When was the last time you sat down and talked with your parents for a full hour? For many young people working far from home, this has become an increasingly luxurious thing.
Phone calls get shorter, video chats end faster, and parents on the other end always say "everything is fine." Thus, a new profession has quietly emerged 鈥?shared children. Young people take on the role of "sons and daughters," providing paid companionship to elderly people living alone or in empty nests 鈥?chatting, walking, accompanying them to medical appointments 鈥?gradually filling in the days when their own children are absent.
Wei Zhenyu, a young man from Inner Mongolia born in 1996, is one of them. His main job is in urban planning, and his side job is being a shared child, charging about 300 yuan per hour. "I'm not here to replace their children 鈥?no one can replace their position and responsibility," Wei Zhenyu told reporters on October 16. He said he is simply helping to hold the thread during the days when children cannot return, acting as a "temporary family member" for the elderly, sitting down with them and listening to what they have to say.
Most Clients Are the Children and Grandchildren of the Elderly
300 Yuan per Hour, Serving Only Elderly People with Normal Physical Function
The starting point of entering this industry was a post on a social platform. Wei Zhenyu works in Beijing. After the Chinese New Year this year, the downward pressure on the urban planning industry made him start exploring other options. He stumbled upon someone doing "shared children" and casually posted: "I'll give it a try too, let's see if any clients find me."
The post unexpectedly went viral. Likes, comments, and shares kept coming, so he simply created a group under the post. The first group of 500 people filled up within days, and he quickly created a second one. But he soon discovered that over 80% of the people who joined the group wanted to "find a job."
"They thought I had a large pool of clients and privately messaged me asking if I still needed people." He admitted that while many people messaged him, very few actually resulted in deals. Over the past six months or so, he has actually served very few elderly people.
Those who actually pay for the service are mostly the children of the "post-70s" and "post-80s" generations, or the grandchildren of the "post-90s" generation. They are in different cities, unable to take time off from work, while their parents and grandparents are growing older. Behind the "everything is fine" on the phone may be long afternoons sitting alone on the sofa staring blankly at the television.
"The elderly themselves are reluctant to spend this money. They come from difficult times, and even if their retirement life is decent, they always feel that 'finding someone to talk to' is not worth spending money on." So the children buy this hour for their parents 鈥?what they're buying is peace of mind, and also a compensation for the guilt of not being able to accompany them often.
The matching process is not complicated, but Wei Zhenyu does it very carefully. He created a questionnaire and asks the children to fill in the elderly person's age, gender, dietary restrictions, preferences, and taboos before the service. Then he negotiates the price based on distance and the elderly person's physical condition.
"I only serve elderly people with normal physical function and self-care ability, with an average price of 300 yuan per hour." He said this way he can focus the service on alleviating loneliness and providing emotional companionship. Orders are mainly taken on social platforms, and the service duration is basically controlled to one hour.
"The elderly have limited energy 鈥?too long actually consumes their strength." He said he is currently using AI to build a mini-program so clients can place orders directly, and people who want to do part-time work can also register, with service matching based on distance and price.
Visiting Under the Guise of Being a Child's Friend, Concealing the Fee
Some Clients Place Regular Weekly Orders for Their Parents
The elderly woman Wei Zhenyu regularly accompanies is already 84 years old and lives in a nursing home. She once graduated from Peking University and later engaged in research on atmospheric physics. Her memory is now not very good. The elderly woman's son is in Beijing but rarely visits her, and her daughter is in the United States, returning even less often.
Wei Zhenyu arrives punctually every Sunday morning at 10 o'clock, chatting with her about memories of her hometown Shanxi, her work and life when she was young, current affairs, and why young people today are under so much pressure. He also video calls the elderly woman's daughter so the mother and daughter can talk through the screen.
"About an hour is just right 鈥?no awkward silences, and topics flow endlessly." But there is one thing Wei Zhenyu has never told the elderly woman: he is paid. This is an unspoken understanding between him and the client's children. They all want him to appear as a "friend" of the children.
He still remembers that when he first visited, the elderly woman repeatedly asked "Who are you?" and he answered again and again: "I'm a friend of your daughter, coming to see you." Later, as he visited regularly every week, the nursing home staff all recognized him, and the elderly woman gradually remembered him. Eventually, when they met, she would warmly say: "You're here! Welcome, welcome."
Wei Zhenyu said that since entering this profession, he has never heard a single negative word about their children from the elderly. "Parents always love their children." He paused, then added: "But sometimes when I think about it, when it's our turn to fulfill our filial duties, are we doing well enough?"
He once wrote in a post: Our generation always says we're busy, saying we'll go home when we have time. But the elderly's "day by day" cannot wait for our "when I have time." When you're not there, your parents aren't "doing fine" 鈥?they're just hiding their troubles well in front of you.
Mutual Healing with the Elderly During the Service Process
The Elderly's Spiritual Needs Cannot Be Ignored; Optimistic About Standardized Development
Shared children can easily be misunderstood as "paying someone to fulfill filial piety on your behalf." There is no shortage of such discussions online: some think it's paying for peace of mind, some question how family affection can be outsourced, and some worry that the elderly are being kept in the dark.
Wei Zhenyu has heard these comments too, but he believes this is not replacement 鈥?it's filling a gap. It is precisely because children value their parents' spiritual needs that they place orders for this service.
He once encountered a potential client who, after hearing his introduction, abruptly said: "So after this, I won't need to come anymore?" He quickly waved his hand: "How could that be? Don't think like that."
He set a principle for himself: if a client wants to completely replace themselves with paid service to fulfill filial piety, he won't take the order. He said the purpose of companionship is to bring the family closer, not to insert himself in the middle as a wall. "No one can replace the children's position, and no one should."
After more than half a year in this line of work, Wei Zhenyu said he has also been healed in return by the elderly. There was a retired middle school teacher who didn't like talking about how glorious his youth was, but loved talking about how he endured through hard times. He said that when he was young, he was criticized during the day and still wrote poetry in his room at night. Wei Zhenyu asked, "Weren't you frustrated?" The old man laughed: "Frustrated about what? Once the poem was written, I felt better."
There was a period when Wei Zhenyu was having a rough time at work and casually mentioned it. After listening, the old man slowly said: "Things come in two kinds 鈥?those that can't be overcome and those that can. Yours is the kind that can be overcome. What's the rush?" Just that one sentence, and his worries dissipated.
Another time, he had a cold, and an elderly person living alone he was serving touched his forehead and insisted on making him a bowl of ginger soup: "You kid, you don't know how to take care of yourself." At that moment, he was deeply moved. "I accompany them in fighting loneliness, and they give me care like family."
He also clearly knows that this industry is still walking in a gray area, not yet mature, and acceptance needs to improve. But encouraging changes are happening 鈥?more and more people are consulting him, video views on social platforms are growing, and teams specializing in shared children have even appeared in many first-tier cities. "The industry is gradually taking shape, and rules are catching up bit by bit." He remains confident about this.
For young people who want to enter the industry, Wei Zhenyu's advice is practical: don't rush to quit your job. "If you have a main job, focus on that first, try companionship as a side job, and when it reaches a certain scale, then consider going all in." He said what this line of work needs most is not skill 鈥?it's sincerity. "You have to genuinely be willing to listen to the elderly, willing to sit there without impatience. If you just treat it as a delivery job, the elderly can sense it."
Shared children cannot replace blood ties, nor can they fill all the gaps left by children's absence. But it gives those concerns stretched by distance and busyness a warm place to go. What it fills are the days when children cannot return; what it leaves behind is the elderly's sense of security in knowing "someone still cares about me." In an era of deepening aging, this companionship is needed by more and more people, and is gradually growing from scattered individual attempts into an industry that is seen and needed.
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