Japan

POINT OF VIEW/ Ikuko Arikita:Don't leave child-care burden only to women

04/07/2007

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

Comment: I love this. It's well worth reading. This woman and those she is writing about could be anywhere.

I am a mother of three children in Kawasaki. Perhaps health minister Hakuo Yanagisawa might call me "a very healthy birth-giving machine."

In addition to raising my children, I have also volunteered on child care issues for the last 14 years, publishing a child-care information magazine, offering counseling and organizing mothers' circles and lectures.

The government's proposals on the declining birthrate are very questionable.

For one thing, the government says if the birthrate falls any further, the pension system will fall apart. Yet the whole purpose of social security systems is to provide an environment for the populace to live happily.

Saying women must produce more babies just to maintain a system is like putting the cart before the horse. There is something wrong with a system that cannot be maintained. It makes more sense to change the system.

Faced with a declining birthrate, we need to work out a way for people to lead happy lives when there are fewer children.

Mothers risk their lives to give birth. Once babies are born, parents must tend them 24 hours a day for years without a break. This burden falls mostly on mothers and women in child-care services.

In other words, women are forced to turn to each other to make up for the government's lack of aid for raising families.

Although local governments say they are willing to help, they are implementing budget cuts. With no money or outside help to count on, today's mothers are struggling.

Some mothers who come to our group meetings say their husbands are overworked and depressed, so they cannot ask them to help out more with the kids. Others complain that while they want to work, they can't because day-care centers are full.

The gap among working women is also growing wider, not only in terms of wages but also over child-care leave and the understanding of their employers and co-workers.

Rising reports of child abuse can also be partly blamed on financial difficulties at home. Although communities across Japan have opened centers where children can play under the eye of child-care specialists, poor families do not have the money to enroll their children in such programs.

Another emerging trend questions "parents' ability to raise children." But all the mothers I know work hard and deal well with their children every day. The more concerned they are about their children, the more troubled and hurt they are at such criticism from those around them.

And the media hypes up problems in the home, such as kids' refusal to go to school and juvenile crime. It even divides people into "winners" and "losers," a cruel attitude that makes parents more anxious and drives children into corners.

It is unreasonable for the government and society to expect community volunteers to support them alone.

For several years in the Kanagawa Prefecture and Tokyo area, I and several university teachers have run a workshop for mothers that focuses on self-development. The classes aim to help mothers to get together and write and talk about their child-care problems. In doing so, they can confirm their own growth and development as they care for their children.

Last year, a young father-to-be took part in our program. This man, after hearing moms speak about their pregnancies and the problems they encountered in raising their children, told them: "Thank you for doing a fine job."

One mother told me: "It was the first time someone other than my husband has ever said something like that to me." Others also said they were moved by his words.

After his child was born, the young man started his own child-care group. Every time a new mother joins, he tells her the same words, he said.

The declining birthrate is not Japan's most serious problem. It is the government's and society's attitude of placing the burden of child care on women alone.

The government's measures to fight the declining birthrate continue to put pressure on mothers both implicitly and explicitly.