Japanese Women Shy From Dual Mommy Role

Video

Looking for a Husband, Not a Child

Takako Katayama is one of the many Japanese women who are choosing to postpone marriage, causing a plunge in birthrates.

» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER

Like many other East Asian economies with a shrinking workforce, Japan desperately needs women to marry and have children while also continuing to work. But only about a third of women in Japan remain in the workforce after having a child, compared with about two-thirds of women in the United States.

Corporate discrimination against women, especially if they have children, remains rampant, despite laws that forbid it. Last year Japan ranked 91st in gender equality among 128 countries surveyed by the World Economic Forum.

Meanwhile, many Japanese men in their 30s continue to be consumed by their jobs. About one in four still works more than 60 hours a week. Just 0.5 percent of men take government-guaranteed parental leave. In Sweden, 17 percent do.

Most working women in Japan face a stark choice: the career track, in which they will acquire financial independence while remaining single and childless, or the family track, which makes them full-time mothers until they are in their mid- to late 40s.

Research on marriage in Japan shows that after a wedding, women have much less time of their own, while there is almost no change in the demands on men's time, said Yoshio Higuchi, a professor of workforce economics at Keio University in Tokyo. "The burden falls almost exclusively on women, and those single women who see that happening choose not to marry, for now, anyway," he said.

Higuchi said that in recent years, as single women have been sought after by a corporate Japan starved for young workers, they have gained more power and freedom in the workplace.

"For women, this has caused enormous change socially and mentally," he said. "Men, though, have not changed at all."

Katayama testifies to that. "Guys will allow a woman to express herself, but they do not want their position threatened," she said. "They want to stand above the girl."

Equally annoying, according to Katayama, is the rarely stated but almost universal expectation of Japanese men to be fed, clothed and picked up after. "I am willing to take care of and give comfort to a man whom I care about, but that does not mean I want to be his mother," she said.

Research here shows that after a divorce, men tend to feel unhappy and remarry quickly. Divorced women, though, are relatively happy and often delay remarriage.

Still, marriage remains almost universal in Japan. Only 4 percent of women older than 45 have never married. It is also exceedingly rare for women here to have children outside marriage (less than 2 percent of all births). The cultural taboo against single parenthood is far stronger than in the United States, where about 37 percent of births are outside wedlock. Cohabitation is also rare in Japan, and single women almost never adopt.

"I don't know why one would want a child so much," Katayama said. "In Japanese culture, the point is not to have children, but to have one's own children."

Social pressure on women to marry has clearly eased in Japan. But being an independent single woman still carries a stigma, even in Tokyo.

When Katayama bought her studio apartment in 2002, she did not tell many friends. "I knew that it would scare away guys," she said.

While "Sex and the City" is one of her all-time favorite TV shows, Katayama says she remains astonished at how its female characters brazenly prowl around for men. "There is still a foundation in us [Japanese women] that thinks hunting for a guy is not ladylike," she said.

Katayama is well informed about Japan's declining population and the catastrophic implications for the economy. She knows there is a national childbirth crisis. Still, she said, until she finds a man who wants a wife, not just a mommy, there is nothing she can do to help.

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.