Opinion Balancing career and family By Masako Yamada	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
仕事と家庭の両立を図るには？ 日本では少子化が社会問題になっている一方、 アメリカではなぜ出生率低下が起きないのか -- その理由をいくつか考えてみた。

I was flipping through a recent issue of "Bungei Shunju" when I came across an interesting article on the perilously low birthrate in Japan. According to this article, this was known for at least a couple decades, but interest in this phenomenon has exploded in recent years. One especially hot issue seems to be that the birthrate is particularly low among educated women who live in cities. In Tokyo, the birthrate is currently less than one.

It reminded me of how, a few weeks ago, I met up with several Japanese high-school friends. Our conversation naturally moved to personal gossip. It turned out that fewer than half of the 40 women who used to be our classmates have ever been married, and only five out of the 40 have given birth by the age of 30 or 31.

The United States does not suffer the low birthrate of Japan. If women - if women and men - in Japan knew that they could have fulfilling careers even after having children, I think things would change. My workplace is relatively demanding, but I see women with two, three or even four children. Most of the women have Ph.Ds so they tend to get a relatively late start in starting a family, but no one blinks an eye at the sight of a 35 or 38-year-old woman pregnant for the first time.

Some may criticize working mothers for not focusing 100 percent on their children, but the fact is that they are supporting their families. Were they to be forced to quit their jobs they may very well choose to forgo having children. I won't say that allowing women to have fulfilling jobs is the only factor (or the main factor) that will increase the birthrate in Japan, but I certainly think it will help.

Parenting philosophy may also be a factor. I recently asked a Ukrainian woman whether she had worked throughout her daughter's childhood. She said, yes, she had returned to college a week after giving birth. She and her husband went through college, then graduate school, then full-time jobs, while raising their daughter. She commented: "People have been having children for 10,000 years. It's not a big deal." She seemed genuinely surprised that childbirth is treated as a huge event. For most of history, for most of the population, children were forced to fit into adult society, and adult society demanded that adults work most of the time.

Another philosophy that I see in the States, which may not be as common in Japan, is that having children is fun and rewarding. The pressure for children to excel academically at a young age is not as great as it is in Japan, and there is less drive to send children to private schools and cram schools. Children are (often) expected to do chores and be involved in the community so they are not just a "drain" on society. They are contributors.

Mitigating the low birthrate is obviously a very difficult topic with many-pronged, intertwined factors, but seeing my high-school classmates and reading that article have unleashed a huge storm of ideas in my head.

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