Majority of Chinese people want two children

BEIJING - Around 78 percent of Chinese people want to have two children if the country’s family planning policy permits while career-oriented people want children after 30 years of age, says a latest survey.

The majority of respondents — 77.5 percent — of those polled said having two children would be “perfect”. Most of the 6,183 respondents survey said they would like to have children before the age of 30, China Daily said.

Only 18.3 percent said they wanted a single child.

China’s family planning policy introduced two decades ago restricts around 35.9 percent of the population, mostly in large and medium-sized cities, to the “one-child rule”.

Only urban couples who are both the only children of their respective families may have two children.

About 56.9 percent of the participants prefer to have children at a relatively early age.

Meanwhile, 26.7 percent of respondents wanted to postpone having children to the age of 30 or later, so they can give priority to career development or to “enjoy time as a couple first”.

“When is it time to have a child? We don’t really think about it. We just take it as it comes,” 24-year-old Zhang Huinan, who works at a vehicle test station in Zhejiang province was quoted as saying.

The best child-bearing age, however, is from 25 to 30 years as late childbirths can be harmful to both the mother and the baby, says Song Jian, an associate professor in the population development studies centre at Renmin University.

Women should be encouraged to have children at a “proper age” to help improve their well-being, he said.

About 67 percent of those polled said economic condition played a major factor in couples deciding to have children, the survey said.

The survey also showed that 38.1 percent felt it was a “wise choice” to have children during post-graduate studies while 22.7 percent of the respondents said childbearing was actually a distraction and burden for students.

The country’s revised National Regulations for Students of Colleges and Universities no longer has any restriction on college students from getting married and having children during their studies.

“Once you start working, you cannot stop. So it is better to have children at an early age,” a first-year graduate student named Qin, who is also the mother of a one-year-old child was quoted as saying.

However, an adviser for graduate students said on condition of anonymity that a masters’ programme student has a tight schedule because of writing papers, going on internships and hunting for jobs. Therefore, having a child during college may have an adverse impact on his or her career.

Meanwhile, the respondents born in the 1980s — about 55 percent — said they wanted to let their parents take care of their children.

“Don’t count on young couples like us to do the child-raising,” said Wu Yanqiong, a Shanghai resident in her early 20s. Both she and her husband are too busy to take care of children and it is expensive to employ a nanny, she said.