Parents choose to leave their homes, full of helplessness
In line with its economic and social development, China has experienced a large-scale population movement in the past 30 years.
The total number of migrants in China was only 6.6 million in 1982, but has increased dramatically since the 1990s, with the number of migrants in China rising to 221 million in 2010.
Once a parent chooses to go out to work, the child can only stay behind or move with them, which is inconvenient either way, but why must they go?
The main reason is that it's hard to make enough money to make ends meet in their hometowns.
Data from China's Rural Statistics Yearbook shows that in 2014, farmers who stayed in the countryside earned 824 yuan a month, while those who went out to work could earn up to 2,864 yuan.
In almost all reports on left-behind and migrant children, parents believe that leaving home to work is a way to give their children a better life, higher education and to excel.
In an environment where basic economic conditions determine everything, going out to work is a desperate choice.
In China, parental mobility affects hundreds of millions of children
When parents go out to work, there are two ways of resettling their children:
One is to let the children follow their parents out of their hometowns to the towns and cities, and the other is to let the children stay in their hometowns after one or both of their parents leave home.
In 2012, the public about the defense of the different places of the college entrance examination Jim Hite, the issue of mobile children as a group of issues pushed to the public, the same year, after the death of the Binjie dumpster five boys warming deaths, more and more appear in the media to leave the children's tragedy.
According to a projection based on census data by Prof. Duan Chengrong and others at Renmin University of China's School of Social and Population Studies, the size of the nation's migrant children in 2010 was 35.81 million, and the number of left-behind children was 69.73 million.
A more graphic figure is that one out of every eight children in China is a migrant child and two are left-behind children.
Nearly half of the children who follow their parents out of the country go to the seven major labor-importing provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Shandong, Henan and Fujian.
And half of the children left behind in rural areas are concentrated in the six major labor-exporting provinces of Sichuan, Henan, Anhui, Guangdong, Hunan and Guangxi.
The number of left-behind children in each of the six provinces is more than 4 million, accounting for more than 40 percent of local rural children.
In the eyes of the children, it is better to be displaced by their parents than to be left alone at home
Peking University completed a tracking survey of Chinese families in 2010, interviewing 8,990 children aged 0-15.
The results of the survey showed that migrant children were much better off than left-behind children in terms of being accompanied by their parents, early education and living environment.
Children who follow their parents to the towns and cities also enjoy the living environment in the city, with access to running water, clean fuel in the kitchen, and improved sanitation such as flushing toilets and garbage collection services.
More importantly, parents of migrant children become more involved in their children's development.
Among the sampled respondents, migrant children feel happier than left-behind children. Left-behind children who lacked parental companionship were more deficient in interpersonal and social skills, and were lonelier.
Why do more parents leave their children behind if the city is better?
If the city is so much better, why don't you bring me there too? This should be the voice of the vast majority of left-behind children.
The biggest reason is that most of the wage earners who are far from home live in collective dormitories and temporary sheds and spend most of their days working. There are simply no conditions to bring their children with them.
Even if they have the means to bring their children to live in the city, they still have to face insurmountable obstacles brought about by a number of policy settings.
In a six-part documentary broadcast by CCTV in 2015, the episode "Long-Held Children" featured migrant children.
The children grew up following their parents to Shanghai, where they took art classes after school. They speak fluent English, rehearse beautiful operas and play the piano well.
But even after living in Shanghai for 10 years, they can't take the middle or high school entrance exams because they don't have hukou.
After completing their third year, they can only choose to go to a specialized school, go home and take the midterm exam, or just drop out of school.
So even with their parents, the proportion of these children who have no confidence in their future is the same as that of children left behind at home.
The inability to obtain an urban hukou is the main reason why parents can't take their children with them when they go out.
Besides not being able to take the middle and high school entrance exams in their localities, migrant children without a hukou are also unable to enjoy local public **** benefits such as health insurance.
For most rural parents, the best way out of their current lives is for their children to go to university. Hukou and money are the most important conditions for reaching that goal.
As for companionship, it's hard enough to juggle under the weight of life.
(This article was written by Tim Tang: tangyeqin@dtcj.com)
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