Japanese Not Settling For Baby-Men

[jhameia]

Got this from Racialicious, and it's basically about the declining birth rates in Japan mainly due to Japanese women refusing to settle for men who work all day and are never home.

It's a devastating thing, of course, from the country's economic standpoint, because without population growth, there can be no economic growth. But at the same time, when half your fucking population refuses to grow up and change with the times (efforts have been made to encourage men to leave the office and go the fuck home), and this same particular half refuses to acknowledge the emotional investment required of marriage and sees marriage instead as a way to have someone else at home to feed, clothe and pick up after one, I don't see how any real progress can be made, even from an economic standpoint.

It's not even that these women don't want to settle down and have children either... they DO, but they see marriage as an equal partnership and refuse to sell themselves short into marriages where they'll be expected to all 100% of the work, AND have their careers on top of that (Japan doesn't want women leaving the workforce for children, but many still do). There's still a great deal of gender-based discrimination; women still face obstacles in the workplace despite measures in place; men are terrified of singledom AND of independent women in general (divorced men remarry really quickly, divorced women don't); and for all their infantile needs, the men STILL want to be seen as on top of it all.

Basically, the women're saying, "fuck that noise."


GOOD FOR THEM.

These women are finding fulfilling, satisfying lives without love, marriage and kids; they're not going to complain about their lot. They're not going to settle for anything less than what they want: they want an equal partner who will come home and help with the house and kids; they don't want to be a mommy to a grown-up man. It's going to take a social revolution on the part of MEN to fix that in Japan.

And by golly, does that ever sound gratifying.

Comments

[beautydreaming.livejournal.com]

I read an article a little while ago along the same lines. Laws were changed so that women would be entitled to half their husband's pension if they divorced, so that's what a lot of them were doing. Getting out when they could. The article focused on a few men's groups which were trying to train married men into being good husbands so their wives wouldn't leave them. Apparently saying "I love you" while sober is a major milestone, which none of the men interviewed had reached.

[fantasyecho.livejournal.com]

That is so depressing. Yet, strangely hilarious at the same time. And very sad. I'm glad the women are taking a stand for what they want, rather than passively just going along with it.