The trend of grandparents not taking care of grandchildren in China

Support, not main responsibility

Person retirement In China, they are often tasked with taking care of their grandchildren while their sons and daughters go to work. But Ms. Chen Shuxiang and her husband Guan Hongsheng, in their 60s, left most of the responsibility for taking care of their 10-year-old grandson to the child’s parents, despite living in the same city of Fuzhou, in southeastern China’s Fujian province.

“We are satisfied with our lives,” shared the couple, who enjoys spending time editing videos, taking photos and traveling around China and the world.

“We are financially stable enough to travel everywhere and do the things we love,” Ms. Chen said. Our son and daughter-in-law sometimes give us cash. The children were very supportive of us pursuing our own lives. I hope that we are not considered “lucky ones” because there will be more children supporting their parents’ retirement in the future.”

Mr. and Mrs. Guan – Chen is still connected to him – cooks and sometimes picks him up from school – but not the primary caregiver.

Grandparents are the primary and often free option of care for Chinese parents, who often travel away from home for a higher salary or work long hours to support the family financially.

However, more and more pensioners like grandparents Guan and Chen are choosing to help out from time to time or ask for payment to look after their grandchildren full-time.

Earlier this month, a court in Jinan, in eastern China’s Shandong province, ruled that a couple owed their father-in-law 20,000 yuan ($3,000) because he took care of one of them. the couple’s son for many years, the Shandong Business Daily reported.

The husband left his eldest son to live with his grandfather and promised to give him 300 yuan ($45) a month but did not keep it, according to the court.

Legal cases of grandparents demanding payment for grandchild care have popped up across China in recent years, according to SCMP.

Tradition is gradually changing

Linda Sun, kindergarten teacher in Shanghai, said that at least 80% of the children in her class were picked up by grandparents every day when she started work in 2017. But over the years, she has seen more parents pick up and drop off their own children.

“As family incomes improve, more parents work full-time, and people are more aware these days of the importance of spending time with their children,” Sun said.

While it is more likely that grandparents will pursue a more independent retirement, the number is still relatively low.

An April 2021 poll by the government of Changzhou, Jiangsu province, found that 20 percent of parents “raised their children independently.”

One-third of the households polled consider grandparents to be a helper, while 47 percent said grandparents are the primary caregiver.

The poll also found that more than half of respondents said that grandparents tend to pamper their grandchildren, causing them to “have spoiled behavior” and “have bad life habits”.

Professor Yuan Xin from the Institute of Population and Development of Nankai University in Tianjin said the lack of childcare facilities meant that grandparents still played an essential role in raising Chinese children. However, traditions are slowly changing with socially adaptive thinking and families becoming more financially stable.

“Current retirees were born after 1960, so they are young enough to enjoy the economic benefits of opening up and reform. They have new ideas compared to previous generations. They are not the type whose life revolves around family. And the younger generation also wants their parents to have their own lives,” he said.

In China, there is a phenomenon of “left-behind children” in the countryside as working-age adults move to big cities in search of work. Because of this phenomenon, most of the villages have only children and the elderly. Currently, 6.4 million children are considered by China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs as “left-behind children”. However, compared to 2016, this number has decreased by 28.6%.