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China drops one-child policy, but ‘exhausted’ tiger moms say one is plenty
dd
BEIJING — Han Jing’s son started taking after-school classes when he was just 5 years old: extra English, math and drawing so he wouldn’t fall behind the other children at kindergarten.
“I didn’t want him to feel ashamed or have low self-esteem on his first day of elementary school,” she said, worried that he’d face other children who spoke English, knew thousands of Chinese characters or could play the piano.
Three years later, the pressure has only mounted: She and her husband spend more than $10,000 a year on after-school classes. It’s a huge drain on their time, and an even bigger one on their resources, given that her husband earns less than $35,000 a year.
Their apartment is too small for a second child, and the cost of moving to a bigger one in Beijing has risen out of their reach. But it is not just money that is preventing them from having a second one: Han says they have also devoted all of their time and energy into their son, and they are simply exhausted.
“Seeing how much pressure my kid is under makes us feel bad, too, so I don’t want another kid of mine to go through this,” she said. “He’s so tired. We’re too tired. Whether it’s us or the child, I don’t think of any of us can handle another one.”
Global Times newspaper called the recommendations “ridiculous and illegal,” and the public letter has since disappeared from the website of the city’s health and family planning commission.
The government says the national birthrate rose by 6.9 percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period last year, with 800,000 more births recorded.
State media even reported a “baby boom” in Beijing, with long lines forming at the capital’s top hospitals to reserve beds, and some maternity wards booked until next April.
But those reports were misleading, said Wang Feng, of the University of California at Irvine.
This year’s rise in childbirths is below the government’s target of 2.5 million extra births in 2016, he said, and still modest considering all the pent-up demand that the one-child policy should have created.
The lines at the capital’s top hospitals are a function of bottlenecks in China’s overstretched health system: Many of the women who have elected to give birth this year are older than average, and have been encouraged to head for Grade A hospitals in case of complications.
Indeed, when the one-child policy was first relaxed in 2013, allowing parents who grew up as only children to have a second child, just 18 percent of the 11 million eligible couples applied to do so, Wang said, a response he called “lukewarm.”
Mass migration to cities, where costs of living are high, has depressed birthrates, while people are getting married later, or not at all, Wang said.
“In the short run, hopefully China can add more people to its population, but in the long run it is very unlikely that fertility will go above 1.5 children per couple,” he said.
That’s a problem for China. The people born in Mao’s era are growing old, and there will be far fewer people of working age to bear the economic burden.
But Xi Wei, father of a 9-year-old boy, said that he and his wife won’t be trying for another child. Their son does extra classes after school and all day on Saturday, and parents and child all feel exhausted by the social pressure for him not to “fall behind.”
As only children themselves, Xi and his wife also don’t think there is anything wrong with growing up alone. “After all these years, everybody is inclined to just have one child. Everybody’s used to it,” he said. “How can you have a second child when the whole society has hostile and incompatible resources towards it?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...6f1890-8ae7-11e6-8a68-b4ce96c78e04_story.html
dd
BEIJING — Han Jing’s son started taking after-school classes when he was just 5 years old: extra English, math and drawing so he wouldn’t fall behind the other children at kindergarten.
“I didn’t want him to feel ashamed or have low self-esteem on his first day of elementary school,” she said, worried that he’d face other children who spoke English, knew thousands of Chinese characters or could play the piano.
Three years later, the pressure has only mounted: She and her husband spend more than $10,000 a year on after-school classes. It’s a huge drain on their time, and an even bigger one on their resources, given that her husband earns less than $35,000 a year.
Their apartment is too small for a second child, and the cost of moving to a bigger one in Beijing has risen out of their reach. But it is not just money that is preventing them from having a second one: Han says they have also devoted all of their time and energy into their son, and they are simply exhausted.
“Seeing how much pressure my kid is under makes us feel bad, too, so I don’t want another kid of mine to go through this,” she said. “He’s so tired. We’re too tired. Whether it’s us or the child, I don’t think of any of us can handle another one.”
Global Times newspaper called the recommendations “ridiculous and illegal,” and the public letter has since disappeared from the website of the city’s health and family planning commission.
The government says the national birthrate rose by 6.9 percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period last year, with 800,000 more births recorded.
State media even reported a “baby boom” in Beijing, with long lines forming at the capital’s top hospitals to reserve beds, and some maternity wards booked until next April.
But those reports were misleading, said Wang Feng, of the University of California at Irvine.
This year’s rise in childbirths is below the government’s target of 2.5 million extra births in 2016, he said, and still modest considering all the pent-up demand that the one-child policy should have created.
The lines at the capital’s top hospitals are a function of bottlenecks in China’s overstretched health system: Many of the women who have elected to give birth this year are older than average, and have been encouraged to head for Grade A hospitals in case of complications.
Indeed, when the one-child policy was first relaxed in 2013, allowing parents who grew up as only children to have a second child, just 18 percent of the 11 million eligible couples applied to do so, Wang said, a response he called “lukewarm.”
Mass migration to cities, where costs of living are high, has depressed birthrates, while people are getting married later, or not at all, Wang said.
“In the short run, hopefully China can add more people to its population, but in the long run it is very unlikely that fertility will go above 1.5 children per couple,” he said.
That’s a problem for China. The people born in Mao’s era are growing old, and there will be far fewer people of working age to bear the economic burden.
But Xi Wei, father of a 9-year-old boy, said that he and his wife won’t be trying for another child. Their son does extra classes after school and all day on Saturday, and parents and child all feel exhausted by the social pressure for him not to “fall behind.”
As only children themselves, Xi and his wife also don’t think there is anything wrong with growing up alone. “After all these years, everybody is inclined to just have one child. Everybody’s used to it,” he said. “How can you have a second child when the whole society has hostile and incompatible resources towards it?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...6f1890-8ae7-11e6-8a68-b4ce96c78e04_story.html
