Chinese parents feel the strain as schools break for summer
- Competitive parents are cramming their children’s free time with study tours and extra classes
As children in China look forward to their six-week summer holiday, parents are finding themselves suffering from higher levels of stress and financial strain than they do during the rest of the school year.
“No freedom summer holiday” became a trending topic on Weibo, China’s Twitter, in May, as parents began spending much time and money planning their children’s holiday schedule. It was a similar tale last year, when “Having 30,000 yuan (US$4,350) monthly salary cannot afford the summer holiday” also went viral online.
Both trends reflect the anxiety and fear of parents that their children will lag behind other classmates during the summer break. To keep their offspring in study mode, parents try to fill the holiday – which typically begins in July and ends in September – with different classes and tours, at ever-increasing expense.
According to online media platform Sohu News, parents in cities such as Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, are most willing to spend on their children’s education during the break.
“I feel much more pressure during the summer holiday than on normal school days since I need to arrange different activities for them [her children],” said Chan Lee, a 40-year-old Guangzhou mother of two primary schoolchildren.
“A study tour costs 35,000 yuan and there are also classes and tutorials which are necessary to apply for,” she said, explaining that, since schools did not assign much summer homework, she sent her children to holiday classes to better prepare them for the next academic year.