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Japanese fathers should be forced to take childcare leave, expert says
He also proposes a system where senior citizens can step in to fill labour gaps when the younger population takes childcare leave
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Your support makes all the difference.A Japanese expert on demographic trends and ageing society has suggested mandating childcare leaves for fathers as one of the ways to boost the country’s plummeting birth rate.
Hiroshi Yoshida, a professor at Tohoku University’s Research Center for Aged Economy and Society, told The Independent that childcare leave for fathers should be significantly increased and made more common in Japan, similar to the policies in Scandinavian countries.
“Male participation in childcare is very low in Japan and it needs to be boosted,” he said.
He also proposes a system where senior citizens can step in to fill labour gaps when the younger population takes childcare leave.
He pointed out the example of the “Papa quota” in Norway, where fathers are required to take at least one month of childcare leave after the birth of a child. Prof Yoshida advocated for a similar approach in Japan to improve gender equality and support work-life balance for families.
Although women’s roles in society have evolved, there hasn’t been enough social empowerment to support families in balancing work and childcare, Prof Yoshida said.
If women can’t have children while maintaining a career, “marriage is useless for them” leading to a decline in marriage rates, he said.
“So the marriage rate of young couples has decreased sharply in Japan,” he said. “As a result, the birth rate has fallen.”
“It is a very, very serious issue.”
He said gender equality in Japan needed to be prioritised as it was crucial for the “country’s existence”. In Japan, while some fathers take paternity leave to support childcare, many hesitate due to concerns about work disruption and career advancement.
Japan’s birthrate dropped to a record low of 1.20 in 2023, with Tokyo’s rate falling below one. This decline has been linked to fewer marriages, with a growing number of people remaining single.
Japanese policymakers have been working on “extraordinary measures” to tackle the country’s declining birth rate, which some leaders have called “alarming”.
These efforts include expanding childcare facilities, providing housing subsidies, launching a government-run dating app to promote marriage and childbearing, and more recently, it was reported that Tokyo’s mayor plans to subsidise epidural births this year in order to encourage more women to give birth.
Mr Yoshida has been maintaining a conceptual clock that highlights Japan’s rapidly declining fertility rate by displaying real-time data on the number of children in the country. It shows the number of children in the current year and the previous year and tracks the decrease every second.
Using official population data from the Japanese Statistics Bureau, the clock calculates a decreasing rate by comparing the number of children in consecutive years. The clock then estimates the year when the number of children will drop to just one, based on this steady decline.
According to the latest calculation, this would happen around the year 2720 – 695 years from now.
Mr Yoshida said he was “impressed” by the impact of the National Debt Clock in Times Square in New York City and the Doomsday Clock, highlighting the power of visualising issues. He believes that a similar approach could help raise awareness about the decline in Japan’s fertility rate.
Even though Japan has provisions for paternity leave, several reports suggest the number of fathers actually taking advantage of it has remained relatively low.
Mr Yoshida says that in order to implement male childcare leave effectively in Japan, workplaces need to adjust by addressing the labour shortages.
He suggested increasing the participation of older people in the workforce and leveraging new technologies, such as AI to improve efficiency and reduce the labour gap.
He also suggested older workers be employed longer, “up to ages 70-75”.
This would allow younger parents to take more time off for childcare while the older generation continues to contribute to the workforce.
A survey conducted by the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry and other organisations last year, involving around 6,000 small and midsize businesses, revealed that 52.4 per cent of the 2,880 companies that responded lacked the personnel to replace employees on childcare leave, Asahi Shimbun reported.
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