Should I charge for making up lessons for my relatives? I found that many of my classmates who came home from vacation faced this problem. On a social platform, I searched for "relatives and acquaintances to make up classes" as the keyword, and there were complaints in related posts, unanimously persuading everyone not to make up classes for relatives and acquaintances' children, and the rhetoric was very intense: "College students at home give make-up classes to relatives and children, so that the already indifferent family affection comes to naught!", "Don't make up lessons for relatives, teach lessons in person!", "Kneel and beg college students on vacation not to be tutors for the children of acquaintances, thankless......" , The comment area under the related post also caused a resonance, most of them are college students tutoring relatives and children during the winter and summer vacations, and as a result, they are treated as free labor, consuming time and energy in vain, and they are very angry. In addition, there are also words to share the refusal of acquaintances' requests for make-up classes, and related searches also appear such as "what to do if relatives ask for make-up classes", "how to talk to parents if you don't want to give make-up classes to relatives", etc. One of my fellow villagers made it clear to me straightforwardly: I usually have a normal relationship with my relatives, I don't see each other a few times a year, and I don't want my parents to treat my hard work as a favor to manage the relationship between relatives, and I value the actual fee more than contacting relatives.

In the eyes of Generation Z young people, the relationship between relatives seems to be getting weaker and farther away: they don't enter the family WeChat group, they neglect to move around with relatives, and even when they are taken by their parents to greet their relatives and elders, they can't remember their names in the face of cousins and cousins, and they need to be reminded by their parents to politely say hello such as "good uncle and grandfather", and at most they can say a word or two such as "good health" and "all the best" Wait for polite beautiful words, in addition to this, I will not take the initiative to talk to relatives, and the elders will also ask you and I will answer, never say more. When peers stay together, they also hold their mobile phones and tablets, and they don't "disturb each other". Once I went down to relatives, compared with the excitement of the elders, young people actually didn't feel the atmosphere of "family exchanges", but felt bored or even a waste of time.

In addition to the New Year's Festival, the coldness and alienation of young people's relatives are also reflected in daily life. Taking myself as an example after the 00s, there are no collateral blood relatives who are more closely connected in life except for a younger brother, and other cousins will basically not contact unless there is something, and the number of contacts will not exceed two times a year, and for me, the only people who are close to the nuclear family are grandparents and grandparents. My father (post-75s) is very different, he has at least one video call per week with his brother and younger brother, that is, my uncle and uncle, after work, to exchange long-distance life, nephews and nieces and other household routines, contact with cousins and cousins at least 2-3 times a month, and often visit the homes of elders who are closer to each other during holidays.

A study took advantage of the opportunity for students to return to their hometowns for the New Year during the winter vacation to carry out a random questionnaire survey, and the statistical results showed that 63% of minors would not contact their relatives if they were okay at home, and only 22.7% of young people aged 18-25 often or frequently interacted with relatives, and 28.8% between 26-30 years old, while in stark contrast to middle-aged people aged 40 to 50, about 85% of them frequently or frequently interacted with relatives. In the eyes of young people, the importance of blood ties is rapidly declining, and they are no longer like their elders, who are no longer keen to move around in the extended family, and are no longer willing to pay for the maintenance of kinship, but directly choose to cut off ties.

In traditional society, the core of a family or clan is blood and marriage; under the influence of the idea of traffic blockage and relocation of land, the physical space and social distance between family members are very close, and they have geographical relations; traditional farming in rural areas is nothing more than farming, grazing, or fishing, and karmic relations are also established; under the conditions of low productivity, small families have poor ability to resist risks, and they need to help each other and stay warm together, and this has a relationship of good fate; information is underdeveloped, the cultural level is similar, and everyone's ideological concepts, interests, and hobbies are very similar, and there are also interests and relationships. In traditional societies, the extended family is a combination of multiple relationships, and under normal circumstances, the relationship between family members is very stable and strong, and they will maintain close contact on a daily basis. The advent of urbanization and the improvement of transportation conditions have made population migration more frequent, and large family members may be distributed in Tiannan and Haibei instead of living in their hometowns due to work, study and other reasons, the physical distance has increased, and the occupations engaged in are also diverse, and the social security system is becoming more and more perfect, so that the small family is more and more resistant to risks and more independent. In addition to the blood relationship caused by genetic inheritance and the marriage relationship formed by their respective marriages, the relationship between members of the extended family has been weakened in several aspects: geography, karma, profit, and interest.

In addition to passive and natural alienation due to the lack of opportunities for in-depth communication, there are also subjective reasons for young people's active choice of "severing relatives". Most of today's grandparents grew up in the big family of the traditional rural society, as Mr. Fei Xiaotong said, the members of the big family are "born in Si and died in Si", forming a traditional view of family affection. When it comes to the parents' generation, the material is still relatively scarce, and when encountering difficulties, siblings, cousins and cousins can help, and the interdependence of extended family members is still relatively close, and the degree of tolerance is also very high. Generation Z is a generation that has grown up in the Internet information age since childhood, and has gradually formed a distinct personality in the online world, coupled with the separation of living space and different life experiences, their values and emotional attitudes may be quite different and conflict with their elders. Sitting with the seven aunts and eight aunts, the chat content is basically impossible for us to be interested in mobile games, animation, celebrity entertainment and other topics, it can only fall to work, study, marriage and other more pragmatic aspects, relatives and elders out of inertial thinking will feel that there is a kinship and tie relationship will naturally be intimate, thinking that they care about these are caring for the younger generation, as a matter of course, who knows that such behavior is a violation of privacy in the eyes of the younger generation, and they are very reluctant to the relatives to impose the ideas and ideas of the older generation on themselves," We don't know each other, so why should they point fingers at me in my life. In the face of intimacy, the older generation pays more attention to emotional performance, believing that since there is a kinship, it should be further confirmed and maintained through the "performance" of daily interactions, while young people pay more and more attention to the authenticity of emotions, believing that even if the connection of kinship objectively exists, if there is no positive emotional experience in the interaction, then subjectively will not recognize this intimate relationship, and naturally they are not willing to take the initiative to contact relatives in daily life.

Some people say that "everyone has a hometown hidden in their hearts," and family affection is still an inseparable emotion in life. For young people, although there are some people who are not used to seeing their relatives, they still feel the help of their relatives when they are in difficulty. Even if there are internal contradictions, they are united with the outside world when they encounter difficulties, which is the complexity of kinship in China.

In the author's opinion, the "severance" of young people of Generation Z may be a selective "severance", for now, it is more difficult to completely cut off contacts, but it has been much weaker, and the phenomenon of "severance" will become more and more common in the future. Cousins are more likely to grow up in a similar family environment, and peers have more common topics, and it is easier to develop friendships, while older relatives with different frequencies choose to cut off contacts;

From the perspective of a young person of Generation Z, it is okay to cut off relatives who are particularly bad, who deny the reality of the attack in the name of caring about education, and bring negative pain, as the importance of kinship in the process of social change declines, it is normal to reduce contact with relatives. However, it should be noted that while we seek to establish new emotional connections with the Internet and pets in order to "fight against nothingness", in the face of relatives and elders who have no subjective malice but only different views, as long as they do not have a substantial impact on themselves, they can be more understanding and tolerant, so that relatives who really care about themselves can rest assured and retain a bit of warmth for themselves.