Let’s start with a concept many are tired of hearing but still need clarification on: What is “child-pushing” (Ji Wa)?
It’s an educational approach where parents, desperate for their children to achieve high scores and get into top schools, frantically enroll them in classes, assign endless practice problems, and push them to start early, forcing kids into a state of extreme fervor, as if “injected with a shot of chicken blood.”
The term “injecting chicken blood” comes from a folk remedy popular in China some sixty or seventy years ago—directly injecting blood from a live rooster into the human body. This triggered an acute immune response, causing temporary excitement and a flushed face. It was unscientific and inhumane, yet became a craze because it “seemed effective.”
Decades later, we’re applying the same logic to our children.
Why is child-pushing most rampant in middle-class families?
The answer is simple: Only the middle class simultaneously possesses three conditions:
- Sufficient economic means to push (which the lower class lacks)
- A intense fear of downward social mobility (which the upper class lacks)
- Insufficient family resources to provide a safety net for their children (which the upper class has)
Lower-class parents are busy scrambling to make ends meet every day—where would they find the money or energy for extra classes and practice problems? Their children are largely raised more freely; their mindset is more like “opening a loot box”: if they get an SSR card, a dramatic reversal of fortune, everyone is happy.
The upper class is the opposite. Even the least accomplished child has trust funds, connections, and family businesses to fall back on; they simply don’t need to grind so hard.
Only the middle class is stuck in the most awkward position:
A ceiling above, a cliff below. Their house is their biggest asset, which in a few decades might not even be habitable. Other resources are even harder to pass on effectively. Climb higher themselves? They find the barriers are completely different—the upper class plays a game of wealth, power, and bloodlines, not something you can break into by acing exams.
Can’t go up, unwilling to go down. The only perceived way out is to push their children forward.
Therefore, the essence of child-pushing is parents wholesale transferring their own anxieties onto their children, making them fight the “leaping over the dragon gate” battle one more time.
This path indeed worked in the past.
For decades, with rapid economic growth and a knowledge dividend exploding, a good degree could be exchanged for a decent job, household registration in a big city, and upward social mobility.
But today?
Two harsh realities:
First, the regression to the mean in intelligence.
The child of a top-scoring gaokao student will most likely not be a top scorer themselves; the children of parents from elite 985/211 universities have a high probability of not even getting into Tsinghua or Peking University. This isn’t an exception; it’s statistics. Forcing an average child to the heights their parents once reached violates biology itself.
Second, severe degree devaluation.
The growth of knowledge-based jobs has long peaked; society has entered a phase of battling over a fixed pie. Masters and PhDs struggling to find relevant jobs has become normal. A degree has shifted from being a “golden rice bowl” to an “entry ticket”—and sometimes not even a valid one.
There’s a serious imbalance between 20 years of investment and the actual return. The old path of “education changing destiny” is, in all likelihood, no longer viable today.
So why do parents still charge forward relentlessly?
Because they feel they have no fallback.
Child-pushing isn’t just the short-sightedness of individual parents; it’s an entire class collectively breaking under pressure and anxiety.
They fear that the middle-class status they worked half their lives to attain cannot be maintained by the next generation, that they will fall back to the bottom.
Under this fear, child-pushing becomes the “last resort.”
But at what cost?
- The child’s intrinsic interest in learning is completely extinguished.
Children raised by force-feeding, endless drills, and test-taking技巧 grow into adults who, for the most part, stay away from books. Because for them, Learning = Exams = Pain. - Self-directed learning ability is destroyed.
All paths are planned out by parents and institutions; the child only needs to passively execute. After leaving school, faced with the uncertainties of the real world, they don’t know how to explore, experiment, or teach themselves new things. - Mental health is overdrawn.
Chronic high pressure, sleep deprivation, and endless comparison lead to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and even more severe issues that might never be fully resolved.
Parents exhaust their energy and savings, often ending up with a child who:
- Has lost internal motivation
- Has their potential depleted prematurely
- Possibly carries lifelong psychological scars
- Whose only leveled-up skill tree is in “test-taking技巧”
And then the parents comfort themselves: At least there’s a stack of certificates in the cabinet to show off.
Is this making the child “a better person”?
Which costs more: pushing a 90-score child to 100, or raising a 60-score child to 90?
Is the 100-score child truly more excellent, happier, or more creative than the 90-score child?
Clearly not. What child-pushing pursues is never the child’s growth, but a painkiller for parental anxiety.
What should parents do if they genuinely want their child to become a better person?
- Manage your own emotions first.
You frequently yell at or even hit your child, yet demand them to be gentle and emotionally stable? Is that possible?
Just because the child can’t fight back now, doesn’t dare to, doesn’t mean they will be filial later.
The choice of whether to pull the plug might be theirs someday. - Find the child’s genuine interests and support them unconditionally.
Even if their passion is watching ants on the ground, it’s ten thousand times better than forcing them to learn Olympiad math.
Stop constantly asking, “Is it useful?” When you are old and truly “useless” by that standard, how would you want your child to treat you? - Lead by example.
You binge-watch TV shows and play games daily, yet demand your child to “strive for the future”? Why should they believe you?
If you don’t read, exercise, or control your own emotions, what right do you have to demand “self-discipline” from your child?
If you yourself couldn’t become a dragon, don’t expect your child to leap over the dragon’s gate.
Every child has their own script. Forcing your script onto them only ends in mutual damage.
Final Summary
Middle-class child-pushing seems extreme, but stems from helplessness. However, no amount of helplessness changes three facts:
- Most children aren’t cut out for that intense path.
- The degree dividend is gone, likely for good.
- The side effects of child-pushing far outweigh any potential benefits.
Rather than overdrafting a child’s lifetime quota of motivation for a gamble with ever-diminishing returns,
It’s better to let go of the anxiety, work on improving yourself first, and then allow your child the space to become who they are meant to be.
The finish line of life’s efforts is never the Gaokao.
What we can do is hold our child’s hand as they walk the first part of the path, not force them to exhaust a lifetime’s worth of drive just as they are beginning to understand the world.
The quota for struggle in life is probably finite. And the loans taken out through overdrafting are ultimately repaid, principal with interest).
原文
我们正在用“为你好”，毁掉孩子的一生
先说一个很多人已经听腻但仍需澄清的概念： 什么是激娃？ 就是父母为了让孩子考出高分、进入名校，疯狂报班、刷题、抢跑，把孩子逼到极度亢奋、像被“打了一针鸡血”一样的教育方式。
“打鸡血”这个词，来自中国六七十年前的民间偏方——把活公鸡的血直接注射到人体内，引发急性免疫反应，让人短暂亢奋、满脸红光。那东西既不科学也不人道，却因为“看似有效”而风靡一时。 几十年后，我们把同样的逻辑用在了孩子身上。
为什么激娃在中产家庭最疯狂？
答案很简单：只有中产同时具备三个条件——
- 有一定的经济能力去激（底层没有）
- 有强烈的阶层下滑恐惧（上层没有）
- 没有足够的家族资源给孩子托底（上层有）
底层父母每天为生计奔波，哪有钱也哪有精力去报班刷题？孩子基本散养，他们的心态更像“抽卡”：万一抽到一个SSR，一夜逆袭，皆大欢喜。 上层则相反，再差的孩子也有信托基金、人脉、家族企业兜底，压根儿不需要那么卷。
只有中产，卡在最尴尬的位置： 上面是天花板，下面是悬崖，房子是最大资产，几十年后可能连住人都困难，其他资源更是传不下去。自己再往上爬？发现壁垒完全变了——上层玩的是财富、权力、血缘，不是靠考试能打通的。 上不去，下不愿去，唯一的出路，就只能把孩子推上去。
所以激娃的本质，是父母在把自己的焦虑批发给孩子，让孩子替他们再打一次“鲤鱼跃龙门”的仗。
这条路过去确实行得通。 过去几十年，经济高速增长，知识红利爆发，一个好学历就能换体面工作、大城市户口、阶层跃迁。 但今天呢？
两个残酷的现实：
第一，智力遗传的均值回归。 高考状元的孩子，大概率不是状元；985/211父母的孩子，很大概率连清北都考不上。这不是个例，是统计规律。把普通孩子硬生生逼到父母当年的高度，本身就违背生物学。
第二，学历严重贬值。 知识岗位的增量早已见顶，社会进入存量博弈。硕士博士找不到对口工作已成常态，学历从“金饭碗”变成“入场券”，甚至连入场券都不够格。 20年投入与实际回报严重倒挂，当年那条“读书改变命运”的路，放在今天大概率走不通。
那为什么父母还是前赴后继地激？
因为他们没有退路。 激娃不是某个父母的急功近利，而是一整个阶层在焦虑中集体失守。 他们害怕自己辛苦半生换来的中产身份，下一代守不住、跌回底层。 在这种恐惧下，激娃成了“最后的挣扎”。
可代价是什么？
- 孩子对学习的兴趣被彻底掐灭 被填鸭、被刷题、被技巧训练长大的孩子，成年后绝大多数远离书本。因为对他们来说，学习＝考试＝痛苦。
- 自主学习能力被摧毁 所有路径都被家长和机构规划好，孩子只需要被动执行。走出校门后，面对真实世界的不确定性，他们不会探索、不会试错、不会自学。
- 心理健康被透支 长期高压、睡眠不足、永无止境的比较，焦虑、抑郁、自卑，甚至更严重的问题，一辈子都可能治不好。
家长耗尽心血、砸光积蓄，换来的往往是一个：
- 失去内在驱动力
- 发展潜力被提前透支
- 可能伴随终生心理创伤
- 唯一点亮技能树的是“应试技巧”
然后家长安慰自己：至少柜子里有一沓证书可以炫耀。
这叫让孩子“变得更好”吗？ 把90分提到100分，和把60分提到90分，哪个成本更高？ 100分的孩子比90分的孩子，真的更优秀、更幸福、更有创造力吗？ 显然不是。激娃追求的从来不是孩子的成长，而是家长焦虑的止痛片。
真正想让孩子成为更好的人，父母该做什么？
- 先管好自己的情绪 你动不动吼孩子、动手打孩子，却要求孩子温文尔雅、情绪稳定，可能吗？ 孩子现在打不过你、不敢还手，不代表以后他会孝顺你。 拔不拔氧气管，以后是他的选择。
- 找到孩子真正的兴趣，并无条件支持 哪怕他喜欢趴在地上看蚂蚁搬家，也比逼他学奥数强一万倍。 别动不动就问“有用吗”。等你老了，真的一点“用”都没有的时候，你希望孩子怎么对你？
- 以身作则 你自己每天刷剧打游戏，却要求孩子“为未来奋斗”，孩子凭什么信你？ 你自己都不读书、不运动、不控制情绪，凭什么要求孩子“自律”？
如果你自己都成不了龙，就别指望孩子能鱼跃龙门。 每个孩子都有自己的剧本，强行把你的剧本塞给他，只会两败俱伤。
最后总结
中产激娃，看似极端，实属无奈。 但再无奈，也改变不了三个事实：
- 大多数孩子不是那块料
- 学历红利已一去不复返
- 激娃的副作用远大于正面收益
与其透支孩子一生的奋斗额度，去赌一个越来越低的回报率， 不如放下焦虑，先做好自己，再放手让孩子成为他自己。
人生奋斗的终点，从来不是高考。 我们能做的，是牵着孩子的手走过最初的路，而不是在他刚认识世界的时候，就逼他把一辈子的劲儿一次性用光。
奋斗额度，大概真的有限。 而透支的贷款，最后都是连本带利还的。
