While men are encouraged to take paternity leave, there is a growing problem of fathers who take paternity leave but do not engage in household chores or child-rearing. Whether husbands adopt a positive attitude toward child-rearing during the delicate postpartum period of their wives can have a significant impact on the future of the families.
When wives whose husbands took paternity leave were asked how long their husbands spent doing household chores and child-rearing during that leave, 30% of respondents said their husbands spent less than two hours a day, according to a survey jointly conducted last year by Connehito Inc., a Tokyo-based child-rearing support app developer, and The Nippon Foundation.
The comments from respondents include, "He spent time idly at home even during paternity leave. I ended up doing household chores after all," and "He spent part of his short paternity leave going out with his friends."
The app developer of "mamari" describes this situation as husbands taking "paternity leave just for the sake of taking it."
The survey also found that nearly half of the wives do not want their husbands to take paternity leave.
"If more husbands take paternity leave just for the sake of taking it, fewer wives will likely hope their husbands will take the leave," said Daisuke Yuasa, 38, editor-in-chief of "mamari."
"We should focus on improving the quality of paternity leave, in addition to the percentage of male workers who take it."
Yuasa added, "If couples discuss how they should share household chores and child-rearing prior to the child's birth and agree on it, I think they will be more satisfied."
Connehito has produced a booklet on topics to be discussed by couples before the birth of a child. The company will begin distributing it at the end of this month and now it is planning to look for municipal governments that want to distribute it.
--30% target
The government set a target in May of raising the percentage of fathers who take paternity leave to 30% by 2025 in its outline for measures to combat the fallen birth rate.
However, if the quality of paternity leave does not improve, the only change would be more fathers taking the leave just for the sake of taking it.
Sekisui House, Ltd. has been maintaining 100% of its male workers with children under the age of 3 take paternity leave. The Osaka-based company is now trying to improve the quality of the leave.
In June, the company made a booklet to support father workers. The section titled "Tips for child-rearing" in the booklet calls on fathers to start doing whatever they can regarding household chores and child-rearing.
The booklet is designed to help husbands realize what sort of behavior is unacceptable to their wives, giving examples such as men offering to "help" with chores, an attitude women dislike because it implies that doing chores is a favor.
"Each family has its own way of doing child-rearing and chores. For example, the way husbands and wives fold laundry is different," said Yasuhiro Morimoto, a section chief of diversity promotion division at Sekisui House.
"We hope our booklet will support our male workers to improve the quality of their paternity leave to some extent."
--Encouraging communication
Couples are being encouraged to talk more actively with each other.
Akiko Boda, 52, a prenatal and postnatal coordinator in Yokohama, holds an online "parents' workshop" with a midwife. In the workshop held in late June, Tsunemitsu Abe, 29, who runs a childcare company, participated as a father who has experienced child-rearing. He shared anecdotes of his experience with other men who were planning to take paternity leave.
"It was hard to get up many times to feed my baby in the middle of the night, so I told my wife that I'd do my best to do household chores and childcare during the day," he said.
Boda replied: "It's tough when you can't tell your wife what you can't do. It was good you told her about it."
Naoki Atsumi, a special researcher at Toray Corporate Business Research Inc. who took paternity leave twice, stressed that, "It's important for men to participate in child-rearing in the early postpartum period."
The husband is the most important object of affection for wives immediately after marriage, but after the birth of a child, the affection for the husband plummets, with the child at the top of the list, according to Atsumi's research.
In Atsumi's survey, women who said they raised their children with their husbands immediately after giving birth and during infancy saw their affection for their husbands recover. However, women who said they raised their children on their own saw their affection for their husbands further decline.
"With more and more women joining the workforce, families can fail if women feel a sense of inequity in bearing the burden of chores and child-rearing," said Atsumi. "The younger generations need to be prepared to share the burden equally."
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
