Quote:
Originally Posted by Brass
Something that I have always been curious about.
Japan has had a long time problem with birth rates, but what stands out to me is that Japan doesn't really have the problems the western countries do.
Western countries (America and Europe) are overran with feminism and skanks so our women are generally not marriage material so American men generally avoid American women for anything other than sex. As a result the US has the highest sex rate in the world but a very low birth rate.
Japan doesn't have any of these issues and I have been corresponding with a female Japanese pen pal and she says women there are still looked down upon in the workplace and gender roles are still very much in place. Not that I support strict gender roles but my point is feminism hasn't completely destoryed women like it has in America.
So what exactly is the deal in Japan? Their birth rate should be AT LEAST 2.0 yet from what I can find it's 1.1 or something extremely low.
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Frankly I find your reasoning offensive. Women's liberation may have prompted a move towards smaller families but it is absolutely NOT the sole cause of the modern declining birthrate, and it's disgustingly narrow minded of you to pin the whole problem on women alone. Have a good stare at the nearest man (or yourself) and consider this; male impotence has rocketed in the last decade or two, due to a combination of bad habits and exposure to modern chemicals. Also more men expect their partners to work in order to be 'marriageable' and are less inclined to adhere to their OWN traditional gender role.
As for Japan, the low birth-rate has less to do with the freer role of women in society and the fact it is incredibly impractical to have a big family. It takes a long time to establish enough of a career (for either gender) in order to afford to marry, dating behavior is more prolonged with modern couples and so people marry later and even if they don't marry, people are having kids later in life compared to decades past.
Unlike other countries abortions are more available (albeit expensive) and there's no religious slur against aborting unwanted pregnancies. Japan has small houses so having a dozen babies is often a terrible idea, and it's incredibly costly. If a woman marries and has kids, she may lose out on income if she chooses to stay at home and then struggle to get full-time regular employment again, so couples can go from two people on two reasonable incomes to three or more people on less. As the cost of living in some areas is high, this can be a point of real concern for some families. It's particularly hard to be a single parent- there's a slight stigma against it, unless you're bereaved or divorced, and again the financial situation is difficult, so women in that situation have more incentive to abort than keep the child. Of course, some wouldn't take that route. There's no real drive for men to have big families or women to have a lot of children, so people don't.
ETA: Wow, that article. What possessed that politician to think it was appropriate to refer to women as 'birth machines'? And 'devices'? Is that... men? Wonder what the original Japanese was...
ETA 2: I realize I may have mis-read the initial tone of the OP in the first post. If, as later posts suggests, you didn't mean to imply that feminism = ruined women= low birth rate= BAD AND TOTALLY ALL WOMEN'S FAULT, then I duly apologize. If you did, then my point still stands.