Who wouldn’t want to stay at home if it was possible? Missing that whole commute stuff, work stuff, etc.
Not everything has to be like the US.
It seems to me that if many Japanese women wanted to be stay-at-home moms there wouldn’t be such a low birthrate and steep population decline.
I’m an aspiring stay-at-home husband.
They grew up watching their mom live a life they found acceptable.
I love it when people like you take women’s equality and warp it into an obligation that women must do something with it.
They don’t want to work. Neither do I honestly.
In the very end, few people wish they went through life spending more time at work.
I’m a Canadian woman married to a Japanese man. I have a degree and I worked for 10+ years in Japan.
I also have a 1 year old son and am now a stay at home mum. My husband encouraged me to be a stay at home mum but of course, he said it was my choice if I wanted to go back to work.
I opted to stay home because I love being a mum and I don’t want a hoikusho raising my son. I’d miss out on his firsts and that’s so sad to me.
I know not everyone has the opportunity or even wants to be a stay at home parent. My sister, for example, has a 3 year old and he goes to daycare everyday while she works. That’s her choice and I respect it, just as she respects my choice.
Corporate culture can be pretty grueling and often sexist……I don’t blame people for wanting out.
They want to do what makes them happy.
Mind your own business.
They don’t. The majority of women in Japan say they do not want to be married or have children. Numerous surveys show this.
Work culture here is toxic, and exhaustingly long with overtime. A lot of which goes unpaid. Not to mention japan is an extremely sexist society. What sounds better, working 12 hours a day and getting yelled at by your shitty old boss and getting sexually harassed? Or staying at home, doing household chores and doing something meaningful such as raising a child?
It’s not to say that work is meaningless or that child rearing is meaningful for everyone l. I hope you can get the point I’m trying to make.
The Japanese workforce is infamous for its long hours, difficulties in taking days off/vacations, and incidents of corporate bullying and power harassment. Why would a woman want to buy into that?
When I taught kids I was surprised when a lot of girls answered the question of “what do you want to be when you grow up?” with “housewife.” That too is an important role in its own right.
But Japan doesn’t have the gender flexibility/open-mindedness that much of the rest of the world does. Women are seen as a liability in the workforce because they’ll quit to follow their husband wherever he may go, or quit when they get pregnant, or if not quit then spend a lot of time on maternity leave, or miss lots of time at work to take care of kids. Again, the Japanese workforce isn’t exactly a shining beacon of good work ethics, and you have workforce that is biased against you from the start, so from the POV of a Japanese woman, why would you want to buy into this system?
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So, u/Yugioh-Fanboy2000…
Thing is… You are free to “wish” for a woman of your preference, but it shows very poor social skills to come into a 480k members group and say “too bad the majority of women in this entire country isn’t of my preference.”
Maybe it isn’t the number of women the problem.
But if you are just some sort newb activist, it isn’t social skills, but lack of purpose.
Either way, damn.
I’d be a stay at home husband if I could. Miss me with that 90 minute morning commute bullshit. Dealing with the kids all day could be stressful but I can manage for a few years until we start them in pre-school.
If the average female wage would be higher than the male one, you’d see a lot more aspiring stay at home husbands. Japan has the lowest gender equality of all OECD countries.
Lol get dunked by stay at home moms and the disappointment they bring you
doing what they like to do. why give your life to a company that doesn’t give shit about you.
who doesnt want to stay at home, take care of kids with no worries, no boss micromanaging every single thing?
Disappointing ? That’s very judgmental.
That being said, it’s the stereotype carried by Japanese culture, … They are taught that this is how it should be.
I’m not sure what you mean by them not wanting “equal power”. In Japanese society, the mother is usually considered the head of the household. They make most of the large financial decisions and control the way the family is run. The husband gets an allowance from the mother for expenses.
But it doesn’t matter what you think is better for women. Taking responsibility for the household is an important role in society. And for many women, it is a good choice for them.
Quite often on Japanese TV (very poor source), you see surveys saying that most Japanese people consider women (housewives) to have the better deal in society. I can kind of see where they are coming from. Being in charge of a household is much more fulfilling than being some salaryman slaving away in a dead-end job.
> America has more “career minded” women than Japan, it’s a little disappointing.
America is more than a “little” disappointing, but I don’t think you should specifically blame woman for that.
I’m a man and if I had that choice, I’ll take tomorrow without thinking twice
Because it’s incredibly difficult to work and have kids in Japan. If you want kids you almost have no other choice at first than to stay home (if you work a corporate job)
Considering Japan’s declining birthrate, I am inclined to believe more women are opting to have careers than ever before.
Government and politicians for the most part just attracts the dumbest people seeking validation and control. I may be alone to say this but anyone that seeks power shouldn’t be given it.
Anecdotal, but, my wife works with a bunch of middle aged women, 35+ years old. She works all over the city we live in, assigned to difference branches every year. Every single women ask “Why would you work when your husband already earn more than enough ? If I were you, I’d stay home and enjoy life with my kids”.
Do they want to, or is it too difficult to? Because I’ve also talked to plenty and they pretty much all cite it being difficult to work as a mother.
I work and am a mom and I have to agree.
Companies tend to discriminate, for example I have never been asked to hold a higher position despite much newer, less knowledgeable coworkers being promoted to said position, because they assume I’m too busy, and sometimes I have to run home early to pick up my child from daycare if they’re sick. I have another mom friend who basically got fired because she had to run home to pick up her sick kid too often (not technically fired but demoted/transferred to a location that would make her commute and life even more difficult)
As convenient and cheap as daycare is here it’s also quite a lot of work. I have to hand sew aprons and blankets and sheets and various things, keep the name clearly printed on every single item that goes to daycare if it starts to wash off I have to notice and re write/stamp the name, in the morning I have to prepare so many things you’d think she was going away for the weekend, diapers, wipes, aprons, bibs, undershirts, shirts, socks, pants, a blanket cover, cot cover, sneakers, plastic bags, a dirty diaper bag, a dirty clothes bag, a coat, a hat, and in the summer: a towel for shower time/water play, a towel blanket, swim shorts, a bag for wet items.
It takes so long to get all those things ready at home in the morning and then to set it all up where it belongs in her classroom, I’m often barely making it to work on time, sometimes unexpected things happen like too many parents are in the classroom ahead of you so you have to wait for them to finish before you can enter and set up their stuff, making you later than you thought you’d be. Plus I have to get myself ready and my daughter ready to go as well, breakfast, diaper changes, getting dressed, doing my makeup, brushing teeth, doing hair, cleaning up, getting the bags packed for her and for me to go to work.
On weekends I have to bring home all of those things and wash them and repair them if they’re falling apart, and restamp names. Sometimes I work Saturdays so I only have between the time I pick her up Saturday evening until Monday morning to get all that washed up and ready to go again. On rainy days like this past weekend the cot cover didn’t even have time to dry after I washed it and this morning I had to spend time holding a hair dryer to it trying to get it dried.
Plus I have to fill out a daily report for the daycare, even on days off, including all her meals, nap time, bed time, wake up time, temperature, mood, poop consistency and how many, if she went to the doctor or is on medication, and then some short comment about how she is recently, what we did that day, if she’s learned anything new, etc.
I often have to pop into the supermarket on my way home to pick her up from daycare, and do my shopping extremely quickly, literally in like 10 minutes, so I can get home, put it away, and then go and get her by the time I’m supposed to pick her up by. Then she gets home and I have enough dirty clothes and stuff that I often have to do laundry literally every day or at least every couple of days, sometimes I end up doing 3 loads in one day if it’s been 2-3 days since I’ve done laundry, especially on weekends when I have all her blankets and stuff home from daycare as well.
I have to quickly prepare dinner (sometimes I have to go to the supermarket with her first if I didn’t have time to go on my way back from work) and then get her to eat, clean up, wash a full sink of dishes, unload the washing machine and hang everything up, entertain her a bit, get her bath ready, shower, bathe her, get her teeth brushed and ready for bed, get her to go to sleep, which usually ends up happening around 9pm, then vegetate on the sofa, with barely enough energy to even do something entertaining, let alone something productive like I should be doing like studying.
So yeah I can definitely see why moms might not “want to” work. It’s exhausting. Especially since the average father here barely helps with housework, errands, chores, or daycare prep. My husband probably helps more than most but I still feel like I’m drowning most days. Being a working mom in Japan is essentially being a stay at home mom PLUS working, being a SAHM is no walk in the park, since I did it for the first year of my child’s life, while I was on childcare leave, but working and being a mother… you have to do 95% of childcare and chores and errands as well as working so it’s definitely harder
As a man who loves cooking and pottering around the house, it’s a completely understandable perspective.
I’d happily give up working in high stress IT if it didn’t mean our finances would be destroyed (working to FIRE )
You Americans…
I’m a stay-at-home-father!
More power to those, woman or man, who throw off the corporate cacophony, and crawl out of the rut of common expectations.
To all those glorifying the state of women’s work in japan (staying at home is great! I wish I could!) I’d urge you to look up poverty rates for single mothers…
Stay at home moms are usually stuck in their marriage or destined to suffer in poverty, especially in japan…so it’s not a choice without severe consequences.
I’m a bit shocked at the support of this system. Culture, feminism, women’s right to choose are all great until something goes wrong. A system built on women’s financial dependence on men can’t be good no matter how you look at it. I’m not blaming women for not wanting to play a game that’s rigged against them, but the choices they have aren’t great.
Edit: Huh, how about that. An innocent post championing women’s independence is the most controversial on this topic? Interesting, interesting indeed.
My husband is Japanese. We both do what we love for a living and he just happens to make 10 times more than I in doing so. Even before we were married, he told me not to worry about rent and grocery expenses, instead he wanted me to only take the jobs that l really wanted to do, and spend that extra time I had making our house more homey. Of course some weeks I didn’t have time to do that, that was also fine. It makes more sense now that we are married and are planning on having kids. Why would I want to loose sleep from getting house stuff done after a long day at work away from my kid, only to make a lot less money than my husband, when we can go by without me doing so. Just makes no sense.
Need to put kid in hoikuen to work. Hoikuen costs the same as what you’d make in the hours you worked. Working to put kid in hoikuen to work…
Work culture sucks in Japan unless you get lucky, I’d pick stay at home parent any day of the week over putting in 10+ hours a day at a job I’m not devoutly infatuated with.
It’s so they can have secret affairs while hubby is working🤣🤣🤣 Trust me many do. But also, look what all that “equality” has done to America. The whole country is upside down. Those career minded woman are destroying your country along with the rainbows. None of that nonsense in Japan thank God.
Had a gf when I first came here. She said she wanted to be a housewife. Ended it quickly. Has to be the biggest turn off for me. Just tells me that the person has 0 ambition.
Considering where the birthrate is, I challenge the idea that “so many” women want to become mothers in the first place.
Because when they apply to medical schools, they got points deducted for their applications for being women. Society is cooked against them and not everyone wants to spend their life fighting the system.
Do you have any actual polling data on that? A cursory googling reveals not a huge difference in desire to stay home between the US and Japan. There may be differences in social pressure to say one thing or the other in public between the 2 countries, but it seems that the majority want to work outside the home.
OP, it seems you have been indoctrinated into thinking things must be a certain way. Not everyone has to follow the same linear path instructed to them by a society that values cheap labor over all, trying to force as many into jobs to devalue hard work.
Why would anyone want to work 16 hours every day no day off with work and housework and child rearing??
Is your opinion that it makes women worth less because they want to be a stay at home mom? Whats wrong with that?
If you were surrounded by highly educated people I don’t think you would think otherwise.
I think everyone, regardless of gender, should choose to live the life they want. I don’t think everyone needs to be “career minded”.
Why is it disappointing? Being a mom is a full job, most working moms sacrifice a lot to do both.
44 comments
Who wouldn’t want to stay at home if it was possible? Missing that whole commute stuff, work stuff, etc.
Not everything has to be like the US.
It seems to me that if many Japanese women wanted to be stay-at-home moms there wouldn’t be such a low birthrate and steep population decline.
I’m an aspiring stay-at-home husband.
They grew up watching their mom live a life they found acceptable.
I love it when people like you take women’s equality and warp it into an obligation that women must do something with it.
They don’t want to work. Neither do I honestly.
In the very end, few people wish they went through life spending more time at work.
I’m a Canadian woman married to a Japanese man. I have a degree and I worked for 10+ years in Japan.
I also have a 1 year old son and am now a stay at home mum. My husband encouraged me to be a stay at home mum but of course, he said it was my choice if I wanted to go back to work.
I opted to stay home because I love being a mum and I don’t want a hoikusho raising my son. I’d miss out on his firsts and that’s so sad to me.
I know not everyone has the opportunity or even wants to be a stay at home parent. My sister, for example, has a 3 year old and he goes to daycare everyday while she works. That’s her choice and I respect it, just as she respects my choice.
Corporate culture can be pretty grueling and often sexist……I don’t blame people for wanting out.
They want to do what makes them happy.
Mind your own business.
They don’t. The majority of women in Japan say they do not want to be married or have children. Numerous surveys show this.
Work culture here is toxic, and exhaustingly long with overtime. A lot of which goes unpaid. Not to mention japan is an extremely sexist society. What sounds better, working 12 hours a day and getting yelled at by your shitty old boss and getting sexually harassed? Or staying at home, doing household chores and doing something meaningful such as raising a child?
It’s not to say that work is meaningless or that child rearing is meaningful for everyone l. I hope you can get the point I’m trying to make.
The Japanese workforce is infamous for its long hours, difficulties in taking days off/vacations, and incidents of corporate bullying and power harassment. Why would a woman want to buy into that?
When I taught kids I was surprised when a lot of girls answered the question of “what do you want to be when you grow up?” with “housewife.” That too is an important role in its own right.
But Japan doesn’t have the gender flexibility/open-mindedness that much of the rest of the world does. Women are seen as a liability in the workforce because they’ll quit to follow their husband wherever he may go, or quit when they get pregnant, or if not quit then spend a lot of time on maternity leave, or miss lots of time at work to take care of kids. Again, the Japanese workforce isn’t exactly a shining beacon of good work ethics, and you have workforce that is biased against you from the start, so from the POV of a Japanese woman, why would you want to buy into this system?
[removed]
So, u/Yugioh-Fanboy2000…
Thing is… You are free to “wish” for a woman of your preference, but it shows very poor social skills to come into a 480k members group and say “too bad the majority of women in this entire country isn’t of my preference.”
Maybe it isn’t the number of women the problem.
But if you are just some sort newb activist, it isn’t social skills, but lack of purpose.
Either way, damn.
I’d be a stay at home husband if I could. Miss me with that 90 minute morning commute bullshit. Dealing with the kids all day could be stressful but I can manage for a few years until we start them in pre-school.
If the average female wage would be higher than the male one, you’d see a lot more aspiring stay at home husbands. Japan has the lowest gender equality of all OECD countries.
Lol get dunked by stay at home moms and the disappointment they bring you
doing what they like to do. why give your life to a company that doesn’t give shit about you.
who doesnt want to stay at home, take care of kids with no worries, no boss micromanaging every single thing?
Disappointing ? That’s very judgmental.
That being said, it’s the stereotype carried by Japanese culture, …
They are taught that this is how it should be.
I’m not sure what you mean by them not wanting “equal power”. In Japanese society, the mother is usually considered the head of the household. They make most of the large financial decisions and control the way the family is run. The husband gets an allowance from the mother for expenses.
But it doesn’t matter what you think is better for women. Taking responsibility for the household is an important role in society. And for many women, it is a good choice for them.
Quite often on Japanese TV (very poor source), you see surveys saying that most Japanese people consider women (housewives) to have the better deal in society. I can kind of see where they are coming from. Being in charge of a household is much more fulfilling than being some salaryman slaving away in a dead-end job.
> America has more “career minded” women than Japan, it’s a little disappointing.
America is more than a “little” disappointing, but I don’t think you should specifically blame woman for that.
I’m a man and if I had that choice, I’ll take tomorrow without thinking twice
Because it’s incredibly difficult to work and have kids in Japan. If you want kids you almost have no other choice at first than to stay home (if you work a corporate job)
Considering Japan’s declining birthrate, I am inclined to believe more women are opting to have careers than ever before.
Government and politicians for the most part just attracts the dumbest people seeking validation and control. I may be alone to say this but anyone that seeks power shouldn’t be given it.
Anecdotal, but, my wife works with a bunch of middle aged women, 35+ years old. She works all over the city we live in, assigned to difference branches every year. Every single women ask “Why would you work when your husband already earn more than enough ? If I were you, I’d stay home and enjoy life with my kids”.
Do they want to, or is it too difficult to? Because I’ve also talked to plenty and they pretty much all cite it being difficult to work as a mother.
I work and am a mom and I have to agree.
Companies tend to discriminate, for example I have never been asked to hold a higher position despite much newer, less knowledgeable coworkers being promoted to said position, because they assume I’m too busy, and sometimes I have to run home early to pick up my child from daycare if they’re sick. I have another mom friend who basically got fired because she had to run home to pick up her sick kid too often (not technically fired but demoted/transferred to a location that would make her commute and life even more difficult)
As convenient and cheap as daycare is here it’s also quite a lot of work. I have to hand sew aprons and blankets and sheets and various things, keep the name clearly printed on every single item that goes to daycare if it starts to wash off I have to notice and re write/stamp the name, in the morning I have to prepare so many things you’d think she was going away for the weekend, diapers, wipes, aprons, bibs, undershirts, shirts, socks, pants, a blanket cover, cot cover, sneakers, plastic bags, a dirty diaper bag, a dirty clothes bag, a coat, a hat, and in the summer: a towel for shower time/water play, a towel blanket, swim shorts, a bag for wet items.
It takes so long to get all those things ready at home in the morning and then to set it all up where it belongs in her classroom, I’m often barely making it to work on time, sometimes unexpected things happen like too many parents are in the classroom ahead of you so you have to wait for them to finish before you can enter and set up their stuff, making you later than you thought you’d be. Plus I have to get myself ready and my daughter ready to go as well, breakfast, diaper changes, getting dressed, doing my makeup, brushing teeth, doing hair, cleaning up, getting the bags packed for her and for me to go to work.
On weekends I have to bring home all of those things and wash them and repair them if they’re falling apart, and restamp names. Sometimes I work Saturdays so I only have between the time I pick her up Saturday evening until Monday morning to get all that washed up and ready to go again. On rainy days like this past weekend the cot cover didn’t even have time to dry after I washed it and this morning I had to spend time holding a hair dryer to it trying to get it dried.
Plus I have to fill out a daily report for the daycare, even on days off, including all her meals, nap time, bed time, wake up time, temperature, mood, poop consistency and how many, if she went to the doctor or is on medication, and then some short comment about how she is recently, what we did that day, if she’s learned anything new, etc.
I often have to pop into the supermarket on my way home to pick her up from daycare, and do my shopping extremely quickly, literally in like 10 minutes, so I can get home, put it away, and then go and get her by the time I’m supposed to pick her up by. Then she gets home and I have enough dirty clothes and stuff that I often have to do laundry literally every day or at least every couple of days, sometimes I end up doing 3 loads in one day if it’s been 2-3 days since I’ve done laundry, especially on weekends when I have all her blankets and stuff home from daycare as well.
I have to quickly prepare dinner (sometimes I have to go to the supermarket with her first if I didn’t have time to go on my way back from work) and then get her to eat, clean up, wash a full sink of dishes, unload the washing machine and hang everything up, entertain her a bit, get her bath ready, shower, bathe her, get her teeth brushed and ready for bed, get her to go to sleep, which usually ends up happening around 9pm, then vegetate on the sofa, with barely enough energy to even do something entertaining, let alone something productive like I should be doing like studying.
So yeah I can definitely see why moms might not “want to” work. It’s exhausting. Especially since the average father here barely helps with housework, errands, chores, or daycare prep. My husband probably helps more than most but I still feel like I’m drowning most days. Being a working mom in Japan is essentially being a stay at home mom PLUS working, being a SAHM is no walk in the park, since I did it for the first year of my child’s life, while I was on childcare leave, but working and being a mother… you have to do 95% of childcare and chores and errands as well as working so it’s definitely harder
As a man who loves cooking and pottering around the house, it’s a completely understandable perspective.
I’d happily give up working in high stress IT if it didn’t mean our finances would be destroyed (working to FIRE )
You Americans…
I’m a stay-at-home-father!
More power to those, woman or man, who throw off the corporate cacophony, and crawl out of the rut of common expectations.
To all those glorifying the state of women’s work in japan (staying at home is great! I wish I could!) I’d urge you to look up poverty rates for single mothers…
Stay at home moms are usually stuck in their marriage or destined to suffer in poverty, especially in japan…so it’s not a choice without severe consequences.
I’m a bit shocked at the support of this system. Culture, feminism, women’s right to choose are all great until something goes wrong. A system built on women’s financial dependence on men can’t be good no matter how you look at it.
I’m not blaming women for not wanting to play a game that’s rigged against them, but the choices they have aren’t great.
Edit: Huh, how about that. An innocent post championing women’s independence is the most controversial on this topic? Interesting, interesting indeed.
My husband is Japanese. We both do what we love for a living and he just happens to make 10 times more than I in doing so. Even before we were married, he told me not to worry about rent and grocery expenses, instead he wanted me to only take the jobs that l really wanted to do, and spend that extra time I had making our house more homey. Of course some weeks I didn’t have time to do that, that was also fine.
It makes more sense now that we are married and are planning on having kids. Why would I want to loose sleep from getting house stuff done after a long day at work away from my kid, only to make a lot less money than my husband, when we can go by without me doing so. Just makes no sense.
Need to put kid in hoikuen to work. Hoikuen costs the same as what you’d make in the hours you worked. Working to put kid in hoikuen to work…
Work culture sucks in Japan unless you get lucky, I’d pick stay at home parent any day of the week over putting in 10+ hours a day at a job I’m not devoutly infatuated with.
It’s so they can have secret affairs while hubby is working🤣🤣🤣 Trust me many do. But also, look what all that “equality” has done to America. The whole country is upside down. Those career minded woman are destroying your country along with the rainbows. None of that nonsense in Japan thank God.
Had a gf when I first came here. She said she wanted to be a housewife. Ended it quickly.
Has to be the biggest turn off for me.
Just tells me that the person has 0 ambition.
Considering where the birthrate is, I challenge the idea that “so many” women want to become mothers in the first place.
Because when they apply to medical schools, they got points deducted for their applications for being women. Society is cooked against them and not everyone wants to spend their life fighting the system.
Do you have any actual polling data on that? A cursory googling reveals not a huge difference in desire to stay home between the US and Japan. There may be differences in social pressure to say one thing or the other in public between the 2 countries, but it seems that the majority want to work outside the home.
OP, it seems you have been indoctrinated into thinking things must be a certain way. Not everyone has to follow the same linear path instructed to them by a society that values cheap labor over all, trying to force as many into jobs to devalue hard work.
Why would anyone want to work 16 hours every day no day off with work and housework and child rearing??
Is your opinion that it makes women worth less because they want to be a stay at home mom? Whats wrong with that?
If you were surrounded by highly educated people I don’t think you would think otherwise.
I think everyone, regardless of gender, should choose to live the life they want. I don’t think everyone needs to be “career minded”.
Why is it disappointing? Being a mom is a full job, most working moms sacrifice a lot to do both.