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There is a ‘life script’ that most women are expected to follow – fall in love, get married, have a few children and become a mother, with other responsibilities taking second to your husband and children.
Japan has always promoted the structured household of a stay at home wife who cleans, cooks elaborate meals, and raises the children while the husband works long but rewarding hours and financially supports them.
Now, however, Japan is seeing the lowest rates of marriage and birth in recent memory. More women than ever before are saying ‘no’ to marriage and ‘yes’ to a life of single freedom.
There has been a big change in the Japanese workforce in the past twenty years, with nearly 70% of women between the ages of 15 and 64 holding a job, a record for the country. Women are choosing to work instead of stay at home and creating real careers for themselves.
In Japan, if a woman marries and has children, she is often expected to leave her career to raise her children – it is an old fashioned societal norm that has stuck around. Women who find their careers fulfilling and rewarding don’t wish to give it up to raise children, however.
It may seem crazy to our US readers, but men aren’t expected to help much around the house or with raising children. The responsibility falls directly on the mother’s shoulders to take care of all domestic needs.
One study showed that Japanese men do fewer hours of household chores and contribute less to childcare than in any other ‘wealthy’ nation in the world.
Some of it is a societal expectation, but a lot of it is workload, too. The hours that a Japanese worker is expected to put in are intense, with nearly a quarter of Japanese companies expecting their workers to put in 80 hours of overtime a month, or at least 60 hours a week. Often times these are salaried positions, so there is no financial gain to working so hard.
Women’s independence is wonderful, and the fact that this generation of Japanese women is more able to build careers, experience hobbies and travel than the previous generation is wonderful.
But this causes a serious problem for the country, who had the lowest amount of births in 2018 since they started keeping records in 1899. Japan is a country with an aging population and no youth to replace them, and more women are choosing to say no to marriage and yes to careers.
The country has no plan at this moment on how to ‘fix’ this issue, but if something doesn’t change soon, they will be in a lot of trouble.
