Explainer | What are ‘full-time children’ jobs? Increasing numbers of young China adults prefer house chores over formal employment
- Young Chinese professionals are entering a brutal job market
- One popular alternative is for them to take care of their parents for an allowance
Amidst a high youth unemployment rate in China, a new trend called “full-time children” has emerged among young adults.
Rather than pursue traditional jobs, full-time children are hired by their parents and tasked with household chores and caregiving in exchange for financial support.
A group titled “Full-time Children’s Work Communication Centre” boasts around 4,700 members on Douban, a Chinese social media platform, and the hashtag “full-time sons and daughters” has garnered over 3.1 million views on Xiaohongshu, China’s Instagram.
As the new trend becomes more common in China, the Post explains what makes it so appealing to young adults and why it might help ease China’s burden as the population ages.
Not ‘boomerang kids’
Some observers dismiss the trend as merely a reinvention of the pejorative phrase ken lao or “the generation that eats the old” that emerged in the 2000s. Often labelled as “boomerang kids” or Neet (not in education, employment, or training), experts say full-time children are not necessarily a new phenomenon.
