Grown-up emperors struggling to cope with squalling princelings

• Source: Global Times
• [21:40 May 31 2010]
• Comments

Illustration: Liu Rui

By Wendy Wang

Tuesday is Children's Day, which in China is becoming more important than ever. The Financial Times described post-Olympic Games Beijing as a city redefined by building cranes and baby car-riages. Shanghai seems the same, with the cacophony of construction sites, car horns and crying babies along the roads filling the air. But it's not young couples pushing the baby carriages, but grey-haired grandparents.

China's young generation, born and bred under the family planning policy, are now becoming parents. And the second generation of only children are feeling intimidated at the prospect of bringing up their offspring alone.

According to a survey by Women of China magazine in 2007 , 70 percent of the new generation of parents leave their own parents holding the baby. There are many reasons behind this.

For one, today's work world is a stressful place. There's no room for single breadwinner families among skyrocketing housing prices, exorbitant medical charges, and a ballooning cost of living.

Women simply can't afford to take maternal leave. My former project manager, a capable and powerful woman, was evicted from her position after she "accidentally got pregnant" and decided to take time off to give birth to her baby.

Workplaces cannot even cope with women taking several months off to look after their babies, yet alone adjusting to their female staff concentrating on the upbringing of their children in the long run. Therefore people with families are always passed over for the good spots in favor of those without. Yet youngsters still bear the brunt of carrying the family name. So here come the babies.

Facing a new baby, young wage-earners, tyrannized by work and squeezed by the pressure to support a family, are left with no choice but resort to their own parents.

These only children are not in a good position to shoulder the responsibility of fostering the next generation by themselves. They don't have the experience of looking after younger siblings that those from larger families do. One friend of mine commentated, "I am utterly out of my depth when it comes to raising a kid. But my parents can do a whole lot better than me."

In fact, being pampered and spoiled "little emperors" themselves, young parents really find it hard to handle such physically and mentally challenging tasks as changing diapers, feeding, bathing, and rocking the baby to sleep.