It is way more expensive for households with two working parents to raise children than it is for households with one working parent, and as a result it is possible that even fewer Japanese people would elect to have children.
Firstly, this is a small and modestly exclusive institution. So much so that it could hardly be a causal factor in motivating women to decline to have children in preference to their career. Simply declining to let qualified women be doctors to make room for privileged rich sons is a repugnant insult to human intelligence, and should be viewed as the sexist attitude it is.
Secondly, if the "force women to stay at home by disadvantaging them in the workplace" were such a great strategy, Japan wouldn't have a declining birthrate because until very recently (and ongoing, to a marginally lesser degree) this is the case.
Yeah, but it is not acceptable to try to boost natality by denying opportunity to 50% of adults. My response would be "ok, you don't want me to be a productive member of the society in the way I wanted, I won't be in any other way whatsoever".
OTOH I'd guess that low natality in Japan has other factors, as other comments pointed, even for men: long, long hours of work, living in a cage called "apartment", probably no leeway in the work to handle domestic problems (yes, even living under the most conservative marriage arrangement possible, there will be domestic emergencies all the time, where a man needs to step in).
You're implying that:
- only women will take care of kids
- daycare is as expensive as in your place of origin. (in Tokyo there are public daycare schools, and you have preference for entering if both parents work)
And yet hundreds of families are on waiting lists. If you don't get a spot, you have to go to a private facility which can easily cost more than one parent's monthly salary, or drop out of work until you get a spot, but then you're relegated even further down the waiting list.
Also, once you're in, you'll have to pick the kid before 6pm in most daycares which means you must leave the office at 5pm and since a lot of companies do not have flex time, that single hour will push you to a part-time position. Then the daycare will refuse to take your child if they have a fever of 36.8℃ and do regular temperature checks during the day and force you to drop your work and come pick the child straight away if they go above 36.8℃.
Unless you work close to home and have a very flexible and comprehending employer (or have grand parents close by and ready to help), even with a lucky spot in daycare it is extremely complicated to continue working.
Let's not even talk about elementary school where mandatory partake in time-consuming useless PTA activities basically assumes one of the parent does not work.
Fever is an abnormal elevation of body temperature that occurs as part of a specific biologic response that is mediated and controlled by the central nervous system. (See 'Pathogenesis' below.)
The temperature elevation that is considered "abnormal" depends upon the age of the child and the site of measurement. The temperature elevation that may prompt clinical investigation for infection depends upon the age of the child and the clinical circumstances (eg, immune deficiency, sickle cell disease, ill-appearance, etc); in most scenarios, the height of the fever is less important than other signs of serious illness (eg, irritability, meningismus) [35-38].
●In the otherwise healthy neonate (0 to 28 to 30 days of age) and young infant (one to three months of age), fever of concern generally is defined by rectal temperature ≥38.0°C (100.4°F). (See "Febrile infant (younger than 90 days of age): Definition of fever", section on 'Definition of fever'.)
●In children 3 to 36 months, fever generally is defined by rectal temperatures ranging from ≥38.0 to 39.0°C (100.4 to 102.2°F) and fever of concern by rectal temperatures ≥39.0°C (102.2°F) if there is no focus of infection on examination. (See "Fever without a source in children 3 to 36 months of age", section on 'Fever of concern'.)
●In older children and adults, fever may be defined by oral temperatures ranging from ≥37.8 to 39.4°C (100.0 to 103.0°F) and fever of concern by oral temperatures ≥39.5°C (103.1°F).
Oral thermometers average one half of a degree Celsius lower than rectal.
The above is pretty much straight out of UTD, as I am far too lazy to retype it for anyone’s benefit.
Probably a typo for 37.8°C, which is about the usual standard for child fever. Usually not worth calling the doctor until it’s like 39° or above, but sending a kid home with a mild fever might keep the rest of the class from catching a cold.
Not a typo and it's oral or armpit temperature. Japan is weird with their concept of "fever". When I get a flu shot, they ask me to take my temperature and I have to lie every time because they won't give me the shot if I tell them I read 37.4 C
Since when? We were taught that the normal temperature is 36.6. Even thermometers had such markings. and the 37.0 was marked red, because there the range of "something is wrong" started.
In the USA it's 98.6 F. I just converted it to Celsius and it comes to 37.0. It's interesting it's different in different places. (That's probably also why Europeans are so cold and snobbish... I kid, I kid)
Not all potential graduates affected would have become mothers, so from that standpoint it’s not applicable to a significant portion of the graduating class.
But the real issue is the women were artificially denied an opportunity to decide by themselves.
Total paid on childcare is higher in a family without a stay at home patent, though the two earner family generally will have more net disposable income (After child-care)
Solution: free day care. It’s a win for taxpayers if those parents go to work and pay taxes instead of staying home with the kids. Also a win for women’s liberation.
Because you can now have your own means of survival as opposed to depending on someone other (such as "state" or "husband") and possibly being booted from time to time from that dependence together with children.
In the UK it's very hard to have one parent stay at home - to pay the mortgage you usually need two full time to cover the mortgage.
Child care is subsidised heavily by other taxpayers, but only government childcare - get a grandparent round and there's no tax break. The tax system works hard to discriminate against single parent families too (two people with two kids on total £80k pay a marginal tax of 32%. One person on £55k pays marginal 60%)
> There is a strongly negative relationship between women's education and fertility.
Actually, it is a correlation between educated women having educated partners that know how to use contraceptive methods. Educate all men and women's education will be less relevant. Or stop any education of men, contraceptive methods will decline and fertility grow.
> Is this, in the long run, also good for the taxpayers?
It all depends. Is it good for "taxpayers" that humanity does not go extinct? Is taxes the only moral compass for our society?
Each time someone mentions a social advance for our society there is a big reaction against it because "costs money". Yes, it costs money, and it is money well spend in the citizens well being.
Is the legal system, schools, the police force, firefighters, etc good for taxpayers? Yes.
Does it costs money? Yes.
And that is why there is taxes. To pay for our needs.
Well if they're not paying for the daycare they don't. If they are they are then they do.If you want someone else's money then you're going to get it on their terms or not at all.
Does going to daycare over have a stay at home parent lead to an increase in the money made? And if we were considering just the number of children and how having more children will lead to more tax payers, then cutting funding for education in ways that result in more children being had is even better because you save money now and have more tax payers later.
If you begin to optimize social and political decisions on the basis of having more tax payers, you'll get weird results. For a second example, cutting reproductive education funding in schools will lead to more tax payers (though arguably tax payers who pay less, so then the question becomes are you optimizing for tax payers or for future taxable income in total).
There is a well established correlation between education in girls increasing and child birth rates decreasing. Unless you think that funding could be cut without decreasing education rates, in which case shouldn't we cut funding?
Yup. Let's forbid education for women. It'll definitely result in a better society for everyone.
Quality is more important than quantity. More educated people will produce better product and improve everyone's lives. Not saying that denying 50% of population a chance to live their lives as they want is plainly wrong and immoral.
That entirely depends on what the parents do. Certainly doctors generally make more than caregivers so in this specific case the family would net more with a physician mother. There is also evidence that female children of working mothers tend to go on to better education and career outcomes themselves, so this is effectively a heritable advantage for some offspring.
If females are denied good job opportunities in Japan, they'd be less inclined to work at all.
So if your first sentence holds true, then this kind of discrimination actually should help Japan's reproduction rate.
maybe my reasoning only applies to big cities?
In manhattan daycare is like $3k/child. To break even, one has to get paid ~$5k, since there are federal tax/city tax etc.
