- With low crime rates and free day care, Japan may seem like an ideal place to raise kids.
- But American mothers say they deal with cultural differences, such as babysitters being uncommon.
In many ways, Japan seems like the ideal place to raise children. It's relatively safe and has a low crime rate, which enables children to walk to school without adult supervision. Many municipalities offer free healthcare for children up to a certain age, as well as free day care for kids over the age of three who have working parents. In child-friendly Japan, there's even a holiday just to celebrate kids (Children's Day, which is on May 5).
Even so, motherhood is hard work, and some American moms living in Japan told Business Insider they felt they faced extra challenges due to differing cultural expectations.
One mother said she was advised to eat only 1,200 calories a day
Kelsi Nagai, who is originally from the state of Washington, has been living in Japan for seven years. She has a 4-month-old son, who was born at a midwifery clinic.
She told BI that the clinic closely monitored her weight during her pregnancy. "I was advised to eat only 1,200 calories a day in the third trimester," she said.
She said doctors "allocated" her 11 kilograms, or just over 24 pounds, of weight gain; she gained 13 kilograms, or just under 29 pounds. The circumference of her belly was measured frequently, and the midwife also told her that she should be doing 100 squats a day. "That was really intense."
Jennifer Watanabe, a mother from California, lives in central Tokyo with her husband and their three-year-old daughter.
Watanabe said her experience with motherhood in Japan had generally been positive. She concurred that, in her experience and from what she'd heard from others, obstetricians in Japan seemed fixated on weight gain during pregnancy and also tended to evaluate foreign patients according to charts calibrated for Japanese body types. But she managed to find a clinic "accustomed to non-Japanese with different weights," she said, where she was not scolded about her size.
Another mom said she was judged for working while her husband stayed home
Nagai said she and her husband, who was raised by a single father, decided he would take time off from work as a public-school teacher. Although the Japanese government offers generous paternity leave benefits — Nagai's husband is entitled to receive 85% of his salary for a year — few new fathers take advantage of them. In Japan, mothers are still expected to take care of their children all the time.
Thirteen weeks after giving birth, Nagai resumed work at an international school in Osaka, which is only in session 180 days a year. "It made sense financially," she said. "But there was so much judgment that I went back to work. Japanese people tend to believe that the husband is not as capable of taking care of children."
In-laws don't often want to babysit
These American mothers also said that the concept of parents getting away from their children for an evening wasn't common in Japan and that it was hard to find a babysitter.
"My American friends don't understand," said Christine Takisawa, a Michigan native who's the mother of a 5-year-old boy. "When my son was a baby, my in-laws didn't want to babysit."
While in America, it's common for parents to hire neighborhood teenagers to babysit their kids for a night out, the mothers interviewed said this practice was pretty much unheard of in Japan. Pricey professional babysitters do exist, but they are mostly in large cities such as Tokyo.
In most municipalities, parents can apply for babysitter services at the town hall. These are often retired women looking to earn some extra income through a system named Silver Jinzai.
Takisawa said, however, "We were told that we can only use babysitters in a pinch for work. We can't use them for date night."
A lack of support makes sleep training tough
Takisawa, who lives in Iwate, said she struggled with additional confusion over cultural expectations. Early on, she said, she sought advice on parenting from friends in the United States. Although she tried to follow American ideas for sleep training, her Japanese friends told her the way to get kids to sleep was to "just lie down with them," she said.
"In the end, I just gave up on sleep training," she said. "It was too hard to do without support. Now, my son is five, and I still have to lie down with him."
Parents are expected to participate more in school events
Many of these American mothers in Japan said the teachers there expected far more participation from them in school-related events than teachers in the US. For example, some mothers reported that they were expected to hand-sew items such as aprons, cushions, and shoe bags in order to demonstrate affection to their children. They said they were also required to pack bentos for excursions and other special events and were expected to participate in meetings of parent-teacher associations.
Diane Nagatomo, a professor born in Nebraska who raised three children in Japan, said she was assigned to a PTA committee to design a unicycle course in the playground for a school event, involving more meetings than she had for her job. She said she was also expected to iron the apron her children had to wear during their turns at dishing out school lunch.
Takisawa said she agreed that school requests could be inconvenient and unreasonable. She said she'd been surprised by "the level that they expect parents to participate: 'Come help clean the playground on the weekend at 6 a.m. Don't bring your child with you.'"