\”Chicken baby factories\” in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have closed down in batches: the awakening of middle-class families begins with \”cutting off the supply\” of babies

Recently, there has been news about the closure of many international schools. Among them are some former top schools. For example, Houde Academy, a well-known private high school in Shenzhen. According to the official website, tuition fees at Houde Academy are quite expensive, ranging from RMB 118,000 per year for the domestic college entrance examination department to RMB 250,000 per year for the international department. But now, it has been revealed that Houde College is in arrears with rent of more than 10 million yuan, leaving 800 students with nowhere to go. For another example, Nord Anglia School in Fangshan, Beijing, announced its closure. Tuition fees of RMB 200,000 to RMB 300,000 a year, while I was reading, the school suddenly disappeared, and the placement suggestion given by the school was that students could transfer to the Shunyi campus, which is more than 90 kilometers away. Not only that, in the past four years, many international schools have announced the suspension of operations in first- and second-tier cities in eastern China and provincial capitals in central and western China. Even the international departments of public schools that were unattainable in previous years have now lowered their admission scores. At the same time, a large number of parents submitted withdrawal applications to international schools. There was once a hot phrase called \”the three-piece package for the middle class to die\”, which refers to the fact that many middle-class people have mortgages worth millions, their wives work as full-time housewives, and they send their children to international schools. Now it seems that the awakening of the middle class starts from cutting off the money for their children. Some people say that education for middle-class parents relies on two words: one is \”smashing\” and the other is \”brushing\”. Spending money on cram schools, and housing in school districts, the money spent becomes the last straw for children; changing grades, playing music, chess, calligraphy, and painting, all kinds of exams, create an insensitive child. Especially the first point, as long as you want chicken babies, there is always money to spend. The \”China Childbirth Cost Report 2024 Edition\” shows that the average cost of raising a child aged 0-17 across the country is about 538,000 yuan, and the average cost of raising a child from 0 to a bachelor\’s degree is about 680,000 yuan. There is a set of statistics online. In the national ranking of the cost of raising a child, Shanghai ranks first and Beijing ranks second. In Shanghai, which ranks first, the cost of raising a child is as high as 1 million. A middle-class parent in Shanghai once posted his daily bill for chicken babies. This mother has two children. The eldest daughter is in elementary school and the younger son has not yet entered kindergarten. The two children have to attend classes with foreign teachers, early education classes, interest classes, etc. every day. All these costs add up to nearly 10,000 yuan a day. It also includes equestrian, golf and harp lessons that young children may not understand. People can’t help but sigh: “What you raise is not a child, but a banknote shredder.” Not only that, as the child grows older, his ability to shred banknotes also increases day by day: Zhihu user @泷玺 during his study in the International Department, he still shredded banknotes in one year. You have to spend 10,000-20,000 yuan on living expenses. He said: \”Everyone in the International Department must have a computer and n mobile phones… For Halloween, you have to pay a class fee of 200 yuan to have a party in a private villa.\” Some media have calculated that if children are sent all the way to China from kindergarten It will cost at least 3 million to study in an international education institution and to study in an overseas university. Most of the international school market is supported by middle-class families. Most of their original intentions are to allow their children to live a glorious life in the future, at least not to slip back to the pre-liberation period. It can make the middle class empty their wallets and throw money at themChicken baby, is it really an investment that will make a profit without losing money? A returned overseas student shared that he went to an international school in high school and spent a total of 450,000 in three years. I went to the University of Leeds in the UK, and the tuition and living expenses totaled 2.4 million. After that, he studied for a master\’s degree at Cass Business School in London, which cost about 700,000 per year. In other words, from attending an international high school to studying abroad to returning home after completing his studies, the boy\’s family spent nearly 4 million on him. And what will be his salary after returning to China? The monthly salary is less than 10,000. In fact, the boy\’s parents are ordinary working-class people, and their family only has an 80-square-meter house. Because of spending too much money on Jiwa, the family is now living a tight life, and they don’t know when they will get their money back. This reminds me of a new term that appeared on the Internet some time ago: \”bad boy\”. It refers to the fact that children have studied hard for more than ten years. As a result, they are unemployed after graduation. Their most precious youth time is spent on the most meaningless exams, and their lives begin to end. Blogger @小琛之DIary once shared his experience on social platforms: When he was 16 years old, Xiaochen was sent to the United States by his parents to attend high school. After graduating from high school, she was admitted to one of the top 30 universities in the United States, and even completed the four-year university studies ahead of schedule in just three years. Afterwards, Xiaochen was admitted to an Ivy League school to pursue graduate studies. In eight years, Xiaochen\’s parents spent a total of about 2.68 million on their daughter, including tuition fees, accommodation fees, living expenses, and board and lodging. However, after graduating and returning to China, Xiaochen found that finding a job was not as smooth as she imagined. Her first job had a monthly salary of 12,000 yuan. Now, over 30 years old, her salary still remains at this figure after experiencing pregnancy and the epidemic. In her opinion, she knows nothing and has accomplished nothing. She once held good cards and had high hopes, but she has become ordinary or even mediocre. It has to be said that the price/performance ratio of chicken babies is getting lower and lower nowadays. It\’s easy to say that you can\’t recoup your money, but what\’s even more scary is that the \”chickens\” will come and \”chickens\” will eventually come out with a child with hollow heart disease. The hit TV series \”Little Shede\” a few years ago brought the word \”chicken baby\” to the forefront again. Later, Sanlian Weekly published an article titled \”Happy Nightmare: I Never Want to Go Back to the Tutorial School.\” A girl who was \”chickened\” since she was a child wrote: \”Every day along the way, I seem to be dancing on the tip of a needle. I am afraid that the slightest mistake will lead to a big mistake in life, which makes me more and more dangerous as time goes by. Disgust, caution. These comparisons that are difficult to banish in human life sometimes make me feel that life is endless and requires endless calculations. Fear arises in my heart, and life is colorless in my eyes. However, she is still trapped by \”her own utilitarianism, her own fear of the unknown, and her lack of imagination and action in life.\” Faced with her parents who invested a lot in her, all she wanted to do was stay away, and stay away even further. With excessive chicken babies, parents lose money and a good parent-child relationship. At the same time, the children also lose their happiness and vitality. Therefore, more and more people realize that spending money on education will notIt’s nothing more than a “pig-killing plate” for harvesting middle-class families. Some time ago, netizen Hui Ge transferred his son from a private school to a public school near his home. In the past, he was also afraid that his son would lose at the starting line. For this reason, he deliberately spent money to build connections and spent all his money to let his son attend a private school. The tuition plus rent alone costs 100,000 yuan a year. On weekends, I spend a lot of money to take my son to hobby classes to learn Mathematical Olympiad and Go. As a result, his son\’s grades not only did not improve steadily as expected, but began to plummet. The couple was anxious for a while. Until last year, Brother Hui was suddenly notified of layoffs by his company. After discussing with his wife for a long time, he finally decided to transfer his son to the public school at his doorstep. After transferring to another school, the quality of teachers inevitably declined. When my son encountered a question he didn\’t know, Brother Hui taught him personally. Unexpectedly, after a period of time, the relationship between the family became much closer than before, and the son\’s grades were much better than when he was in a private school. We always think that spending money to send our children to international schools is for their own good. But they have ignored that blindly following the trend of chicken babies will only make children depressed and make themselves anxious. I read a netizen’s childhood story on Zhihu. Her father is a truck driver and has no conditions for her to attend hobby classes or international schools. But when she was a child, her father would take her out in the car with him to provide her with high-quality company. At noon, my father would park the car on the side of the road, get some bricks to build a small earthen stove, pick up some branches, and stew rice in a small iron pot. Her father would also pick wild pea pods on the roadside for her to play with. The black shells contained thin yellow-brown seeds, which rustled like a sand hammer when shaken. One day, when my father was out of the car, it suddenly started to rain heavily. After driving for a while, my father would stop and use a big flashlight to shine on the road ahead, and then drive forward cautiously. It drove for a while, then stopped, took another photo, and started again. But she always remembered that while her father was exploring the way, he also comforted her, \”You don\’t have to be afraid because daddy is here.\” Not only that, every time after repairing the car, my father would insert a plastic pipe into the fuel tank, take a deep breath at the mouth of the pipe, and then quickly put the pipe mouth down into the iron bucket to draw out the gasoline to clean the repair tools and the car. Component. Therefore, netizens knew what the \”siphon principle\” was before they entered junior high school. Although this father did not have much money, he provided the soil for his children to grow freely. Let children have a precious curiosity and enthusiasm for life. I very much agree with what Professor Liu Yu of Tsinghua University said: \”The correct concept of education is not to cultivate a small grass into a towering tree, but to cultivate a small grass into a beautiful grass. Healthy grass. \”Let flowers become flowers and trees become trees, which not only fulfills the child, but also liberates oneself.\” Economists Depke and Zilibotti pointed out in their book \”Love, Money and Children\” that in countries with economic inequality and high returns to education, parents may be more arbitrary and \”chicken-blooded\” and prefer to educate their children. Inculcate the idea of ​​getting ahead. But in fact, if the parents’ background, resources, and knowledge are limited, no matter how hard they try, the result may be useless. After spending time and money, you may end up training a \”bad kid\”. And in this uncertain timeIn this era, many middle class people are only one step away from bankruptcy. Being able to stop losses in time and cut off the money for the children is a rare sobriety for middle-class families. To disenchant chicken babies, we no longer use money to pile up education, but pay attention to the nourishment of children\’s character and the shaping of their quality. Even if the children cannot become a dragon or a phoenix in the future, they can still live a happy life. Like it and share it with your friends.