Agonizing fathers
As one of the headaches of being older parents, fathers are especially agonizing due to the increased costs of raising kids.
A father in his 60s told the newspaper that his daughter was still at college. Unaffordable education tuition has now become a big challenge for the retired man. Many fathers in their 50s therefore have to work harder to save more money, with the intent of continually supporting their college-aged children after retirement. Children growing up in such families where fathers are extremely busy with jobs, face high risks of being unsociable and eccentric.
The new family pattern consisting of older parents and younger children brings in more trouble beyond economic burdens as older parents tend to spoil their children. This is even worse in China because of the one-child policy.
"Unexpected problems may show up once the age gap between the two generations in the family widens to a certain extent," said Yue Shanyao, expert in family education.
As one of the most obvious troubles, many families with this pattern suffer from the "little emperor syndrome"！a situation in which parents lavish love, attention, and wealth on their only child. As a result, this very child becomes spoiled and behaves like a "little emperor." They often show no respect to traditional moral values and discipline.
Sometimes, this goes to another extreme when fathers try to better raise the child by traditional standards. When this happens, the parents get improperly rigid when their children resist traditional rules in the family.
"If I were given the second chance, I would choose to have a child at a younger age," sighed Mr. Lin, a resident in Beijing. He represents a considerable number of fathers in the country, who have their children in their 40s and feel lost about how to better raise their children, especially under the circumstance where difficulties in communication between the two generations arise.
Hence, more teenagers breaking the law like Li the singer's son have been witnessed in the country.
