DINK IN CHINA
Have a baby or not ？
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in China, the new babies born in 2018 is 15.23 million, and the total fertility rate is 1.09.
The fertility rate changes very rapidly in China, it seems more couples are choosing to be child free. Couples in China who choose no kid, also known as DINK (abbreviation for double income no kids).
Chinese couples who choose to remain childless face pressure from all sides of families, society and the state. In traditional Chinese culture, marriage and childbirth are a close connection. With the low fertility rate, childbearing is still seen as the first goal of marriage in China.
Is it a right or an obligation for couples to give birth to a child? This multimedia report looks at various generations of DINKS and one couple who is struggling to compromise.
Chapter 1
The 90s couple : Shen &Yan
To be dink couple after marriage?
The British writer Rachel Kaske wrote in his pregnancy record "A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother", "I don't know how much the experience of pregnancy and birth has an impact on the concept of gender equality. The birth of a child not only separates women from men, but also distinguish women from women... When the child is around, she can't do it herself, she can't do it when the child is away."
Being a mother has never been easy, but for Yan, who has been married for four years, the hardest thing now is to choose whether to be a mother.
After two accidental abortions, Yan’s husband decided to become a Dink. Considering the educational environment and the cost of raising children, Yan’s desire to be a mother is gradually faltering.
However, facing the urging of relatives and friends, Yan's age is constantly increasing. Compared with her husband Shen, whose firm attitude of no children in the future, Yan still hesitated to choose Dink.
CHAPTER 2
The 80s couple : Sun & Mu
The complete family is we have each other.
6 PM, The streets of Lanzhou city are bustling.
At the end of the school day, students flocked across the pedestrian
street of Zhang Ye Road. Sun Yue's company was close to the school.
She usually waits half an hour to leave after work to avoid the noisy
students and parent who waiting in line at the school gate.
It is common to hear of Chinese couples who stay married "for the sake of the child." The child will compress most of the feelings and experiences between the husband and wife, and Chinese traditional concept of raising " children to anti-ageing" will make Chinese parents would like to scarify everything to raise children.
But the main reason for Yue's marriage is that her husband Mu wants to be Dink.
" we are classmates in middle school. 2006, after graduating from college we connected with each other and started dating." Yue decided early not to have children in the future. In the process of dating, it is difficult to meet people with the same idea until she met her current husband. "I thought he can be my husband when he told me he would like to be Dink in future." Yue says.
According to an article about Dink in the SIXTH TONE, The traditional structure of the Chinese family makes a common view of real families all have children. In most Chinese couples, giving birth to a child is often not a decision of themselves, but a combination of the views of two families.
Yue is lucky, after several effective communications, her parents accepted the fact of she is Dink when they knew the reasons of why Yue and her husband didn’t want a child after marriage.
"Giving birth to a child is a responsibility, but I may not be able to afford it, so I might as well choose not to do it at the beginning." Yue’s husband Mu says, who lost his father when he is 3 years old. Grew up in a single-parent family, lacking fatherly love made him don't know how to play the role of a father correctly.
Yue and Mu were married for 7 years, friends, and co-workers alike chastised their view of no child life, which makes Yue very helpless and getting upset. “I born in 1984, my friends who are as old as my age all have children now, so they often urge us to have a baby. Yue says, ”After a long time we had no kids, my friends will guess the reason behind our choice of Dink and think we may not be able to have children for physiological reasons. For us, this problem is more troublesome. I want to maintain the friendship but I can't accept my friends to interfere too much with the decision of whether I want a child. In my opinion, this is not a concern, but an offence.
The most important thing between husband and wife is trust and respect for each other's choices. The relationship between husband and wife is not a big ring, but the two rings interact with each other. The amount of interaction depends on their own wishes
“I didn't feel that I had a lot of free time without kids”. Yue told me, Last year she was taking an MBA and having classes every day, Mu is also busy with his own career, they always need to do hard works overtime. “The age of 30s is the golden period of wealth accumulation. In particular, Dink families need to consider more about their pension problems in the future.“ Mu said seriously.
Continuous negative growth accompanied by the natural population growth rate, China fully opens its policy of second child in 2018, but the number of newborns in China is at a record low. According to the Chinese population data of 2018 released by The National Bureau of Statistics on January 21, 2019, China's birth population of 15.23 million in 2018 decreased by 2 million in 2017, with a total fertility rate of 1.09, the lowest since 1949. China's post-fertility transition has rapidly entered a very low level of fertility.
On January 3, 2019, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published the "Green Paper on Population and Labor: China Population and Labor Issues Report No. 19", stating that long-term low fertility rates will lead to a high degree of aging. The decline of the population and the population has brought multiple challenges to the social economy. The era of negative population growth in China is coming.
Zhang Dingqiang, dean of the Education college, Northwest Normal University, has studied the development of China's population for many years. He believes that couples’ concepts of birth are related to the education situation in China.
Prof. Zhang thinks that the social mobility of different classes is mainly achieved by higher education. However, due to the current poor employment environment in China, the uselessness of education begins to spread, and universities are no longer elite education. Rural students continue to return to the countryside after finishing college. Many people think that they can change their destiny after such hard work, but the result has not changed. The possibility of giving birth to a child to cross the class is relatively small, so people have a negative attitude towards fertility and more couples will choose to live their lives without giving birth to children.
" The lack of a sound social security system is also a big factor affecting fertility", Professor Zhang said:" Birth is actually contributing to the country. Therefore, I think it is necessary to strengthen the concept of fertility of college students. It is necessary to educate the correct concept of birth and death. We also need to pay attention to the education of fertility concept." Many couples of childbearing age choose Dink and don’t realize the importance of fertility for the development of the country. The most effective measure to reverse the demographic structure is to form a virtuous circle from the education of children, especially the education of fertility of college students. "
CHAPTER 3
The 70s DINK couple:Huang & Yuan
Dink for 30 years, never regret.
Huang Qi, who worked in education after graduating from college, witnessed many parents who were irresponsible and unruly teenagers. " After work, I began to realize that the child’s uncontrollability is too strong." Since then, Huang began to examine whether he could become a good father who could spend enough time and energy to meet the children’s needs of the future. The answers to these questions are negative.
Married in 1998, Huang Qi and Yuan chose to be dink after the marriage has lasted for 30 years.
Many Chinese with traditional ideas consider" raising grandchildren" as a way to realize self-value in retired life and help lessen the burden of their adult children.
This circular pattern also forms a unique" sub-dink" in China. (Children are brought up by grandparents, the young parents live like having no kids.)
Huang Qi’s parents’ healthy is not very well. When he got married, Mr. Huang was also urged to have children. Huang Qi has rejected childbirth because he was busy with work and no one could help him taking care of children. Huang says: "When I got married, the pressure to not have children was not as big as it is now. We all have brothers and sisters who can divert the attention of parents, unlike now the four parents who are now staring at a woman of childbearing."
Friends around Huang Qi have gradually had children. Even friends gathering is hard to avoid children's topics. Mr. Huang Qi and his wife gradually cultivated hobbies, fishing, and calligraphy that needed to be alone. In his long efforts, he jumped out of the world's evaluation system for family happiness and used more energy to achieve his goal - freedom, which is the only desire for him to catch up.
Huang Qi said:" The more you care about, the more desires you have to satisfy. So the steps to marry and have children are not for me. I can accept the life of not having children. Everyone has a huge difference, so the evaluation system in the world is difficult to become an eternal indicator to measure Dink is right or wrong."
