Working and being a mother in Japan at the same time sounds impossible to do. I’m kind of hesitant to settle down and start a family because I’ve heard mentions of workplace discrimination towards mothers, and I’ve noticed that sometimes women quit their jobs once they get pregnant.
If, let’s say, a woman decides to quit her job after having a child and she wants to go back into the workforce once the child is old enough, is it possible to do so? I just feel like the gap may seem unattractive to hiring companies.
Do you really have to sacrifice one for the other? I really don’t want to sacrifice either one so I need some insight on this. It would be great if anyone can share their personal experience or the experience of someone you personally know. Thank you!
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It’s possible to be a working mother in Japan. Many companies allow them to have maternity leave(several
months) and childcare leave(a year or 2). While having this leave, they are still hired by their company, so it’s totally fine to go back into the same workforce.
The reason why many people quit a job is simple. In the west, the society doesn’t allows people to be a housewife and there is so much peer pressure that encourages you to work again. In Japan, the society allows you to be a housewife and not to work.
I guess it depends on your career and the demands of both motherhood and your job. I work at a private school and my husband is super hands on with raising our child. I was welcomed back with open arms after I finished child care leave and even got a raise this year. It is hard to adjust to but I don’t think I’ve given up one for the other. But then again my job is not very demanding and my partner is very supportive.
My wife is a working mother. She is allowed to work from home unless completely necessary. She took a year of maternity leave after our most recent one. Hasn’t affected her career.
Most of the women in my office have kids, most of them came back part time until they’d had their last baby, and then eventually returned to full time once the kids were old enough. Haven’t seen or heard of any discrimination, but then I’m a man so I doubt I’d have been part of any conversations in which it would have happened anyway.
There are a lot of women at my company who have done just that and even been promoted to management positions after coming back from child leave. It’s still not common, but the government is pushing companies to make this kind of thing more common.
That said, it helps to have family around to help make it work. Being able to leave kids with grandparents makes a world of difference.
The issue is mostly with having to deal with so much when the kid is young (the kid is sick, meetings with school, school events, etc) make it hard to return to the work place full time as a parent. Once the kid is older there’s no issue.
I’m lucky in that I work at the school my baby will attend when he turns one, so that will be fine. But elementary school may be a little difficult, though my in laws will certainly help.
I worked fulltime before I gave birth to my daughter. After she was born, I was on flex time for 2 years, and I am going back to full time this April. I’m pregnant with my second child though, and will be taking leave again this year, but my workplace is completely supportive and understand. I am probably going to be back on flex time after I finish my mat leave, so another 2 years of flex time before I go back to full time again! It all depends on the workplace. I’m extremely glad I didn’t work full time for the past 2 years, because damn, taking care of a baby is not easy.
It’s really unfair, this feeling of being forced to make a choice. If men can have both a family and a career then women can too.
The working environment here has improved in the last 10 years. It’s supposed to be easier now to take child care leave, and find a daycare place for your child.
What industry are you in? Your experience may vary.
If you are job seeking , ask the interviewers how they support working families. Take anything that rubs you the wrong way as a red flag. Any company that turns up their nose at a break in your resume due to maternity leave isn’t worth working for.
Also, get your family on board to support you. Do you have a supportive spouse to share housework and care duties with? Or another family member? Can you outsource anything to reduce the burden at home?
I’ve been a working parent for 7 years.
I’ve known multiple women who’ve had kids and have kids and came back into the workforce shortly after having the sprog and have a successful a career.
It will depend on your job and workplace. You hear horror stories, but, they’re not universal. Both places I’ve worked have been working proactively and hard to hire/keep more women as they married/etc.. At one office we actually have a room set aside for mothers to breast pump.
My company also has a lot of moms working in all types of positions. I think that as long as you don’t work for a too traditional and/or black company, you’ll be fine. At my current and any of my previous workplaces, they were also very understanding about having to leave early in case of an emergency, which happens all the time when you have little kids.
Teaching Eikawa or anything with strict schedules becomes impossible though.
It really depends on the industry and the individual company. Being a working mother will affect your ability to do overtime, work weekends, etc. This can impede your chances of promotion, especially at a more traditional Japanese company where showing your commitment to the company above all else is crucial.
I am currently pregnant and have zero intention of giving up on my career, which took so much effort to build. I will come back to work after a 6-month leave. My job is flexible, so I will be able to work from home when needed (baby gets sick, medical checks, etc.). Also, I think a partner that contributes their share to the household (chores and childcare) is necessary.
Anecdotal, but I work in a giant company, many women took full leave for a year, and came back to work. They work 4 hours for 6 months, then slowly ramping back up to normal. The male employees are also taking full 1 month leave when their wives gave birth and work 6 hours for a year without reduction in pay.
Can’t say the same for others, since we have replacement of people to cover up their work, so you probably have to research your company’s policies and discuss things with your managers.
Depends on the company. My company has a great maternity/paternity leave system, and many people make use of it. We’ve had people come back after 6+ months off. We also have pretty good support for employees who use childcare.
Thus, the low birth rate. The system and the culture here discourage people from starting a family.
I’m a working single mother. I quit my previous job and switched industries after 2 years, so I could work mostly from home and slightly less than full-time. It’s tough but doable, even without support (although making up for the gaps makes things more expensive)
The company you work at makes a huge difference, imo. I was very upfront about my familial obligations which probably weeded out a lot of places, but the 2 companies I’ve been at since returning to work (a “white” Japanese company and a gaishikei) are very supportive of working parents and my coworkers nothing but understanding.
If you’re somewhere that daycare is available, it is certainly possible.
We raised two, about four years apart, both started daycare at about 10 weeks (wife did not take a year off, tho she could have). One of those kids now has two of her own, now 3 and 5, took a year off for each, and went back to the same company (job) after each leave.
I’d fully agree that it depends on location (we’re in a provincial capitol), how much competition there is for daycare openings, where that is vis-a-vis your home and work, whether you need to drive, and so on.
I have not read it in the comments explicitly, so I want to state the obvious: the best option is not to quit, but to take a leave.
Jobs where I have seen people quit and reapply have been secretary and technical staff, those are jobs you can take a break in, if your former boss likes you enough to rehire. But, I guess from your user name that you are a chemist. I am sure you know, child or not, several years of a gap in work experience will make it hard to find employment.
Instead you should look for employers that explicitly declare their benefits (of leave options and maybe find out if they uphold what they are writing about). E.g. universities might have all the beneficial leaves in their policy, maybe even a kindergarden option and potential telework/reduced hour/flex-time options during the younger child years etc..
I wish you all the best! I think this topic is very tricky – cause you will rely a lot on your partner and their family. if everyones values about child care align, it will go well, otherwise, there might be a lot of stress where you have nowhere else to turn to. (Like, are you sure your partner will be involved in the child care or will he “salaryman”-style nope all the way to work, how close are you with his parents, will you be okay with them taking over a lot or are they rather uninvolved etc.)
I’m in academia and I was told it would pretty much kill any chance of a promotion for at least half a decade.
Yay.
It depends on your employer/job. I’m not going to reveal my employer for privacy reasons, but people here are encouraged to take their childcare leave and are welcome to return, and men are also able to take the legal childcare leave without issues to help their partner cover the workload.
In general the harder you are to replace/the more valuable your skills are, the better your chances are to be able to do both, so acquiring in demand skills is worth it for this alone.
Working mom here. It’s possible to work with kids here BUT you most likely won’t have the same opportunities as a man with kids, unless you’re quite lucky.
The reality is that the majority of working moms of small children in japan work part time or low paying contract work that is more flexible. For the obvious reasons that we need to pick up the slack that our salaryman husbands won’t or can’t pick up.
There is a bit of everything of course but I am in no way surprised to meet so few western women married to Japanese men who actually work full time with small children here. I don’t actually know any personally myself. I wouldn’t be able to do it either.
Yeahhh… that’s what I did and it was a pita to find an office job (still don’t work a decent position).
(Female and male) recruiters where very disencouraging, like it’s either work OR take care of your child.
I did point out how all it takes is flextime or remote work and that it’s not actually a problem because my kid is taken care of by family when I‘m not around but they where almost laughing at my absurd idea of getting a decent job.
They recommended the mother’s corner at hello work.
You know, where they get you a part time minimum wage job stacking bentos at the supermarket with the other mums.
I‘ll try again once he‘s in school, but I have little hope, looking at how the mom’s are helicoptering around their kids drilling the kanjis in and all that.
But actually, if you are on a contract that allows you to take maternity leave (we moved after having the baby, so bye bye job), definitely take the 1 year leave and you will not loose your job.
However, don’t quit during that phase.
Don’t give up your prime family years for corporate slavery. Life is so damn short and those years are waaay shorter.
You don’t have to let this be the decision maker. It’s
More about how much you want to make it work, and also how you feel after having a child. There’s always some issue like mom guilt for everything, lack of time, parenting ..which are big issues too. I don’t know about discrimination against mothers though..maybe about not participating in every PTA meeting for work? But that sounds a bit old fashioned and to a point it happens in other countries too. There’s a lot more than just daycare that is causing the drop in birth rate imho.
I think it is up to your family. The law prohibits women who return to work after childbirth from being disadvantaged in the company. However, many Japanese women do housework and childcare by themselves. Even if they work as hard as their husbands. But this trend is changing in the younger generation.
There are plenty of women in my company with children. Many of them have young children and work essentially part-time (from 10 until 3 or 4, aka only core hours) and the majority of them work in non-customer facing departments, like general affairs and technical development. The reason for this being that they might not be able to attend face-to-face meetings with customers or go on business trips within their hours.
That said, there are a few women with children that work full-time and in customer-facing positions. These women tend to either be in management or or have older kids that don’t need as much looking after, however, since the job naturally demands more of their time.
Hi, I left work to have a baby and came back to the same job with same conditions when baby was a little under 1. I did not have any support besides my partner. It’s totally doable, but the kind of contract you have with your work will make a difference on how easy things are.
The best way is to be seishain (a full employee) and have worked for over a year before you have the baby. This basically guaranteed you maternity leave, maternity pay and the right to return to work, or the right to stay off longer if there’s no openings at local nurseries.
The next bast way (what I did) is to negotiate with your workplace. I was only keiyakushain (contractural employee) but I had been paying into the same health insurance for over a year. As such, I was due the same benifits as above, but it wasn’t specifically stated in my contract. I had to consult with the company and confirm several things before I was sure I could take maternity leave and come back. It was a bit more uncertain at the start, as my role wasn’t as protected as that of seishain, but I ended up getting all benefits and being able to return to work easily. Just because something isn’t stated in your contract doesn’t mean you don’t have access to it – there might be a complete contract/kinmu youryou that your HR department has which you may not be aware of unless you ask about it.
You can also quit work entirely, but I would try as much as possible to avoid this if you are in a position to wait and have a guaranteed job to go back to after the baby. The nursery system is based on points, and you are more likely to get a slot easily if you are under an employment contract with an agreement to return.
Consult with the fukushi/welfare section of your local city hall, and the jinji/HR department of your work and hopefully you can find a way though it to avoid quitting your job while you have your baby and take time off.
Good luck!
My friend is Chinese with PR and a single mother. She gave birth here in Japan but later sent the baby to China to live and be taken care of by the grandparents while she kept working in Japan. I can’t remember how old, but when the child became maybe elementary school age, she was brought to live in Japan with her mother. Now she is a junior high school student completely fluent in Japanese and Chinese. Friend works for a smallish Japanese company, and working is more for survival rather than her dream of a career, but certainly it’s possible to do both
You get like a year of maternity leave, and then I’ve heard some people can bend the rules to extend that a little. That’s pretty good as far as I know. I think if.you want to take a break for longer than that then it could be a bit of a slog to get back to where you were.
Actually my wife is having a rough time of it. She had some bad luck on the way. First, an asshole boss basically harrassed her out of her full time work. After this, she couldn’t find another full time job and I suspect this is because she was approaching 40 and now married.
However, it seems to me that if you’re well established enough then you will be ok. Basically, the company has to be pretty shit to fuck with the maternity laws. You’ll get your leave and can go back to work, probably with some flexibility.
This is pretty standard, I think, but it would be much more difficult if you quit your job and then go to start again elsewhere yeah.
The key is probably to plan it well before you start on the marriage and baby route. Get your career sorted early on, think how you’ll manage it as your family life progresses. Try and avoid the chaos we are going through lol.