When my brother and his wife had their first child recently in Shanghai, they checked into a post-partum centre, where a team of doctors, nutritionists, physical therapists and nurses help mothers recover and babies grow.
It felt reassuring, like a medical institution, he said, but with everything else you might fancy, such as a baby swimming pool, delicious meals, a massage room and a spa.
What it does not have is a place for meddling grannies, whom the centre promises to keep at bay.
Nurses care for newborn babies at a postnatal centre in Hangzhou. Business is booming, says director Ying Zihao, because mothers increasingly want to receive professional postnatal care so they can get back to work quickly and avoid conflict with their own parents, who might expect more traditional postnatal-care methods. Photo: Justin Jin
A new mother exercises to tighten her stomach in the Hangzhou postnatal centre. Photo: Justin Jin
But these modern choices do not come cheap. My nephew’s first month cost his parents 70,000 yuan (US$9,700), a median fee at maternity centres in top cities where a similar stay can cost up to 300,000 yuan.
This opened my eyes to how expensive it is to bring up a child in urban China, and how it could be one of the reasons so many people are opting to have fewer children or none at all.
In a competitive environment where parents feel pressure to invest heavily in their children – with extracurricular violin, dance and language courses, for example – spiralling fees are making people think twice about having children. Several estimates put child-rearing costs in urban China higher than those in the United States and Europe, while China’s per capita gross domestic product is lower.
Song Xinxia (second right), a former concert violinist, sits with her music students as they prepare to perform at a concert for their parents in Shanghai. Competition in China is so fierce that anxious parents sign up kids for extracurriculars such as violin, tennis or chess classes. Photo: Justin Jin
There are more than 8 billion humans on Earth, according to the United Nations. And for decades, China has had more people than any other country.
But now, China’s 1.4 billion population is growing at its slowest pace in decades and it is no longer the most populous nation.
Falling birth rates and rising life expectancies are common traits among industrialised countries. As China emerges as a 21st century superpower, it, too, follows this pattern – but its sheer size could slow the global economy in many ways.
The rising cost of child-rearing has led newlyweds Shi Lin and Guo Huanhuan, who live in Chongqing, to plan on having just one child, or perhaps none. Raising children, Guo believes, is too demanding. “I want to give my child the best,” she says, “but I also want to have my own life and not be tied to childcare.” Photo: Justin Jin
A falling population has its upsides, too. Pockets of humanity are finally reversing the reckless growth that is draining the world’s resources and disrupting the climate.
In urban planning, the downside of weakened property demand could be offset by improving lifestyles in crowded cities. And future generations of children might get more space for individual development under less competitive pressure.
Wan Liping (centre), a retired doctor, practises with other older women in Nanjing for a show billed as Beautiful Mother Fashion Week. The women say they had little opportunity to express themselves or celebrate their beauty growing up in a more tradition-bound China. Photo: Justin Jin
The hardest thing about photographing this story is the abstractness of it all. A tiny percentile change in a massive population is not something that you can see.
I looked for clues among individuals and found two contrasting families in Shanghai.
Lu Jinfu and his wife, Zhou Yafen, both nearly 90, raised three children in the 1950s, when that was encouraged by party leader Mao Zedong. By the time their children had grown up in the late ’70s and ’80s, China was under the one-child policy, and each of them gave birth to one child.
Today, even though the policy has been relaxed, the third generation no longer want children, and a single girl in the fourth generation is passing on the genes of her great-grandparents.
Five-year-old Kong Niling visits her great-grandfather Lu Jinfu and great-grandmother Zhou Yafen in Shanghai. The couple had three children who each had one child in accordance with the one-child policy, but Niling is their only great-grandchild. Photo: Justin Jin
Kong Niling is the only fourth-generation descendant of her great-grandparents. Photo: Justin Jin
Another family I met had a single child under the one-child policy, then gave birth to a second child when the rules were relaxed to allow two children in 2016, and now a third after permission was extended for three children in 2021.
The mother, a successful business owner able to afford her children’s expensive schooling, said she feels proud to support China’s national rejuvenation programme with her children. On national holidays, she dresses the family in red pullovers emblazoned with the legend: “Made in China”.
Yi Dingrong (left) and her husband, Zhao Bo, visit Shanghai’s Bund with their children: 16-year-old Yanxi, three-year-old Shurui and two-year-old Yikun. The couple, who own a Chinese medicine business, are among the few city dwellers affluent enough to have a large family. They had their first baby when the one-child policy was in effect. Once it was eased, they had two more. Yi finds having three children fulfilling. “There’s more energy, more self-disciplined learning,” she says. Photo: Justin Jin
At a pet centre, I met young people who have opted for pets instead of children. While spending their weekend doting on their four-legged friend they told me the prospect of raising a child with all the attendant responsibility and expectations was too daunting.
Then I came across a group of female professionals in their late 20s and early 30s hiring male escorts on a night out. It was all good, clean fun, but until recently, females of this age would have been under immense pressure to get married and have children.
In a vivid display of how gender roles are shifting in urban areas, women at a Shanghai karaoke bar enjoy the company of male escorts hired for their night out. Young professional women in China are increasingly choosing their careers and social lives over settling down. Photo: Justin Jin
This group, empowered by their financial independence, hired the escorts to sing with them, pour them beer and tell jokes. They are in no hurry to make babies.
