When kindergartens disappear one after another, there is an ebb of parenting anxiety

microscopic story

2026.11.11 14:59

· From Shanghai

Full text 5263 words

Text | Microscopy Story, author | Cai Yu, editor | Fang Yuanjing

The “difficulty in enrolling in school” that once hung over the heads of countless families seems to have quietly withdrawn from public discussion.

It was once the collective memory of a generation: when you were pregnant, you had to rush to register, it was hard to get a ticket for kindergarten, and the price of housing in the school district affected the whole city.

In just a few years, this chain of anxiety is loosening. The changes are hidden in official data: the number of kindergartens nationwide will reach a peak in 2021, and by 2025, more than 60,000 kindergartens will have withdrawn within four years.

One message after another about the closure of kindergartens crosses the information stream, and what the public remembers are often just cold statistics.

Behind the numbers are ordinary people who have been swept up in this population wave and have gone through the ups and downs. Their voices are rarely heard.

This microscopy story tells the story of the people involved in this dramatic turn:

Some of them lined up downstairs in the hospital and got their last registration number that year. Ten years later, three kindergartens around their home had their seals successively affixed;

Someone has been the principal of a kindergarten for six years. On the closing day of the kindergarten, he accompanied the teachers to count and sell off the slides, teaching aids, and tablets one by one;

Some students planned to take the teacher preparation examination early, and began to prepare for it since their freshman and sophomore years. Only when they finally came to the exam did they realize that they were one of the few lucky ones in the class.

Here are their true stories:

Xiaoyu often feels a little guilty for giving birth to her eldest son in 2016, "not at the right time."

It seems now that that year was the first year that the comprehensive two-child policy was implemented, and it was catching up with the birth peak. Xiaoyu still remembers that when she was preparing for pregnancy, she had to prepare a profile-building strategy in advance.

As a non-Beijing citizen, it is not difficult for her to successfully give birth to her son in a public hospital in Beijing, but every step of the "strategy" must be carried out as planned and every step is indispensable.

At that time, when I wanted to find a good obstetrics department in a tertiary-level hospital, "If you had already filed a file from the day you got pregnant, it would be too late. The hospital's file might have been scheduled as far as eight months after your expected delivery date."

During the pregnancy preparation period, Xiaoyu read various news every day, such as "the dealer offered tens of thousands" and "someone went to Yanjiao to give birth", which made her panic.

For this reason, before she planned to have her eldest son, she set aside a few months to study the profile creation strategy: in the public account that guides profile creation, she wrote down the information about the obstetrics departments of major hospitals and the intensity of profile creation, and then screened out the ones closest to her home.

Choosing a hospital is not enough. The moment the pregnancy is detected, the next step must be followed immediately, which is to register in the community. At that time, Beijing’s requirement was that couples who were not residents of Beijing and wanted to give birth in Beijing had to bring their original ID cards, temporary residence permits, and B-ultrasound test sheets confirming pregnancy to the community to collect mother and child health records.

After getting the file, you can go to the hospital to queue up to create a file. The thresholds of each hospital are different. Some can make an appointment once pregnancy is confirmed, some require 6 weeks of pregnancy, and some require fetal heartbeat and fetal buds to be shown on the B-ultrasound to be "qualified to make an appointment."

"I didn't choose the hospital at that time, the hospital chose me." She finally chose a top-tier hospital not famous for its obstetrics department. It was three stations away from home and the obstetrics department was not crowded. On the day it was her turn, she asked her husband to go out at four in the morning. By 4:30, there was already a row of matzas lined up downstairs. Some people brought thermos cups and some were wrapped in military coats. Numbers were released at seven o'clock, and he got the last one.

Since then, Xiaoyu has discovered that many things on his eldest son’s growth path require “advance planning.” The confinement nanny must make an appointment in advance, the kindergarten must be lotteryd, and it is best to ask her to take time off in advance to get the vaccine, during working hours, otherwise she will have to queue for a long time on weekends. "The health stations are crowded on weekends. There are so many people. I don't know whether the vaccine is being administered or the virus is being spread."

Not to mention elementary school. Now my eldest son is in fourth grade, and their grade has the largest number of classes in the school, with five classes. However, the first grade where my neighbor’s son is in only has three classes enrolled this year, and the number of students in each class has not exceeded 35.

With the younger son in comparison, Xiaoyu's guilt towards her older son was even more overwhelming.

In 2021, when the eldest son was in middle school, the family moved to Chongqing. Two years later, Xiaoyu's youngest son was born. From the moment she opened her profile, Xiaoyu felt that everything was very different. Her eldest son's previous experience of "grabbing an account" was completely useless. There was no need to queue up to create a profile, he could just go and create it.

She originally thought that she would need to prepare various certificates in advance for the birth of her second child. Unexpectedly, Chongqing's "Birth Matter" was launched across the city on March 27, 2023. One form of application, one online process, no materials needed to be handed in. The official results are: 80 days reduced to 5 days, 14 links reduced to 2, 7 runs reduced to one no run.

In September this year, my youngest son entered a local public kindergarten, and the whole process went smoothly. Xiaoyu recalled that when she was looking for a kindergarten for her eldest son, she visited several private kindergartens and went into the classrooms one by one. This year, when her younger son wanted to sign up, she went there again, but all three were closed.

One was converted into a nursing home. The one opened next to the shopping mall is now a Miniso. The other one was the first to be closed. It is still empty and has not been rented out to this day.

When it was my younger son's turn to go to the first class, he happened to catch up with the country's free preschool education. Three years of kindergarten, two years of payment, and one year of exemption. In August 2025, when the youngest son turned 2 years old, he started receiving child care subsidies. 3,600 yuan a year, paid until the age of three. He was born in August 2023. According to the policy, the compensation will be from January 2025 to August 2026, a total of 20 months and 6,000 yuan.

"Elementary school should be less stressful," Xiaoyu said. Nowadays, almost no one around her is talking about school district housing. By the time the second child goes to elementary school, there will be far fewer children in the first grade than now. The contrast between before and after was too obvious, which made Xiaoyu feel a little sad.

The last time she picked up her youngest son from school, she chatted with Mr. Wang, the security guard at the gate of the park. He also lamented that there were fewer and fewer children.

"In the past few years, parents always came to the security room and asked me when the school would start enrolling students and what the enrollment teacher's phone number was. Now almost no one comes to ask." Lao Wang said that when teachers and principals chatted, they also said that it is difficult to recruit children now, and they planned to move some vacant classes for trusteeship, accept children over two years old, lower the enrollment age, and attract more students.

Lao Wang and his garden are still thinking of solutions, but some gardens are gone before they have time to think of solutions.

Elaine managed one of them. Since 2016, she was employed as the principal of a private kindergarten owned by an education group in Guangzhou until 2022, when the kindergarten was closed. Her current job is as an insurance sales agent.

In 16 and 2017, she never worried about enrollment.

Her kindergarten fees are not high in Guangzhou, 5,000 yuan a month, including half-day classes with foreign teachers, all of whom come from English-speaking countries. The education group behind this kindergarten is ranked high in the local area. It also has private elementary schools and middle schools. The middle school has a dual track for domestic and foreign studies. Many parents have signed up for this path, so they have not been worried about the number of students. As long as the kindergarten posts enrollment tweets on its official account or makes a call on Dianping, parents will call every now and then to make appointments to visit the kindergarten.

In 2020, the epidemic came. The kindergarten has been closed down and quarantined one after another, and has started and stopped, and the pace of enrollment has also slowed down.

At first, there were still people calling for consultation, but then the number of calls decreased, and they wanted to place advertisements in the community. Later, they started to work part-time to distribute flyers at the door of the community. Elaine studied Xiaohongshu and public accounts one by one, and wanted to see if self-media can bring in some students.

But the principal bears the pressure first, and the teachers are often the last to be notified suddenly.

Ruth is the kindergarten teacher. The week before she was notified of dismissal, she had just assigned her children practical tasks for the weekend: uploading a video of herself doing housework to a parent group, picking up autumn leaves and making a scrapbook. If she did well, she would be praised in public after returning from the National Day holiday.

The holiday was not over yet, and on the penultimate day, Ruth received a notice from the principal - the group decided to end the kindergarten business and would only operate in elementary and middle schools from now on. Teachers and staff would receive normal compensation.

Immediately afterwards, the first thing she had to do was to notify the parents of each class to make an appointment to come to the kindergarten to sign and collect the prepaid tuition fees.

Ruth and Elaine are not alone. According to the statistical bulletin of the Ministry of Education, there were 294,800 kindergartens nationwide in 2021, which was a record high. In that year, 3,117 new kindergartens were opened across the country. However, in the same year, the number of children in kindergartens began to decrease, with a decrease of 130,000.

By 2025, there will be 231,900 kindergartens left in the country, a decrease of 62,900 in four years. These gaps correspond to a downward birth curve: in 2016, 17.86 million people were born nationwide, and by 2023, only 9.02 million people will be left.

The fastest closing ones are private kindergartens. There are still 166,700 kindergartens in the country in 2021, and only 135,500 will be left in 2024. Elaine's kindergarten is among them. The number of kindergarten teachers is also decreasing, from 3.191 million to 2.6126 million.

During the closure period, Elaine led the teachers to sort out the remaining things in the garden, and put up everything that could be resold: beds for children’s lunch breaks, slides and shock-absorbing air mattresses in the playroom, tablets for classes, and tables, chairs, and bookcases in the classroom.

Ruth and her colleagues were crying while they were sorting things out. She said she was not sure what she was crying about. The farewell came too suddenly, and the children and the garden, those things that originally contained memories, had to be plated up one by one, and then sold one by one. She also vaguely felt that she was saying goodbye to her favorite industry.

The closure of kindergartens is not just a matter of this kindergarten. If the fertility rate goes down, kindergartens will inevitably shrink their enrollment on a large scale, and there will no longer be so many kindergarten teachers. She had no idea where to go in the future.

Elaine thought ahead of Ruth. She sensed the change earlier and made some mental preparations in advance. She planned to take a break first, spend time with her children at home, and prepare to change careers.

With her English major and education experience, she wants to try teaching English in other private schools, and also work in multiple fronts, trying as an insurance agent.

In the past few years of enrolling students, she has met many parents. Most of them are from well-off families and have plans for their children's future. In her opinion, it is relatively feasible to slowly turn the connections she has accumulated over the years into a business.

Ruth sent out her resume for a while, and finally worked as an admissions teacher at a physical training institution. "I still like children." Ruth said that when she was working as a kindergarten teacher, she just liked the environment with children. There was no intrigue, communication with children was simple and pleasant, and she could often reap the emotional value the children gave her.

But she is not optimistic about how long this organization can last. The decline in fertility rates will not only affect kindergartens, but all preschool institutions will be the first to feel the pain.

From 2016 to 2026, this education chain is like a wave, which has been waves for ten years. The first few waves seemed to hit the beach slowly and dispersed into the gaps in the sand without making any sound.

This is how kindergartens are closed. But it’s not just this wave. The waves behind came one after another, one after another, higher and higher, vaguely like a tsunami.

Next comes the turn of primary schools, middle schools, and universities. They are increasingly crowded with students entering higher education, and there are more and more fresh graduates every year.

In 2026, the number of college graduates nationwide is expected to reach 12.7 million, 480,000 more than the previous year and another historical peak. In addition, in the same year, 3.718 million people passed the national civil service examination, but only 38,100 positions were planned to be recruited. In other words, there were an average of 98 competitors for each position.

Qi Meng was one of the people who crowded the door. She is a fresh graduate of the 2026 class and graduated from the music department of a 211 university. Her current identity is the piano tutor of Xiaoyu's eldest son.

In fact, Qi Meng already knew that it would be difficult to find a job this year as early as a few years ago. She started paving the way since her freshman and sophomore years: besides piano and clarinet, she learned other musical instruments, and hired a separate vocal teacher to broaden her employment possibilities little by little.

In her spare time, she worked as a piano tutor in a family like Xiaoyu's to earn some living expenses. It's just that most of the money earned from tutoring is returned to the class fees for professional courses.

She thought about building herself up to be what the market wanted - the current music teacher recruitment exam requires the ability to choreograph, arrange music, and more than one musical instrument. The more skills you have, the more confident you will be.

But there are fewer opportunities left for her than before.

In the recruitment of primary and secondary school teachers in Jiangxi Province, there will be 13,000 positions in 2021, and only more than 2,100 will be left in 2025; for the most popular kindergarten teacher position in Siming District, Xiamen, 3 people are recruited, and 301 people have passed the review.

Sitting in the examination room were Qi Meng's classmates, as well as those employee-based teachers who had been on the substitute teaching platform for several years - they had no establishment and had to sit on the same exam paper as the fresh graduates.

With great difficulty, Qi Meng passed the exam and became the one with the best job search in the class. Some of the people in the same dormitory are going to study abroad, some are staying at home full-time to prepare for the postgraduate entrance exams, the civil service exams, and World War II, and some still have no whereabouts. But after landing, she discovered that the preparation plan for 2027 was even less than that for 2026.

Schools that train kindergarten teachers are also quietly making a U-turn. There is a preschool teacher's college in Guangzhou. In 2025, it established a new major in smart health and elderly care. The school, which teaches people how to take care of children, has begun to teach people how to take care of the elderly.

At present, the end of this education chain is still expanding its enrollment to accommodate the once strong student supply. In 2025, "double first-class" universities announced that they will expand their undergraduate enrollment by another 20,000 people.

Minister of Education Huai Jinpeng once predicted that the higher education school-age population will peak in 2032. The time difference is stuck here - the generation born in 2016 will not have their turn to enter college until around 2034, and that will be the time when the competition for the college entrance examination will be the most stressful.

But when Xiaoyu's youngest son takes the college entrance examination, the number of people will drop sharply again, and the queue will be half shorter than that of his elder brother's generation. Only then will the wave truly recede.

In the autumn when Qi Meng was admitted to the establishment, he was still teaching his eldest son. Before the employment notice came out, he was working as a tutor.

Xiaoyu and Qi Meng talked about how her husband lined up at the hospital in the early morning seven years ago and got the last registration number.

Although Qi Meng has never experienced it, she seems to be able to feel this kind of anxiety, just like she refreshes the registration system and test scores every day to grab the one-in-a-million position.

Parenting anxiety is receding, but no one is really winning the change.

In the evening, when Xiaoyu went to pick up his youngest son from school, Lao Wang stood at the gate of the kindergarten as usual, watching the children being picked up by their parents one by one. When the last child came out, he closed the iron door, locked it, and pulled it twice to confirm that it was locked.

He has been doing this routine for many years, but the sounds inside and outside the door are getting younger and younger every year.

The disappeared kindergartens, the slides that were sold, and the only teacher staff are all shadows cast by the same curve. The old difficulties have faded away, and new choices are waiting for ordinary people in the future.

Lao Wang closed the iron door. As long as there are children, the door will open on time the next day. It’s just that the stories belonging to this generation are no longer the same.

(The characters in this article have adopted pseudonyms at the request of the interviewees)

Respect for the original work, if you are qualified, you should be appreciated.

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