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Text | Mi Li Ma

Recently, Mi Li Ma heard a new term - "unfinished baby".

It talks about children who have studied hard for more than ten years, but finally become unemployed after graduation. Their life is like an unfinished building and is forced to come to a halt.

When I saw the word "烂尾娃", my first reaction was: true and heartbreaking

This year, the number of college graduates has reached 11.79 million, but what were our parents like 20 years ago? Almost only one-third of this year's.

The devaluation of academic qualifications is an established fact.

Today’s college students are either taking the postgraduate entrance exam, taking the civil service exam, or returning home to follow in their father’s footsteps.

It's not that young people don't want to work hard, it's just that the market can't support so many college students. Not to mention ordinary first-tier and second-tier college graduates, even if you graduate from a prestigious university with a master's or doctoral degree, you can't say that you will definitely find a job that suits you in all aspects.

In Beijing, many young people working in large factories used to have high salaries and busy work (earning more and spending less), and a couple could usually save money on their own to buy a small house and settle down in just a few years.

Nowadays, large companies are laying off employees and cutting salaries, housing prices are ridiculously high, and the cost of raising children is unlimited. Young people in big cities have completely lost their sense of belonging and security. They simply don't buy houses and go back to their hometowns after working there for a few years.

A few days ago, Mi Li’s mother saw a video about a young person who returned to her hometown to be a “full-time child”. She said that her parents had a high pension and kept asking her to return to her hometown, saying that if she went back she would just “have to add another pair of bowls and chopsticks” and if she didn’t want to stay at home, she could just find an easy job.

If you drift in a big city, work 996, take care of the children 007, and your parents feel sorry for them, they will have to "drift" with you, contributing manpower, effort and money. If you don't buy a house, it's fine. But once you do, you will have to empty the wallets of four elderly people.

Now that I think about it, being a "full-time child" is also a form of filial piety - accompanying parents, leading a regular life, low cost of living in hometown, and high retirement salary for parents, it is a win-win situation.

In the AI ​​era, many jobs have gradually been replaced by artificial intelligence. While we are still worried that people who do translation, design, article writing, and coding jobs will lose their jobs and be able to drive for Didi in the future, driverless cars are already on the road.

Orders for the "Carrot Run" driverless car have surged in Wuhan. The degree to which people have accepted and embraced this trend is beyond your and my imagination. I believe that it won't be long before the profession of driver will be replaced.

What major or skill should I learn to solve my problems once and for all? What will ensure that I can have a stable life? There is no answer.

What should this generation of parents who push their children to do? . .

I have written before in "Are the 'first generation' who pushed their children to take exams' just going to lay low?" that in recent years, many families that were planning to go international have changed direction and switched to continuing their studies within the system.

Because the "return on investment" has been calculated.

A friend of Mi Li's father has a child in the third year of junior high school. His grades are average.Can get into a regular high school, but not a key oneWhen the child was still in elementary school, my friend had already planned to send him to an international school or the international department of a public school for high school, change his career path, and go to the United States to study for an undergraduate degree.

Later, my friend changed his mind. He did some calculations and found that apart from the cost of studying in an international school,Going to the United States to study for an undergraduate degree would cost three to four million, conservatively speaking.Moreover, given his child's situation, he cannot apply to top-ranked schools. The key is to find a job in China.The monthly salary is only about 5,000 to 8,000 yuan.

It is still good to have a job. Nowadays, there are a lot of unemployed returnees, including some who graduated from prestigious universities.

My friend said that with this money, it is better to go to a regular high school and take a bachelor's degree in China. The job after graduation will probably be 5,000 to 7,000 yuan, but you can save 3 to 4 million yuan.This money can be saved for the children, so that even if they don’t have a good job, they can survive for a while.

Like Mi Li's father's friend, there are many people who have changed their education

But then again, if you push your child too hard, even if you work within the system, you won't save much money.

The article “The End of 18 Years of Raising Children in Haidian” that went viral on WeChat Moments some time ago is not an isolated case.

They are carefully nurtured from a young age, with preschool education, English, sports, art, thinking enlightenment, international or bilingual kindergartens. In order for their children to go to a good elementary school, they would like to spend tens of millions to buy a house in a school district before their children are even born.

In primary school, they have to learn Chinese, math and English, and they have to learn math and math. They have to learn foreign teachers, study abroad during holidays, and participate in various competitions. When they enter junior high school and high school, the tuition fees are rising. In order to save their children's time, parents choose one-on-one tutoring, which costs hundreds of thousands or even millions of yuan a year.

In the end, there is a high probability that you will get into an ordinary first-tier university, even a 211 university will be difficult to get into.

Four years later, the child graduated from college and became a “unfinished product”.

So now many middle-class parents in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have given up on pushing their children to succeed and are now focusing on pushing themselves to succeed.

Especially for the "test-taking generation" in the capital, their children's IQ may return to the mean and they may not be able to perform well, but they are still confident in their IQ, abilities, connections and level of effort.

Mi Li’s mother used to know a friend who worked at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. After having a child, she looked for opportunities to change jobs. She jumped from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications to Beijing Institute of Technology, and then from Beijing Institute of Technology to Renmin University.

Beihang University is actually a very good school. Although it is not a 985 school, it is one of the top 211 schools. Unfortunately, the primary school attached to Beihang University is too average. In order for their children to go to a good school, parents have to try their best.

I saw one beforeMy mother is a PhD graduate from Peking University School of Medicine and my father is a master's degree director of research and development at a pharmaceutical company., and he has become a poor student. My son has been at the bottom of the class since the first grade, and there is basically no chance of him getting into a high school.

What to do? She turned to herself and forced herself to switch tracks and start a side business. She even earned more from the side business than from her main business. She bought a third house in Shanghai and also had several properties in other places.

Then I collected all kinds of information and conducted in-depth research, and found 9 routes suitable for ordinary children for my son.

She even listed a detailed table for the blue-collar route, and for higher vocational majors, she researched out three "best" ones, including optometry, veterinary medicine, and mechatronics.

Raising a child under the influence of a certain force is essentially a gamble. We have seen many successful cases, which are actually the result of "survivor bias". But it seems impossible to just lie down and do nothing. What should we do?

• Chicken Ability > Chicken Knowledge

Arrange your children's study, but don't deprive them of their life, because many abilities and skills are acquired in life.

Cooking and tidying the room are living skills; planning and arranging a trip are overall planning skills; hanging out with friends and classmates is interpersonal skills; proactively thinking, seeking help, and trying to move forward when encountering problems are problem-solving skills...

• A good attitude determines your life

No matter how well you study, your mentality must not be bad.

Although I often complain about Mi Li's unreliability, his good attitude really puts me at ease. No matter what kind of university he gets into in the future, he can be self-satisfied and not get stuck in a dead end.

Many times, we are not defeated by difficulties, but our mentality collapses first, and then the person collapses.

• Lifelong learning, embrace change

Twenty years ago, who could have imagined that we could go out without a wallet and travel the country with just a mobile phone? Who could have predicted that there is something called AI that can be our helper, but can also take away our jobs?

The world is constantly changing, and so should people. Children must have the ability to learn throughout their lives and embrace change so that they can respond to ever-changing situations with constancy.

• Work hard to make money and give your child confidence

If you really can't roll up, and can't lie down flat, and do sit-ups, you might as well stand up and work hard to make money.

If the children are excellent, they can be handed over to the country; if the children are not good enough, they can be left alone as "full-time children". Everyone has their own happiness, right? !