A study conducted by Nankai University (NKU) and Henan University of Technology (HAUT) in China found that working more than 40 hours a week significantly reduces people’s desire to have children.
Night shifts, on-call work, working on weekends, etc. disrupt daily rhythms, take away time from partners, and increase anxiety about the future – this negative cycle is thought to be one of the causes of the declining birthrate.
Will our work-centered lives be a cornerstone to our future, or an obstacle?
Time Trap? The inconvenient truth about raising children and working long hours
China maintained a one-child policy for many years, but in recent years has made a major shift toward allowing couples to have two or even three children .
However, the birth rate continues to fall, and the problems of demographic distortion and aging are becoming more serious. Many people may first think of economic and institutional factors such as “housing and education costs are too high” and “lack of support for raising children,” but one factor that has recently begun to attract particular attention is “lack of free time.”
The claim that long working hours are discouraging people from starting a family is being heard in various parts of society.
For example, the “996” working style that is often heard of in urban areas of China involves working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week, like a never-ending marathon.
Long working hours are being raised as a serious issue in Japan as well, but China’s work culture is also extremely hard, to the point that it is often mocked that “it is common to cut down on not only leisure time but even sleep.”
Research reports from around the world, including Japan, the United States, and Europe, have shown that this kind of time pressure places a greater burden on family life than expected.
However, there have been few studies conducted on such a large scale and with such large regional differences as in China.
Additionally, we hear voices from the younger generations in China saying, “We may be economically prosperous, but we lack peace of mind and time.”
As people continue to work desperately to advance their careers, they become increasingly anxious about whether they will have the physical and mental energy to raise children. In a sense, this is like “searching for the oasis of family in a work environment that feels like walking through a desert.”
To answer these questions, this study used data from a large-scale survey conducted across China to examine the relationship between long working hours and the desire to have children.
A life of work that takes away time to have children
The research team used data from the 2020 China Family Tracking Survey (CFPS) and analyzed a sample of approximately 20,000 people.
Because the CFPS collects information on a wide range of factors, such as age, gender, annual income, health status, and family structure, it is possible to examine in detail how “working hours” and ” desire to have children ” relate to other factors.
Furthermore, we investigated the impact of working overtime “more than 40 hours per week” on fertility intentions, taking into account regional differences across provinces and cities.
What’s unique about the research design is that it didn’t just categorize people by “working hours,” but also by detailed differences in working styles, such as night shifts, weekend work, and on-call (being contactable 24 hours a day).
We conducted a comprehensive analysis to determine the extent to which factors such as the disruption to daily routine caused by night shifts, time lost with family due to working weekends, and the mental stress of on-call work are reducing people’s desire to have children.
The results showed that when working hours were broken down into smaller chunks, such as less than 20 hours a week, people tended to have a higher desire to have children.
On the other hand, the negative effect clearly intensifies when working more than 40 hours a week, with fertility declining most sharply in the 40-50 hour work group.
Although individual differences become somewhat larger when it comes to overworking more than 60 hours, overall the negative effects seem to be strong.
Interestingly, those who work night shifts, weekends, or are on-call and are therefore more likely to be “always at work” are even less likely to want to have children.
Specifically, among those who work 0-20 hours a week (part-time or certain flexible working arrangements, etc.), about 65% answered that they “want to have children within the next two years.” Meanwhile, among those who work 20-40 hours a week within the so-called full-time standard, about 50% answered that they “plan to have children.”
However, when the working week is 40-50 hours, the desire to have children drops significantly to 32%, and for those working 50-60 hours of overtime per week, it drops further to 25%. According to the research team, one of the reasons for this is that once the working hours exceed 40, the mental and physical burden increases sharply, and there is a sudden decrease in the amount of time that can be spent with one’s partner or on self-development. Furthermore, for those working overtime over 60 hours a week, although the average for all respondents was 22%, there was a large degree of individual variation, with some respondents saying that they “had almost no motivation to start a family.”
Differences in work patterns were also notable. Among those who answered that they “frequently” work night shifts, weekend shifts, or on-call, the percentage of those who said they “want to have children within the next two years” dropped even further to around 20%. Conversely, in workplaces where flextime systems are available or where remote work is common, this figure rebounds to around 35-40%.
The research team pointed out, “We found that the more long working hours and irregular working hours a woman is in her environment, the more cautious she tends to be about childbirth and child-rearing. In particular, when working more than 40 hours a week, the psychological burden and lack of time appear to seriously reduce her desire to have a child . ”
Furthermore, there was a tendency for women to be more sensitive to overtime than men.
In China, too, there is strong social pressure for women to be responsible for child-rearing, so it is thought that long working hours have a greater impact on women.
It was also striking that unmarried people were more likely to hesitate when deciding whether or not to have a family because of long working hours.
Many studies have also shown that environmental stress can profoundly affect fertility in animals.
For example, when animals experience chronic stress due to a lack of food, climate change, or an increase in predators, reproductive behavior itself may be suppressed.
This is thought to be because hormone balance changes in order to conserve energy and prioritize survival, resulting in less energy being directed toward mating and reproduction.
In fact, there have been many reported cases of significant declines in reproductive rates in areas where wildlife habitats have been damaged, or in livestock breeding conditions when rearing conditions deteriorate.
This phenomenon is similar to the mechanism by which long working hours and irregular work schedules reduce fertility in humans, and it can be said that the biological tendency for “harsh environments = avoiding reproductive costs” exists regardless of species.
Why is this research groundbreaking?
First, it is based on large-scale, diverse data covering the whole of China, and goes as far as to break down not only working hours but also working styles. Secondly, it provides specific working hour boundaries, such as “fertility increases at less than 20 hours and drops significantly at over 40 hours,” which will provide a valuable hint for considering future measures to combat the declining birthrate and work style reforms. These comprehensive and multifaceted approaches have the potential to have an impact not only on China’s efforts to combat the declining birthrate, but on global efforts as well.
Can work and family be balanced? A life choice is required
With a little imagination, the results of this research can be intuitively understood.
If you work from morning till night, you may not have time to think about your future family when you get home.
People who work night shifts have their day and night reversed, disrupting their physical and mental rhythms, and people who work weekends have extremely limited opportunities to spend time with family and friends.
People on-call have little time to rest as they are constantly under pressure, never knowing when they will be called upon.
In such a situation, it is not surprising that the vague anxiety of “What will I do if I have a child ?” leads to resignation, such as “It’s just not possible right now.”
Further exacerbating the problem is the heavy burden placed on women.
Even in China , the idea that “childcare and housework are primarily the responsibility of women” still persists, so there is a lot of pressure to take on the responsibilities of childcare and housework in addition to pregnancy and childbirth itself.
For unmarried people, this is the time when they are deciding whether or not to plan a family, so if long working hours feel like a burden, it is only natural that they will be inclined to think, “I’ll put off marriage and childbirth.”
On the other hand, in workplaces that allow flexible working styles, such as through flextime and remote work, the desire to have children remains relatively high.
Working from home allows you to get housework done in your spare time, and a flextime system gives you more freedom in your life, allowing you to avoid rush hour traffic and adjust your schedule to fit in with picking up and dropping off your children.
If these small changes give you the feeling that you can continue working while raising your children, it should greatly reduce your anxiety about the future.
Of course, this study is based on cross-sectional data, and it is still unclear whether fertility intentions are directly linked to actual birth rates, or how they will change in the future.
It is also possible that we are not fully measuring the extent to which informal work and freelance work is having an impact.
However, the fact that large-scale data has revealed that “long working hours are an important factor in declining birth rates” is of great significance.
It was emphasized that in addition to economic support and housing policies, reducing overtime, providing flexible working arrangements and sufficient childcare leave are also essential measures to combat the declining birthrate.
People tend to focus only on numbers like “future population structure” and “rising social security costs,” but the decision of whether or not to actually have children tends to be influenced by factors that people perceive in their everyday lives, such as “free time” and “mental stability.”
If the nation, companies, and local governments each seriously consider what they can do and put it into action, we may be able to create a society that encourages people who want to have children.
Rather than a binary choice between “work or family,” the question is “how to balance work and family.” This perspective may be the key to halting the declining birthrate.