Mom sharing

• Source: Global Times
• [10:40 July 20 2010]
• Comments

Emmanuel Capy is playing with his daughter and his friend’s son. Photo: Zeng Zhiwei

By Zeng Zhiwei

While New York is known as the city that never sleeps, Shanghai is quickly becoming the city that never stops working. For many working mothers this is becoming almost too much to bear, with a full-time workload and a 50-minute commute each day, many mothers come home too exhausted to think, let alone care for an infant. Recently a group of mothers posted demands for more personal time and are calling for mothers to unite and share the burden of child raising in a movement dubbed pinyang.

Zhang Xiaoling is the mother of a 4-year-old boy, and finds that she no longer has her own life. She used to love going to the cinema with her husband and singing karaoke with her friends on weekends. But now all her spare time is spent taking care of her infant son. Every time she tries to leave, her son gets very upset. “Of course my child is important, but I need my space!” she vented in a post she wrote in May this year, on a website called iyaya.com, where mothers share information.

Zhang used to leave her son with his grandparents, but they spoiled him too much. “Every time he came back from their place, he was unbearable,” Zhang said. Another path Zhang is reluctant to go down is hiring an ayi, as she worries that they are not professional enough to be trusted with her child. In her controversial post, Zhang proposed an idea where parents take turns caring for each other’s children (which she termed “pinyang” – literally raising children together), in doing so parents are able to reclaim much needed spare time. Her requirements were:

►The children must be over 3.

►Parents should be patient and responsible.

►The income levels of parents are not an issue as long as the baby has enough to eat.

►Parents should live close by so it is easy for families to visit each other.

After posting her proposal online, Zhang stirred controversy, first on the website, and then in the Chinese media. Some criticized it as irresponsible behavior towards children, while some argued it was better for parents to spend more time with their children on weekends. Some were more concerned about the safety of the children because the proposal would be hard to monitor. Despite the criticism, more than 10 mothers expressed interst in Zhang's post within two days, and now the number has increased to 15. Importantly, the mothers have support in principle from their husbands.

Day care in China

While day care has existed in the US and Europe since the 19th century, day care in China is still uncommon. In China, only major cities have private day care centers which charge around 5,000 yuan ($ 739) per month. Because of the cost most families cannot afford to send their children there, so their only other option is pre-school classes catering for children around 2 years old. However these classes only last for two hours a day, and the care providers are required to be there. As a result, grandparents and ayis are the only practical choices for most working parents. In cases where the grandparents are not available, and the parents are not comfortable with hiring an ayi, one parent must stay at home which incurs financial losses for the family.

When Chen Danyue lived in the US, she found it much easier to care for her son. Chen said children under 3 years old can go to a day care center there if their parents need to work. Some companies even offer day care services. For example, the New Jersey-based company Johnson and Johnson provides on-site day care facilities for over 500 children. These day care centers are open from 9 am to 6 pm. "The system in the US is very convenient. I could pick up my son when I finished work and I felt very safe leaving him there," Chen told the Global Times. Chen came back to China with her 2-year-old son and then gave birth to her second child. She finds the system in China less convenient. "In the US, neighbors and friends offer more help to parents than people do in China. If you don't have help from your parents and you don't hire an ayi, it is impossible for you to go back to work," Chen said. Chen thinks the idea of pinyang is possible as long as the parents can find people they trust.