Workers urged: Go home and multiply

[Sinestra]

Well once again Japan's birthrate and aging problem has made headline news. Companies at the request of the government are encouraging employees to go home early 2 days a week to spend time with their families and to make more babies.

For those of you who do not know Japan has a serious problem with their birthrate as it is the lowest in the world at 1.34 well below the 2.0 it needs to maintain the population. Add in the the fastest aging society in the world and you have the makings of a disaster waiting to happen. Japan wont even have enough citizens to work the jobs needed in the coming years.

I thinks its great the government is getting involved and trying to get the population to have more children (except for the Diet member who resigned because he called Japanese women baby making machines) but its going to take more than going home early 2 days a week to fix this problem. Its not just the long working hours but many other social problems and factors and i think many of these factors need to be addressed before a plan of action can be crafted to fix the problem. They are being encouraged to have more children during a economic downturn thats kind of ironic.

Any thoughts? speak up.

here is the article.
Workers urged: Go home and multiply - CNN.com

[spicytuna]

I've made it my personal mission to help with this crisis during my next visit to Japan.

[Koir]

Originally Posted by spicytuna

I've made it my personal mission to help with this crisis during my next visit to Japan.

I suppose *somebody* had to say that...

[StangGuy]

Originally Posted by spicytuna

I've made it my personal mission to help with this crisis during my next visit to Japan.

I'm working on it myself, my wife(japanese) is due in August.

Having talked to my wife a litle bit about this topic before, I don't really think the proposed solution will work. How she explained it is that after the first child many of the typical salaryman/housewife couples see their job as done with respect to having kids. Allready having a kid to carry on the family name and take care of them when they are older they pursue other activities and sometimes sex elsewhere. With that kind of perspective the only way is to change the burden of having kids and also the perspective of what it is to have kids.

[ThirdSight]

First time I've ever heard something like this. Kinda' scary, but kinda' funny if you think about it:

"Gentlemen, we need to adjourn this meeting early because we all need to go have sex with our wives."
"I don't have a wife."
"Men, get Johnson here a wife. Then Johnson?"
"Yes?"
"Have sex with her."

[mrnicekid]

Originally Posted by ThirdSight

First time I've ever heard something like this. Kinda' scary, but kinda' funny if you think about it:

"Gentlemen, we need to adjourn this meeting early because we all need to go have sex with our wives."
"I don't have a wife."
"Men, get Johnson here a wife. Then Johnson?"
"Yes?"
"Have sex with her."

haha that cracked me up.

[Ronin4hire]

2 more practical solutions.

-Increase immigration.
-Stop overworking people so that having and raising families is not such a burden.

[MMM]

The reason Japanese folks are having less kids is mostly economical, the way I see it. Raising a child is expensive in Japan, and when the economy suffers it is natural for people to "cut back".

[Sinestra]

Originally Posted by MMM

The reason Japanese folks are having less kids is mostly economical, the way I see it. Raising a child is expensive in Japan, and when the economy suffers it is natural for people to "cut back".

Yep thats pretty much the main reason. Though Japans population did get better for a while but then suddenly it come crashing down again and continues to fall year after year. They are going to have a real problem maintaining their infrastructure after a while. When i spoke to some of my female Japanese friends about the subject i basically got these replies.

1.Who has time to have children.
2.Children are expensive.
3.I'm not married nor do i have the time to look for a spouse because of work.

Take a look at this graph its like upside down skyscraper just waiting to come crashing down.

[Nyororin]

The Japanese government needs to seriously push some incentives to move large companies OUT of Tokyo and more spread around Japan.

That would, in my opinion, make the biggest difference toward the population problem.

People move to where there is work - which ends up being a big city 95% of the time. This takes them away from their families and the social infrastructure they grew up in and are familiar with. They have no family support for a family (a big thing) and they have no space and money. Without friends and family around, there isn`t a whole lot to do but focus on work, so things just get worse.

Outside of the big cities, people have a decent number of kids. It`s just too expensive in the city - but unfortunately that is where the work is, so that`s where most people of childbearing age end up. If they were around their extended family, a lot of the issues and worry in regard to having a child would be reduced. But as things are - no work back by the family, but no space and money in the city.

except for the Diet member who resigned because he called Japanese women baby making machines

I think I`ve posted about this multiple times in the past, but that one single sentence was taken so incredibly far out of context that it disgusts me - when what he was saying was INCREDIBLY accurate, and he had the best ideas I`d ever heard. Too bad mass media wanted to get worked up over something and decided to forget to broadcast anything but that half a sentence.

To quote my past post on the subject;

I recall his speech being that no matter how hard men in the government may sit around talking about how the population should increase, and coming up with grand schemes... It all comes down to women - There is a limited number of women, and in that population there is a limited number of "baby producing units" ie. functional wombs with willing owners - so the best we can do is to ask them to do their best for the population.

In other words, instead of old men sitting around trading theories, why not ask those who really do have the power to increase the population to do their best.

If you ignore his wording, I think what he said is very accurate, and is in fact empowering to women as he refers to them as the ones with the power, and refers to asking/begging them to do their best.