Me (35F) and my partner(32M) we are planning to get married and start family later next year.
What it really scares me is the lack of support and paternity/ maternity leave, compared to the European country I come from. Plus I work for in hospitality so weekends and overtime are the norm for me. My partner is extremely busy at work as well from November to March.
He keeps saying to me to not worry that his grandmother will help us, but she is already 82. Plus she lives in a city that is one hour away. How do you foreigners in Japan manage especially if you have young kids?
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Multiple young kids here. We are doing okay without any relative in Japan, but my wife doesn’t work. I think the few months after my second kid was born was the most difficult. Fortunately, I was able to took a 6 months paternity leave.
We manage by my husband and I both making sacrifices at work – ie taking turns taking leave when our kid is sick, needs to go to an appointment, etc. if you are working in an environment that is not flexible enough, you may want to consider finding another work place.
Many in my company take unpaid leave for an extended period. The main problem is finding daycare outside of April but even then it’s difficult.
I work for an ALT company and the branch I work for as reached the point where childcare absence is just “しょうがない”. You have to use your paid holidays in the beginning but otherwise no one bats an eye.
I took a year maternity leave when my son was born. Going back to work was the hardest because we had to put him in daycare and he kept getting sick so pretty much all my yuukyu was used for that. It’s doable without help but you and your partner need to plan things out well in advance. Research temp daycares/babysitting services in advance, find out who has the more flexible schedule, etc. I’m also lucky my husband doesn’t have a fixed schedule so he gets some weekdays off which means I don’t have to burn through my PTO.
Maternity and paternity leave is quite generous here. I don’t remember but it’s something like 2 years paid, 1st year 80% pay paid by company, 2nd year is 50% pay paid by government. Of course like the 15-20 days of vacation given to most ftes ymmv depending on your company on how welcoming they are of you making use of these policies.
Lack of paternity/maternity leave?
Not if you’ve been working for the same company for over a year. Then you’re both entitled to a paid year off at the same time. Japan is globally quite gracious with that one.
I took half a year and my wife almost two years of by playing with the system (not getting kindergarten spot)
However, your workplace might not be as lenient, and other indirect nuisances. But you can also use some of that paternity leave time to work to get a better job, especially if you’re both on a leave.
If you fall outside the system, which is rather easy, then you’re out of luck.
Me and my partner are both foreigners, working full time, and we had our child 6 years ago.
When he was born, we had my wife’s mother came for like 1 month to help. After then we were alone, but the first 1.5 years was fine since my wife took a maternity leave, and she enjoyed the time really well.
Now the problem arises when she went back to full time and our kid went into hoikuen. My wife is really busy, like working weekend or until past midnight/morning, so yeah it was really tough balancing work and private life. I tried to help a lot, like picking up my kid from daycare and stuff, but even then we really burned out, it wasn’t sustainable.
In the end, my wife had to quit her full time and went to part time. We’re doing great now. And since the pandemic, with me WFH, I can spend more time with my kid. And since he will go to primary school next year my wife would probably go back to full time then.
So yeah it’s really depends on your family situation. But if I could give advise, always prioritize family. My wife couldn’t when she was working, she had to *do* all those work because of some sense of responsibility I guess. She couldn’t refuse her work even when she was working for a shorter time. But now I think we realize that time with family is the most important thing and try to balance work to accomodate it, not the other way around.
The revised Child Care and Family Care Leave Law, which took effect in April, obliges all companies to inform their employees, including men, of the system and individually confirm with would-be fathers whether they want to take the leave or not and it is for up to 12 months for both mothers and fathers. The change was made to force companies to let prospective fathers know about the law/benefit, but it has been available for fathers…. Many companies didn’t tell their employees about it.
I feel like the leave here is pretty generous. Although it can take a while for payments to start to be deposited into your account, so have savings for several months in case it takes a while to get your money. But you get at least a year off guaranteed, up to two years if you can’t get into a daycare. It is only 67% of your salary for the first 6 months and 50% of your salary for the remaining time though.
This also requires you to have paid into unemployment insurance for at least 12 months in the last two years(?) correct me if I’m wrong on that, pretty sure that’s what I was told.
As for maternity leave (which is 6 weeks before and 8 weeks after the birth) it requires the mother to be paying into shakai hoken herself for it to be paid leave. If she’s on NHI or a dependent of her husband’s insurance she won’t receive any compensation for it, but can still take it unpaid, every mother has the right to take it, the insurance just determines if it’s paid or not.
I was a dependent of my husband’s health insurance so since I wouldn’t get compensated for the maternity leave I worked as long as I could, took about 3 weeks off before the birth and then didn’t return to work until about a year postpartum. I got paid for childcare leave from 8 weeks postpartum until the time I went back to work since I had paid into unemployment insurance
(Don’t get confused by maternity leave and childcare leave thinking they’re interchangeable, they’re two different things)
My wife and I both work demanding jobs full time and don’t really have any family support . We are hanging on by a thread. Luckily we both make good money and have lots of PTO so we go on three-four vacations a year as a family.
I’m American and my wife is Japanese and we just had a kid.
Just balance it I’m out and live within your means. I was nervous about this and instead of taking my allotted paternity leave, I took a month of PTO instead because of timing and that influencing tax calculations.
I regret it immensely and missed out on a couple of few in a lifetime experiences because of it.
I work from home which helps a lot, but I’ll be changing jobs and industry in a few months which will pull me out of the house and change the rhythm of daily flow entirely. Also, we just took out mortgage and are building a house, which is also terrifying.
All on my salary alone and her maternity leave pay. And we’re still good. If you have to make it work, it’ll happen.
Also zero-sai daycare is a thing too. Which is what we’ll be doing because my wife wants to go back to work next calendar year and her parents aren’t around and her entire family is in a different prefecture.
I would recommend asking other parents in your industry how they do/did it.
Relying on your partner’s elderly grandmother is a terrible idea – trust your instinct! Even relying on your mother/father in law can be challenging for all involved.