Japan needs babies.

[LittleRaven]

And Japanese women are not cooperating.

Japan’s population is aging at an unprecedented speed, bringing the country to the brink of a demographic crisis that will have long-term implications for its economy and society.

Japan is trying hard to woo couples into having babies.

While Japan had some maternal leave policies in place for workers as early as 1911, it passed a law in 1992 (pdf) that formalized partially-paid parental leave for up to a year after childbirth. The government now requires companies of more than 300 employees to publish targets for hiring or promoting women, part of a bid to encourage women to go back to work after having children. In 2017, it announced it would invest 2 trillion yen ($18.47 billion) into a package of subsidies for elderly care and for childcare and education. State-approved preschool is now free for children between three and five years old, and low-income households with children below that age get free childcare. And since 2013, municipalities have created more than 500,000 new public day care slots (paywall).

Some Japanese towns and municipalities have gone to even greater lengths. According to The Economist, the Japanese town of Nagicho managed to increase its fertility rate from 1.4 to about 1.9 in 2017 by offering new moms a “gift” of 300,000 yen ($2,785), as well as subsidies for children’s care, housing, health and education.

But it isn't really working.

Japan is losing its battle (pdf) to meaningfully raise fertility rates. Those who experienced the “1.57 shock” of the late 80s are confronting a fertility rate that has roughly plateaued in growth, reaching 1.43 today.

Japan isn't unique in having this problem, of course, although it is having one of the worst times of it. Birth rates are down all across the developed world. The US and UK are at about 1.8 fertility rate, Germany is more like 1.5, and Italy has a truly terrifying 1.33. But all of these countries also take in plenty of immigrants (at least for now) which cushions the blow considerably, while Japan is notoriously xenophobic.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yeah it's not really unique. Dissolving its superconservative culture is resulting in more professional women or just less women bound to traditional maternity.

[Mecha82]

To be honest there is no easy solution to this problem. Basically way I have understood it (and I could be wrong) one of those problems is that traditionally in Japan most mothers are also house wives that don't see their husbands most of time so lot of modern Japanese women tend to rather choose career over marriage and having children. In order to change that that change needs to come from cultural level because it's so rooted to they culture so that they can have both family and careers instead of being forced to choose between those two.

[Yukaphile]

You think that's bad? We could be going the same way... look at the sex recession.

[Robovski]

It's almost like children aren't necessarily the bundles of joy they are portrayed as and if you can prevent having them an individual might decide they like having time and money since you don't need progeny to secure your old age.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Also professional life in Japan is known to be rather stringent.

[clearspira]

Shrinking birth rates are a good thing. May it continue.

BTW it is very simplistic to say that men worked and women stayed at home, it was often that women stayed at home AND worked especially in farming communities where the harvest meant the difference between life and death. In more urban environments, women often juggled kids and waitressing or typewriting - proper menial shit that was nonetheless a job. It is a modern lie to suggest such a black and white view of the past.

What has changed is now women work LONGER and men do not move into the role that women vacated, often because they cannot due to the way society views men. A woman who works eight hours doesn't have time to look after kids unless she wants all of her wages to go on childcare.

[Yukaphile]

I agree. May the trend take off here as well! Still, it can be quite fucking frustrating and lonely for people like myself, because all those articles you see on the sex recession? Fit me to a T. A Millennial who still lives with his parents, who is shy, worried about approaching somebody the wrong way, suffers from depression, all that stuff...

[LittleRaven]

It's almost like children aren't necessarily the bundles of joy they are portrayed as and if you can prevent having them an individual might decide they like having time and money since you don't need progeny to secure your old age.

But that only works if you have a growing economy to take advantage of in your old age - one that has plenty of surplus labor that you can purchase at a relatively low price. Growing old in Flint is not a fun time, regardless of how much money you have. Nobody has figured out how to make a shrinking economy fun for anyone yet.

[Mecha82]

It's almost like children aren't necessarily the bundles of joy they are portrayed as and if you can prevent having them an individual might decide they like having time and money since you don't need progeny to secure your old age.

That is true. Besides need to have more than 1 or 2 children has also went down thanks to education and healthcare having improvet. Of course this is not case in less developt countries as we have seen.