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The fledglings who don’t want to leave the nest
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YANG Xuming is graduating this summer. But unlike her classmates at Shanghai Business School, who are busy sending out job applications, she has a different attitude toward life.
“I’ll just take a break and stay at home,” says the business English major. “It’s so tough to find a job.”
Yang is among a growing number of young Chinese graduates joining what is globally referred to as NEET — “not in education, employment or training.” Some of them would like to have a gap year to enrich themselves before landing a job, others like Yang just plan to continue living at home and relying on her parents to support them.
In China, the phenomenon of able-bodied but unproductive young people who live off their parents is called ken lao zu, or “people who bite the old folks.”
The term NEET was actually first coined in a 1999 British report on social trends. A subsequent 2007 UK survey found a fifth of people aged 16-24 in England, Scotland and Wales were in that category. In Canada, a 2012 report concluded that about 13 percent of Canadians between 15 and 29 years of age were NEETs.
Sociologists point to many causes for the young not leaving the nest: rising living costs, a tighter job market, education out of step with the needs of a rapidly changing job market and parental overindulgence.
In China, many blame the syndrome of spoiled single children.
According to a report released on Monday by the Shanghai survey team of the National Bureau of Statistics, 68.1 percent of the parents of new graduates are willing to financially support their children after graduation. About a third of parents said they would continue supporting their children as long as it was financially feasible to give them an easier life.
The survey interviewed the parents of 806 college graduates in Shanghai.
“Ken lao is not an admirable term,” says Qian Biaohong, the 50-year-old father of a son who is graduating this summer from Shanghai University. “It implies that our children are trying to steal money from us.”
His son Qian Jiamao majored in accounting and finance but isn’t interested in working in that sector. Instead, young Qian plans to spend one or two years traveling around the world, with all expenses paid for by his parents.
His father says he doesn’t feel “bitten.”
“We parents have the responsibility to provide our children with solid financial support for a good life and a brighter future,” he says. “If travel experience is good for his future life, then why not?”
“But even for such graduation trips, students back home usually pay their own bills,” says Canadian Brent Larmour who’s living in Shanghai for five years. “When I had my gap year trip in Europe, I used my own money saved from part-time jobs.”
Actually, Qian’s views correlate with those of a large number of parents interviewed in the Shanghai survey. About 56 percent said they would support their offspring taking a break after graduation and staying at home.
“We don’t mind feeding our daughter until she gets married,” says Yang’s mother, citing the stress and competition of the workaday world and a desire to shield her daughter from that.
Yang says her dream is to become a journalist, but prospects of landing a reporting job were dimmed when she failed the entrance exam for a journalism major four years ago.
“Life is short,” the mother says. “Her father and I have worked hard for almost all our lives. Now that we are comfortable financially, we want our daughter to enjoy her life. I don’t care if she earns money or not.”
Yang has never worked. Every summer and winter holiday when classmates were taking part-time jobs in fast-food restaurants or tutoring children, she traveled abroad to shop. The trips, of course, were paid for by her parents.
“To be honest, sometimes I admire my friends who are self-reliant,” says Yang. “I have been taking it for granted that I can live off my parents.”
Qian Biaohong, the Shanghai father, spent most of his savings to buy a new apartment in Pudong for his son. That’s a prerequisite for marriage in today’s China. “The high price of the real estate makes it impossible for young generations to afford an apartment on their own,” he says.
“This is an important reason that ‘biting the old folks’ is a social problem in China,” says Wang Qiwei, a Chinese-American psychologist.
According to Dr Wang, the “biters” are not just spending their parents’ money, they are also relying on parents to cook meals, do their laundry and tidy up after them.
“Living off parents without having to share costs or responsibilities is all part of ken lao,” Wang says.
Western culture used to hold that those beyond the age of 18 should live independently from parents, though that idea has certainly broken down with the NEET generation.
Chinese tradition is very different. Chinese parents believe it’s their responsibility to take care of their children their whole lives, if necessary.
“The reason why we work so hard to earn money is to provide a good life for our children,” says Yang’s mother.
Still, there are some parents who believe that children have better prospects for the future if they learn to be independent and take responsibility for their own lives.
About 31 percent of parents interviewed in the Shanghai survey refused to be “bitten” by their children.
For psychologist Wang, the NEET phenomenon and the willingness of Chinese parents to pamper children so excessively is an undesirable trend.
“The fact that so many young people who have good health and education are unwilling to work hard to pay their own way in life is leading to a weak generation, with no ambition or sense of responsibility,” he says.
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