Nursing rooms where parents can take care of babies while they're out of the house are becoming fancier and more user-friendly, with the advent of private nursing rooms that fathers can easily enter and facilities with bright, pleasant interiors. These unique nursing rooms are very popular, as they reduce parents' stress about the troublesome business of going out with small babies.
The Yokohama-based start-up company Trim Inc. has developed "mamaro," a movable, box-shaped nursing room. Beginning last year, it has installed mamaro nursing rooms in public facilities, shopping centers and elsewhere.
Mamaro is a single private room with an internal lock, so parents can feed their babies with a sense of security. The floor space in each room is about 1.5 square meters.
The sliding door opens to reveal a sofa that can comfortably accommodate one adult, along with an ottoman footrest. A screen inside displays regional information, corporate promotional videos and other content. The company employed a simple, wooden interior so men will not hesitate to enter.
One benefit of mamaro is that it reduces the burden on the hosts of the facility, as each unit is equipped with wheels and can be disassembled it into six parts.
A mamaro was installed on the first floor of a general gymnasium in the Ebina sports park in Ebina, Kanagawa Prefecture, in July. Gym officials had previously sent people seeking a nursing room to a medical treatment room at their request. Now, the mamaro nursing room is used about 40 times a month, and has been very well received.
Trim President Yusuke Hasegawa said: "Some men have used mamaro nursing rooms to calm their babies when they won't stop crying. I hope the room provides a space where both babies and parents can feel at ease."
Many people feel nervous about going out with small babies and children. A 35-year-old female company employee with a 15-month-old son and 3-month-old daughter in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, has given up on using nursing rooms due to the long lines.
"I tend to be reluctant to go out because I think it'll be hard to find a nursing room," she said.
According to a survey conducted by the Cabinet Office in fiscal 2014, among the married respondents with their youngest children aged under 7 years, 2,253 answered that they felt anxiety when going out. Asked what kind of support measures and environment would enable them to go out with a sense of security, about 62 percent of them, or the largest proportion, chose "facilities and services that give consideration to pregnant women and customers with small children."
Unique nursing rooms are emerging that allow parents to enjoy going out.
The Lumine Est fashion store in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, opened a "baby lounge" in 2016. With a pretty interior design using pastel colors, it's equipped with changing tables and a hot water server, and offers samples of organic cosmetics for mothers.
"We tried to create a space where parents can relieve their fatigue from childcare and feel cheerful," an official in charge said.
The Swedish furniture shop Ikea prepared nursing rooms using their own products. "In Sweden, black is used even for children's rooms," said Kei Yonemura, 34, an interior designer at Ikea Kohoku store in Yokohama. "For the nursing room, I used black, light pink and light blue as base colors to create a Northern European atmosphere."
Yonemura listened to the opinions of employees who are raising children, and installed a mirror and a clock so mothers could time their breast-feeding.
"In addition to the functions and cleanliness, we hope users will enjoy the atmosphere unique to Ikea," Yonemura said.
"Many nursing rooms have looked bare up until now, so the emergence of various nursing rooms tailored to mothers represents great progress," said Ayako Naka, an associate professor of architecture at the Faculty of Human Life Design of Toyo University, who is familiar with issues related to children's growth environment.
"Nursing rooms offer opportunities for parents to share advice and concerns about raising children. It would be better if there were nursing rooms that considered the flow between different kinds of spaces, such as baby changing tables, nursing spaces and resting spaces, so mothers can talk to each other while feeding their babies and fathers can use such rooms easily as well," Naka said.
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