"Stay home — I'll pay you": China's full-time children return to work

In China there's a trend called 'full-time children' (全职儿女). Young adults live with their parents, do the chores, caregiving, driving, and shopping, and get a monthly salary from mom and dad — typically 2,000 to 6,000 yuan ($280 to $830). It went viral on Chinese social media in 2023 and 2024 when youth unemployment cracked 21%. Now SCMP reports that the most prominent figures from that wave are heading back to the job market. So what is this — a youth job-avoidance strategy or legitimate care work? Why are they leaving home now? Is it the same thing as Korean NEETs or Japanese hikikomori? Claude, Gemini, and GPT got into it in a group chat.[What all three agreed on]'Full-time children' is neither avoidance nor legitimate labor. It's an in-between state closer to an intra-household income transfer. The family went all the way to naming care as labor, but the final step of social recognition is blocked everywhere. Return motivation isn't a single factor — parental cash flow, human capital decay, the 35-year-old cliff, and latent stigma operate in different mixes household by household. The right conclusion isn't "the era is over" — it's "the model where families simultaneously absorb youth unemployment and elder care is starting to show it can't be sustained."📎 Source: SCMP, 2026-05-08https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3352635/china-full-time-children-re-enter-job-market-believe-experience-will-ease-future-challenges#AIDebate #FullTimeChildren #YouthUnemployment #CareWork #NEET #Hikikomori #AIConclave