Are you ready to be a three-child mother
Every time Chen Chen showed up in public places with three children at the same time, he always attracted the attention of passersby.
People often come forward and ask: "Is the family rich in raising 3 children?"
Chen Chen has a 7-year-old daughter and two 4-year-old twin daughters.
Facing the curiosity of the people around, Chen Chen laughed and said nothing.
Not long ago, the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee reviewed the "Decision on Optimizing the Fertility Policy to Promote the Long-term Balanced Development of the Population" and proposed the implementation of the policy that a couple can have 3 children and supporting measures.
As soon as the policy came out, it became the hottest topic on Weibo.
Several colleagues forwarded this news to Chen Chen, and she began to expect that perhaps more and more women would be willing to become three-child mothers, and she would no longer be regarded as an alternative.
However, related surveys show that, in the face of the liberalized three-child policy, everyone is more concerned about what supporting policies government departments can implement in order to let the people of the right age release their willingness to bear children.
There are three children at home
Chen Chen is a teacher of a "985" college in Changchun City, Jilin Province, and his husband is a lawyer.
In the second pregnancy check-up, when the doctor told them they were twins, Chen Chen and her husband were both overjoyed and over-stressed.
Chen Chen has a sister. In the past few years, she has really felt the support between her parents and sisters when they were sick and hospitalized.
Personal experience made Chen Chen and his wife even more convinced that, despite the current difficulties in raising three children, the burden of supporting their parents after the children grow up has been reduced, and many brothers and sisters have also taken care of them.
Chen Chen is small and thin. After she became pregnant with twins, she reacted strongly during pregnancy, and the baby was born a month prematurely.
"The child born prematurely is delicate and weak." There were two babies waiting to be fed at the same time. Chen Chen and her husband were a little bit overwhelmed. Fortunately, Chen Chen had in-laws to help.
But the elderly are not in good health, and every time they take care of the children for a month or two, they have to return to their hometown to rest for a period of time.
The experience of having a baby is not very effective for the second and third child.
In the first few months after birth, both children have to be hugged to fall asleep.
To catch up with her husband on a business trip, and the old man was not around, Chen Chen had to take her three children out with her husband, because at night the children had to hug them to sleep and drink milk powder, so she was too busy alone.
While walking around the newborn, Chen Chen found that the eldest daughter always played with toys by herself.
The eldest daughter is well-behaved and sensible. Although she didn't say it directly, Chen Chen still saw that the eldest had some emotions about the arrival of new family members.
For this reason, she and her husband talked to the eldest daughter together, and also made a plan. No matter how busy she is, she must spare time every day to study and play with her.
Wuxi's mother Zhao Yang also has 3 children. The eldest is a 10-year-old daughter, and the second and third are twin sons of two and a half years old.
Fortunately for her, she has a husband who is willing to take care of the children after get off work, and a mother who works in silence.
During the day, the full-time mother, Zhao Yang, takes care of the twin sons, and the old man takes the boss to school.
In order to prevent Zhao Yang from leaving the society, her husband and mother often give her half-day vacations so that she can go out to eat and shop with friends.
"Can you have a second child or a third child?" When a friend asks Zhao Yang, she will say that if you have family support and help, you can give birth.
The arrival of a newborn always keeps parents in a hurry.
In a three-child family, mothers have to deal with the different needs of their children, and it is commonplace to be exhausted physically and mentally.
In Zhao Yang's view, the happiness of having three children as companions is difficult for an only child to experience.
Right now, Chen Chen and Zhao Yang have already felt the benefits of having three children: children can play together without the parent company all the time, and the biggest benefit is that children can learn how to get along with their peers from an early age.
Multi-child family education should be tailored
"One intensive raise, three start free range." Many three-child mothers interviewed said that the economic pressure brought about by the doubling of education investment is a reality that their families have to face.
According to the relevant data of the "2020 China Family Education Industry Research Report", in 2019, the expenditure structure of my country's new middle class population, education expenditure ratio was 52%, which has exceeded other living expenses, becoming second only to 71.2% of daily expenses and 53.9 of rent and mortgage. % Of the third largest daily expenditure.
The higher the income of the family, the greater the proportion of expenditure on children's education.
As soon as the three-child policy was released, conflicts arose in the family of second-born mother Zhang Xin.
"A second child, maybe it's a daughter, even if it's not, the three children are quite lively." Recently, Zhang Xin got angry with her husband's talk.
In order to dispel the idea of her husband, she calculated the education account for the husband to raise the baby.
Zhang Xin and his wife run a piano shop in Beijing.
Affected by the epidemic in the past two years, business is no better than in previous years.
They have two sons, both of whom are learning the violin, each with a 400 yuan "one-to-one" lesson each week.
Zhang Xin has high hopes for her children, and she has to take another master class of 1,500 yuan every month.
Only learning piano, the two children spend nearly 60,000 yuan a year.
The eldest son is currently studying in a public elementary school, and tuition is not pressure.
But Zhang Xin enrolled in a bilingual kindergarten for his 5-year-old son, with a tuition fee of 100,000 yuan a year.
In addition, the two children have to attend English tutoring classes and taekwondo classes after school.
In addition to investment in education, taking children to travel and participating in winter and summer camps every year to broaden their horizons is also a must-choice project for Zhang Xin, with a cost of tens of thousands of yuan each.
At present, the annual expenditure on extracurricular education for two children is about 180,000 yuan. If one is regenerated, Zhang Xin is worried that each child will reduce the quality of education and life due to limited financial resources at home.
Relevant data from the "Consumption Power Report on China's Business Education and Counselling Market" released at the end of 2019 shows that 52.3% of families will enroll their children in out-of-school tutoring classes, and out-of-school learning has become a must for most Chinese families to educate their children.
The selection ratio of the first to fourth tier cities is between 62% and 67%.
In Chen Chen's view, the amount of education investment cannot be blindly compared, and the more extracurricular tutoring and interest classes may not be the better.
When the colleagues around me learned that Chen Chen had 3 children, they all worried about her - "How high is the cost of education?"
Chen Chen has his own parenting plan. None of the three children go to kindergarten. Instead, they learn a set of English-based general early childhood education courses at home, mainly online live and recorded courses.
Chen Chen, who is not in class, tutors his children when he is at home, and asks his mother to take care of him when he is working.
In this way, the cost of early childhood education for the three children has been saved a lot, and Chen Chen has extra financial resources to enroll the three children in their favorite extracurricular dance classes.
At the same time, the eldest daughter is still taking a free online piano lesson every week.
Finding and using network resources can significantly reduce the cost of education.
Compared with his colleagues in the school district and cultural classes, Chen Chen pays more attention to building a harmonious family relationship and cultivating children's self-learning ability and character.
Help children do subtractions in extracurricular classes, and be interested in refinement and not greedy.
"If I only have one child, the educational opportunities and alternative resources will be better." Chen Chen said frankly that most of their family of five live and play in the community or the city, and the older sister will leave it to her younger sister if she wears small clothes.
However, Chen Chen is not inferior. She believes that the income of each family is different. It is also important for children to learn to be thrifty and adapt to different material conditions.
Zhang Di, a second-born mother in Chaoyang Town, Tonghua City, Jilin Province, is more careful.
Zhang Di has two daughters, the eldest is 9 years old and the younger is 4 years old.
Her husband works in an auto repair factory and earns about 70,000 yuan a year.
The couple, who have been renting in the town, bought a two-bedroom house with a loan last year.
After the youngest daughter went to kindergarten, Zhang Di, who had more time and energy, became an insurance salesperson.
Zhang Di does not dare to hope for whether his children can go to prestigious schools in the future.
In addition to studying cultural classes at school, she only enrolled her eldest daughter in dance classes to give her children more artistic experience.
Zhang Di really wants to have a son, but she and her husband do not plan to have a third child.
In Zhang Di's view, although the pressure of living in a small town is not great, if there is another one, the family whose economic situation has just improved will be struggling again.
Mothers with many children urgently need social support
Faced with increasing education expenditures, some mothers with many children choose to stay in the workplace and work hard.
But most people can only get frustrated in the workplace or just leave.
After working for more than 10 years, Chen Chen is still only a lecturer and it is difficult to get promoted.
Some of the teachers who entered the same group as her are already applying for senior professional titles.
However, Chen Chen has been studying for a Ph.D. for 6 years, but his thesis has not been published and he cannot apply for defense.
Outside of teaching, she doesn't have more time to read the literature and modify the thesis, so she has not been able to graduate with a doctorate.
When he first had three children, Chen Chen felt that as long as he worked harder, he could balance work and family, but the facts proved "too difficult."
She also has the idea of giving up work and wants to concentrate on raising children at home.
But considering that an extra income in the family would allow the three children to have better living and learning conditions, she finally dispelled the idea.
Before the arrival of Mother's Day this year, 51job.com released the "2021 Survival Status of Working Mothers".
The survey shows that the main reason why working mothers choose not to be full-time mothers is to "relieve family financial pressure" and to satisfy their career pursuits.
The report also pointed out that the main difficulties for mothers to return to the workplace after maternity leave are: the inability to balance work and family, the need to update knowledge and skills, and the inability to keep up with the pace of work.
Because of this, Lin Lin, who lives and works in Hangzhou, has never dared to have a second child.
She and her husband are both only children. When they first got married, they had a clear plan to make good use of the national population policy and have at least two children.
Now that the three-child policy has been liberalized, Lin Lin can't even squeeze out the time for the second child.
As a top-notch art talent introduced from abroad, the unit entrusts Lin Lin with an important task.
She often worked until two or three o'clock in the evening to rest. With hard work, she was promoted quickly.
In September of this year, Lin Lin's child is about to go to elementary school, and the mother who has been helping to look after the child plans to return to her hometown for the elderly.
Lin Lin is very difficult to choose if she puts aside her rising career and has children.
"I dare not have a second child, let alone a third child." In her view, having another child will not only affect her career, but also affect the life and quality of education of the boss.
"In the current era of diversified fertility concepts, economic strength is not the basic condition for determining whether there is a willingness to have children." Professor Wang Xiaofeng, director and professor of the Institute of Population, Resources and Environment, Jilin University, believes that in addition to the adjustment of population policies, people can truly release fertility. The potential is related supporting measures. When social welfare reaches a certain level, more people will be willing to have more children.
Regarding the supporting measures to support three-child births, the National Health Commission responded at a press conference that it is necessary to improve the maternity leave and maternity insurance system, strengthen taxation, housing and other support policies, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of women in employment.
Wang Xiaofeng suggested that we can learn from the relevant economic policies of some countries, such as tax incentives, maternity leave, and childcare subsidies.
In addition, he believes that government agencies or state-owned enterprises set up childcare institutions for 0 to 3 years old, so that women can bring their children to work and nursery, and they can visit during lunch breaks, which is an effective way to help women better balance work and family.
“Women want to have three children and work normally, so they must pay more.” Wang Xiaofeng reminded that the implementation of supporting policies is a long-term process. Three-child mothers need to take care of all aspects first if they want to take care of family and work. ready.
Among the three-child mothers interviewed, reducing education costs and looking forward to more job opportunities are the focus of everyone's attention.
"To give birth to three children in first- and second-tier cities is more pressure on housing and education investment." Lin Lin called for more reasonable maternity leave and promotion opportunities for working mothers.
For Zhao Yang, after all three children have gone to elementary school, she wants to return to the workplace, but she is not sure whether she will be accepted by the society and whether there will be a competent position.
Regardless of the current situation, the three-child mothers interviewed by the reporter said that they did not regret their choice at the time.
They also have a common feeling that the happiness of raising children is far greater than the pressure of life.
But they will not directly suggest that others have 3 children, after all, this is too challenging.
(At the request of the interviewee, the mothers in the article are all pseudonyms)
China Youth Daily · China Youth Daily reporter Wang Peilian Source: China Youth Daily