I am ikuman!
July 9, 2018 1:24 PM   Subscribe

"A third of [Japanese working fathers] wanted to spend more time with their kids and wanted to take paternity leave, but felt that it would be frowned upon by their bosses: for the older generation, spending time with children was just not something men did...

"In 2008, the Japanese government began piloting the Ikumen Project (NYT), aimed at drafting policies that would make workplaces more father-friendly and funding various cultural projects that would encourage dads throughout Japan to get more involved with their children. (The word ikumen is an amalgam of the Japanese ikuji, “child-rearing,” and the English “men.”) Signs began to appear in subways and on crowded streets: an American-inspired, movie-poster-style billboard of an actor dressed in a Superman costume, standing proudly with the word “Ikumen” emblazoned on his chest. Men could be seen actually engaging in fatherhood on TV and in films and magazines, too"

"Feminist scholars have taken issue with the language, ads, and media around ikumen, which tend to portray involved dads as heroic and situate fatherhood as something patriotic in the same way that the government encouraged men to work hard for the good of the nation as it struggled after World War II...'Most notable here is the likening of ikumen to superheroes—hypermasculine icons who serve the nation through protecting the weak (children and mothers); and frame their roles more in terms of ‘support’, ‘consideration’ and ‘understanding’ for their wives—a sympathetic, but somewhat passive fathering model, leaving the gendered division of labor largely intact.' "

"While this idea that women take care of children and homes while men run companies has dominated modern history in Japan, there have been noticeable shifts in the past decade. “Every year I see more and more fathers taking care of their children. On the street or in a TV drama or in the media. You can see men doing fatherhood more and more all the time, so that is very encouraging. Those are the men in their 30s. Men and women in their 30s have a totally different mind-set than people in their 50s. They are different people. So we have high hopes for the younger generation.”
posted by devrim (7 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble



 
A nation of suit-wearing salarymen educates its first generation of stay-at-home dads.

What about the husbands and fathers who work in primary industries, construction, manufacturing, logistics...

The topic.com article views the new labor laws as a good thing, where overtime is supposedly capped at 720 hours a year. However, the laws, which were just passed last month, put the monthly cap at 100 hours -- more than 25 hours of overtime every week. Even worse, highly-skilled labour is exempt from any caps on overtime labour.

The approach to overtime -- for white collar workers, that is -- is one problem with encouraging Japanese men to spend more time at home.

Another problem is that wages for women in Japan are quite low. There are very, very few "meat-eating women" -- professional women who earn more than their spouses -- in Japan. Typically women earn at best half the salry of male workers. A typical monthly salary for a female office worker is about $1,200. There are going to be women who earn more, notably teachers, but they are a small part of the workforce.

So, since husbands earn more, and are required to work overtime, there is little incentive to spend more time with family. On top of that, dual-income families are taxed more -- something else not mentioned in the article. If the wife, as a dependent of the household, gets a job, above a certain threshold her earnings will be taxed.

So there are some structural impediments to getting men to stay home.

There's also culture. I'm not sure what it's like nowadays, but for Japanese Gen Xers (my generation) it was still totally normal for a woman to quit formal work to focus on family and managing a household (which is considered "work" in Japan).

If I had legislative power I would limit overtime and abolish gender discrimination when it comes to wages.
posted by JamesBay at 2:05 PM on July 9, 2018 [13 favorites]


It seems, anecdotally, like it’s becoming less the norm now for women to leave the workforce indefinitely upon having kids. This may just be that whole “stagnating wages” phenomenon that America is so familiar with.
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:57 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


Japan is still doing something fundamentally wrong because in 2017 the child birth rate was at its lowest since records began in 1899. The root causes are difficult to address because they intertwine shitty gender roles, unfair labor markets and other complex systems. Having a very conservative government with a right-wing nationalist Prime Minister doesn't help, either.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:35 PM on July 9, 2018


Just to give an inkling of how serious the Japanese government is about making it easier to raise a family in Japan, in late 2017 the prime minister appointed a 59 year old man, Masuji Matsuyama, to be the minister of state for Measures Against Low Birth Numbers, Male and Female Equal Participation in Society, Science and Technology Policy, Space Policy, Intellectual Property Strategy, and “Cool Japan” Strategy; as well as Minister for the 100-million Citizen Activation (my bad translation), and Minister for IT Policy...

So like, the label ikumen is cute and it’s really nice that attitude are changing; but claims that government is helping feel, hallucinatory :)
posted by AxelT at 4:37 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


Mod note: Couple deleted; let's not drive the thread off into generalizations about low/high population growth everywhere on earth and so on. This is a specific link about a specific thing, we can discuss that.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:53 PM on July 9, 2018


It's been a long time since I've been in Japan. I was there in the 80s as a jazz musician, a gaijin curiosity to the salary-men (saramīman) whom we entertained.

The Japanese culture has obviously been less female-friendly than some other First World countries. (I remember how odd it was in a Japanese home being served first, the wife to eat later, on her own. Also: the pineapple or raisin-studded butter patties as beer snacks. Much weirder than dried shrimp.)

But those of us of a certain age in the USA (meaning us olders, especially--and this must be true in many places) almost universally remember a somewhat distant Dad. The increasing acceptance of a father as a nurturing figure is surely a bright moment in our increasingly Dire Times.
posted by kozad at 9:06 PM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]


I must grant that my "does this writer know what they're talking about?" defenses were raised when they failed to note that "ikemen" is a play on the quite common "ikemen," referring to a cool/stylish man
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:05 PM on July 10, 2018


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