In Yichang City, the highest payment paid for confinement nurses, or “Yuesao” in Chinese has been increased to RMB 6500/m, however, the supply is still far from meeting the crying demand of the public.

　　Since the Lunar New Year is coming soon, demand of confinement nurses becomes urgent as usual. The cost of hiring such nurses is now becoming more and more expensive in many domestic cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Even in Yichang City, the maximum of RMB 6500 every month is quite alluring. Yet under present situation of great demand for them, it is still hard to hire one until May next year.

　　Nevertheless, high salary of the confinement nurses means challenge, intensive labor and ever-growing service requirements for them.

　　A qualified confinement nurse should have gone through tough training. With the more and more requirements for them, receiving professional training has become an essential for their qualification and skills. In Yichang, many homemaking companies are also improving their employees’ professional capacity through constant and frequent training. For instance, Yang Shicui, the manager of Beijiaqin Domestic Service Center, recounts that every staff in her company is required to receive certain professional training, no matter new hand, intermediate, skilled or even top one because the way the nurse holds the baby can tell professional skills and capacity. “We also attach much attention to on-the-job training as the way of tending to baby is keeping changing” said Sun Jie, the deputy general manager of Mulanhua Domestic Service Company.

　　In the second place, the supply can hardly keep pace with the demand. Apart from increasing demand, yet another major reason must be added, that is, the lifted requirements for domestic service. “Even the current situation of short supply is largely due to the growing calls for upgrading service standards,” said Sun Jie. “With accelerated pace of modern life and a change of social attitude to infant care, there is an increasing need for nannies attending baby while the qualified ones do not increasing accordingly.” she added. Wang Xiaohong, the general manager of a domestic service company, put more frankly that a qualified confinement nurse should boast of her qualities such as devotion, patience, and experience as prerequisites, but few people can strictly reach the standards though almost everyone has gone through certain training.”

　　What’s more, as confinement nurses are becoming younger and younger, they tend to be more professional and more skilled. Sun Jie commented that in the future maybe confinement nurse will be required to be better-educated, younger, more professional and more capable. Up to now, the age of this group is from 40 to 45, compared to from 45 to 50 in the past; meanwhile the education background is required to be over the level above junior middle school.