On October 19, 2026, during the moment of marriage, the parents of both sides emptied their savings to buy a house and a car. After giving birth to their first child, expenses for postpartum care centers, specialized nannies, and childcare services cost hundreds of thousands of yuan. When the couple decided to have a second child, they found that they did not have enough cash left at home. Writer Ye Qingcheng shared the experiences of two families on Weibo on October 19, sparking attention to the topic of “emptying the family’s savings during marriage and being unable to afford a second child”.
In the first family, the couple were both born after 1990, they were university classmates who later pursued postgraduate studies and worked in a provincial capital city. Their professions were relatively stable, but their income was not high, with a combined annual income of over 200,000 yuan.
During their marriage, both families exerted efforts spanning generations to help them buy a house and a car, depleting twelve pockets — having nothing left for both sides.
After the child was born, the couple continued to use postpartum care centers, specialized nannies, and childcare services, with expenses totaling about 300,000 yuan in the first year, all supported by their parents. In addition, their parents took turns coming to help with childcare until now. Although there was a minor conflict between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law at the time, it was not serious.
The child is now attending primary school, and the couple both intended to have another child. However, when they approached their parents with this idea, they did not receive a clear response.
Ye Qingcheng pointed out that this couple had depleted both sides of their family’s savings at the time of their marriage, and now, wanting to have a second child would require another 300,000 yuan expenditure on postpartum care centers, specialized nannies, and childcare services, causing their household to be short on cash flow.
In the second family, the couple were born in the late 1980s, with the husband being a local in the provincial capital city, while the wife comes from an area with high dowry requirements. They were colleagues, and during their marriage, the husband personally paid the dowry without asking their parents.
After the wife became pregnant, her parents came to take care of her, and the husband even rented a house for his in-laws. To reduce potential conflicts during their shared family life, the husband also paid for postpartum care centers, specialized nannies, and childcare services, costing about 300,000 yuan a year.
Later on, the wife proposed buying a house for her parents in their hometown and expected the husband to pay for the down payment. However, after paying the dowry, the husband no longer had sufficient savings to bear this expense, leading to unhappiness between them.
Subsequently, the wife suggested having a second child, and once again, the couple faced the issue of not having enough money, with their parents also unwilling or unable to continue covering the related expenses.
The experiences of these two families involved marriage and property purchase, dowries, childcare services, and family financial support. The first family mainly relied on support from both sets of parents during marriage and the birth of their first child, whereas the second family, after paying the dowry and childcare costs for the first child, found it challenging to afford a house and the additional expenses of having a second child.
After the article was published, the topic of “emptying the family’s savings during marriage and being unable to afford a second child” became a subject of concern, involving issues such as the cost of marriage, childcare expenditures, and household cash flow.
Internet users commented, stating that “dowries in many places have risen to the mainstream price of 288,000 yuan, coupled with houses, cars, and weddings, often requiring hundreds of thousands in cash from the groom’s family, depleting savings accumulated over generations.”
They also mentioned that “the average cost of marriage nationwide is 330,000 yuan, exceeding 500,000 yuan in first-tier and new first-tier cities, with miscellaneous expenses on the wedding day alone (photography, banquets, wedding cars, etc.) totaling over 100,000 yuan.”
Many netizens expressed agreement, saying that “getting married and having one child already costs a lot of money; when the child grows up, there will be even more places to spend money!”