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Japan's Women Opt Out of Marriage
- ronnier 7y agoIt’s not just Japan, but also a lot of the western world. People are getting married less often and having fewer children and my guess is that it’s largely driven by women opting out as they are a lot more selective in who they date and marry compared to men. Historically women didn’t have much of a say in the matter since they needed to marry for a better life since they lacked the freedoms or resources to go it alone. Now that women have gained their freedom and the resources to to survive on their own (higher rates of education, economy that supports high paying jobs that employees lots of women, etc), they can totally stay unmarried and have fulfilling lives in their social circles and wait until they can select exactly what they want. Men largely take what they can get, they are the selected. Women select. And of course this is just a generalization.
- danharaj 7y agoOr maybe, it's too expensive to start a family these days. Or people grew up watching their parents regret starting one too soon and want to avoid that mistake. People who talk about women being more selective makes me wonder if there's an ulterior motive to choosing that hypothesis. Sour grapes?
- dfcmt 7y agohttps://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1111607604348805120 https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1111607604348805120
- danharaj 7y agoMost women I know 18-30 put hours of their week into their fitness and appearance. The most you get out of men is that some of them try to get nice clothes and go to the gym. Those men have no problem dating, it turns out. Most men? I have to chide some men to take a shower and do their laundry, even. If incels found out about exfoliating and not turning your depression and anxiety outward into misogyny, maybe they'd get laid.
- dfcmt 7y agoI don't know where you live but where I am both males and females have the same standards of fitness and hygiene but females can afford to be more picky about to whom they open their legs.
- danharaj 7y agoYour language betrays your resentment. The sourest of grapes.
- nyolfen 7y agoso you think this lack of hygiene or whatever has tripled in the last ten years or what? this betrays a total lack of consideration. sexual market dynamics are shifting rapidly.
- danharaj 7y agoI'll give you a hint: Using a market analogy for intimate relationships is not attractive, it's creepy.
- nyolfen 7y agoi don't call my girlfriend my customer, it's a completely appropriate metaphor when speaking about culture-level aggregate effects. you should reflect on why all of your responses in this thread boil down to attacks on a perceived outgroup instead of engagement with ideas.
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoThe implication of that chart is that women are increasingly having sex with the men who have sex with multiple women.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dgzl 7y agoI agree with the GP, women are more selective these days. I've been in the dating pool a while and things are changing in weird ways. Sexually speaking, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
- rectang 7y ago> Or maybe, it's too expensive to start a family these days. There's much more economic uncertainty for the average family as a result of two things. 1. Corporations innovating the labor market and successfully squeezing increasing amounts of wealth out of the workforce: successful union busting, ever more cleverly exploitative labor contracts, the gig economy, unpredictable scheduling, metrics and surveillance, etc. 2. Fewer funds proportionally available to labor thanks to increasing wealth capture by a tiny minority. It's not only expensive, but it's statistically difficult to overcome the uncertainty and establish a homestead you can believe will prove stable over a kid-raising time frame. It's easy to understand why people are hesitant to start families in such family-unfriendly economic conditions.
- mlguy456 7y agoSimple solution: 1%/year tax on wealth and give these money to families with kids. The tricky part is wealth is often stored as shares and if you tax Bezos, he'd have to sell 1% of his shares, thus driving the price of those shares down; then if some hedge fund keeps buying the shares he sells, eventually he may lose control over his company, which is unfair. We might want to define wealth as savings above 5M dollars. This would be easy to work around: register a few companies with highly complex structure of ownership and spread money across them.
- nugget 7y agoHow do you ensure our society survives in such an environment? There’s a potential future where the birth rate in open and tolerant communities falls to near zero while the birth rate in closed, ultra orthodox (across numerous faiths and denominations) religious communities within which women are commanded to procreate remains high. If you watch a show like Handmaid’s Tale through this lens you can start to connect the hypothetical dots from here to there.
- malandrew 7y agoLiberalism needs to evolve to incorporate the family and procreation into its philosophies and worldview if it wants to continue having an influence.
- hellisothers 7y agoSeems like you’re saying liberalism is anti-those-things but it’s not, it is anti-coercion though and if that has historically been the solution to what you describe then I could see one drawing that conclusion.
- hellisothers 7y agoHow about men could stop doing the things that make women not select them?
- freetime2 7y agoI think the solution is probably to make having children more attractive with government subsidies and labor laws. E.g. free daycare, affordable education (including college), health care, a minimum amount of paid time off per year, etc. Nobody should be forced to get married or have children if they don’t want to. But if we can alleviate some of the risks/down sides to having children, I think we will see more people choosing to start families and also having more children per family.
- klntsky 7y ago> to make having children more attractive with government subsidies and labor laws This is a bad idea. Russian government have already tried that, and the result was that less wealthy people (mostly alcoholic and drug addicts) started to literally make children to receive subsidies and spend them on themselves. It's fun to me how Google search results differ for "to make a child for subsidies" and for this same phrase translated to Russian, where it has already became a phenomenon.
- dmaldona 7y agoThese are other articles by the NYT: * Japan’s Working Mothers: Record Responsibilities, Little Help From Dads * In Japan, More Women Fight to Use Their Own Surnames * Japan Desperately Needs More Day Care Workers. New Mothers Need Not Apply. * A Princess in a Cage Seems like NYT has a mission to liberate woman in Japan... I am really skeptical of this ideology that affirms work and a wage as some sort of spiritual liberation.
- danharaj 7y agoIf you earn your own money then you have more independence. If that's ideological then I don't know what's not ideological.
- daenz 7y agoCan any anthropologists answer this: have there been other human cultures that die out due to a lack of desire to procreate, or is this a new development?
- mnem 7y agoProcreation isn't limited to marriage.
- daenz 7y agoPlease don't strawman me by suggesting that I'm saying only married people have children. The article also talks about the lack of desire to have children due to the desire for independence, and talks about how it's also a factor in the lack of desire for marriage.
- mnem 7y agoI simply misunderstood what you were saying - it seemed quite a non-sequitur from the main point of the article. I think it's a little premature to assume that the population of Japan is going to die out. One of the points mentioned is that few Japanese women have children out of wedlock - I imagine this will change as time moves on and fewer couples marry, similar to other countries. However, I think the main challenge with posing the question "have there been other human cultures that die out due to a lack of desire to procreate" is that culture is quite an ephemeral thing - what would it mean to die out? As an aside, is strawman a verb these days? Language is hard to keep up with.
- daenz 7y agoI see what you mean. Maybe my question does have a hidden assumption that it is even possible for a culture to die out from a lack of procreation. I'm just trying to better understand the problem... sub-replacement fertility rates seems to be a new development, and nobody seems to know how it plays out in the long run in the modern world.
- 7y ago
- kalleboo 7y ago> As recently as the mid-1990s, only one in 20 women in Japan had never been married by the time they turned 50, according to government census figures. But by 2015, the most recent year for which statistics are available, that had changed drastically, with one in seven women remaining unmarried by that age If anyone is curious, the statistics for the U.S. look similar. https://i.redd.it/qn25qiv8fawz.png https://i.redd.it/qn25qiv8fawz.png
- TomK32 7y agoWith the difference quite likely being that Japanese children are rarely born out of wedlock as the article suggests.
- xivzgrev 7y agoI feel sad reading this article but understand where the women seem to be coming from. It basically seems like two choices 1) get married and because your husband works all day, you get zero assistance managing kids and housework and aging relatives. There’s no safety net there, unlike in the US where, in many cases the husband could take time off or work from home to help out when the wife needs 2) don’t get married and be encumbered to all that. But have to forgo intimacy and the joys of kids.
- watwut 7y agoNote that given expected hours from salaried man in Japan, men don't get to experience joys of kids at all, no matter whether they marry or not.
- hurrdurr2 7y agoYeah the salary men culture of Japan is not one of moderation. I mean they even have a specific term for being overworked to death: "karoshi". ...but I wouldn't hold my breath on the NYT writing an article on how rough Japanese men have it.
- johnny22 7y agothey sure have. in 1980 even. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/19/world/tokyo-tries-to-find-out-if-salarymen-are-working-themselves-to-death.html https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/19/world/tokyo-tries-to-find... The problem hasn't changed much.
- johnny22 7y agothey sure have. in 1980 even. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/19/world/tokyo-tries-to-find-out-if-salarymen-are-working-themselves-to-death.html https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/19/world/tokyo-tries-to-find... That was just the first link, I'm sure there are more, but i'm not going to do your homework for you.
- freetime2 7y ago> There’s no safety net there, unlike in the US where, in many cases the husband could take time off or work from home to help out when the wife needs A lot of people in the US (both men and women) do not have the flexibility to take time off from work whenever needed. Also in terms of “safety net” - Japan offers affordable (and soon to be free) daycare for households where both parents work full time. The long work hours Japan is famous are a strain on families to be sure. But with the government actively working to change the culture and also the sheer necessity due to a large percentage of households where both parents work, I think things are changing quickly. As others have noted, the US is experiencing similar declines in marriage and birth rates. And unlike in Japan where the government is actively working to address the issue, the US government does not seem capable of making necessary reforms to social welfare/child care systems right now and is even actively making things worse by discouraging immigration.
- Hitton 7y agoThis article read really biased. The part about wife being ruled by her husband is simply not true. In Japanese households traditionally wife stays at home to be a housewife and man earns the money. But when he brings the money home, he gives all of them to wife who traditionally controls household's money and only gives a husband a small pocket money which he is then allowed to spend how he wants. So obviously the article's allusions to Japanese sexism must be taken with reservation.
- daenz 7y agoGender-based division of labor is heavily frowned upon in modern society, even if that division of labor still makes a lot of sense for a lot of people.
- lwhalen 7y agoEh, "heavily frowned upon" in certain small (but incredibly vocal) urban pockets along the US coastline, sure. The rest of the nation... not so much.
- Kadin 7y agoThose "urban pockets" contain a very large percentage, if not the majority (depending on how you measure and with what granularity), of the US population. One could just as easily say that it's "heavily frowned upon" by all but the retrograde inhabitants of the country's depopulated and backwards interior. But we won't, because that's rude.
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoI'm a liberal but I still have to point out that "the country's depopulated and backwards interior" (your own words) provides the food, agricultural products, and mineral plus other natural resources that cities depend on. Until urban areas manage to figure out how to conjure their food and industrial input out of thin air, rural areas are as important (and arguably more important) than cities. It's also worth noting that a large portion of the armed forces come from rural areas. Need I point out the potential problem with a military that doesn't hold the same values as the civilian populace it's supposed to protect and obey? Bear in mind that history does have a nasty habit of repeating itself.
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoI guess the key question is whether new cultural norms can be formed that allow both women and men to have the opportunities they deserve while still encouraging and supporting the birth of children. Liberation doesn't do much good if the culture and way of life that liberated them dies off.
- hellisothers 7y agoI’m seeing this framing a lot in this thread and I haven’t experienced it before, where does this “back in the day when women had less freedom it was better for humanity” come from? Seems like a negative feedback loop if you’re looking for a date...
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoI said nothing of the sort. Since I went to great trouble to avoid any hint of that in my post, I suggest you re-read my post and apologize.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- q6 7y agoMarriage has its roots in slavery, especially of women. The word 'husband' means 'owner of a wife'. The woman was considered property of the man, a slave. The word 'family' meant 'slaves in a household'. Look it up.
- jchanimal 7y agoChecks out
- rfrey 7y agoNo it doesn't. Husband is from Norse hús, meaning House, and bóndi, meaning farmer or tiller of the soil, combining to the Norse húsbóndi meaning the male manager of a household.
- q7q 7y agoVery good now check the etymology of bond https://www.etymonline.com/word/bond https://www.etymonline.com/word/bond "c. 1300, "in a state of a serf, unfree," from bond (n.) "tenant, farmer holding land under a lord in return for customary service; a married bond as head of a household"" In ancient Mesopotamia, the words describing a husband meant “owner of a wife.” From “Israel’s house : Reflections on the use of “Byt Ysr’l” in the Old Testament in the light of its ancient Near Eastern environment” (PDF) by Daniel I. Block (page 268): "In the patriarchal Mesopotamian society the father was considered to be the lord of the house.65 65 Cf. “The Code of Hammurabi,” ANET, 171, #129, and 173, #161, where he is called be-el as-sa-tim,“owner of a wife.” […]" The man was usually indeed lord of the house, the manager among the 'slaves in a household', aka 'family' family (n.) early 15c., "servants of a household," from Latin familia "family servants, domestics collectively, the servants in a household," thus also "members of a household, the estate, property; the household, including relatives and servants," abstract noun formed from famulus "servant, slave,"
- q7q 7y agoMarriage= slavery Also, when is HN going to stop shadow banning the truth?
- mrhappyunhappy 7y agoCan confirm. Wife tells me all the time about how shitty Japanese guys are as husbands (heard all of her friends complain), and how happy she is that I’m not Japanese. Even stay at home mothers without jobs do an insane amount of work here, with husbands expecting home made meals. This is all anecdotal of course, but I hear Japanese husbands almost never participate in any household chores. Wives don’t even bother asking as they are afraid of being seen as incompetent at doing housework. I can only imagine the schedules for working women! Mind you, Japan is not a society where hiring others to watch your kids is a common thing. Women typically do most of the kid raising on their own, with husbands only around on weekends and holidays.
- distantaidenn 7y agoYour wife married a foreigner, and you are touting her bias as some overarching trend? Japanese men bad; foreigner good. Come on... I respect that you admit it's anecdotal, but this goes well into data gleaned from self selection bias.
- mrhappyunhappy 7y agoMy wife didn't marry me because Japanese guys are shitty, she was far too young to know better when we met. This is coming from a person who interacts with married women living in Japan. Her personal opinion of Japanese guys was not formed until after interactions with these women. Even then, you could argue she is biased just by the company she keeps. I'm just telling you what I hear from my sources.
- rolltiide 7y agoThe thing that bothers me the most is the lack of consensus. For every economically free woman there seem to be 5 more that would prefer the man to pay for every date or assume other traditional roles, no matter how it is rationalized. (My experiences in the Americas and most European cultures.) In this article about Japan that seems like an accurate distribution, given that it mentions only 1 out of 7 subscribe to any of the logic/circumstances the article is written about. To be a male ally for the economically free and liberated woman is almost the worst form of altruism. The incentives are completely misaligned. All you can do is learn about what the sensibilities are, never publicly disagree with them on record or around a woman striving for these ideals, but do the complete opposite with the much larger population of women that expects a certain traditional heteronormative gender role. (The goal, of course, is to be an eligible mate - or not ineligible - for all of them)
- krapp 7y ago>The thing that bothers me the most is the lack of consensus. >For every economically free woman there seem to be 5 more that would prefer the man to pay for every date or assume other traditional roles, no matter how it is rationalized. Women, like men, are individuals possessed of a diverse set of opinions and beliefs, they do not operate according to a consensus algorithm. To expect "consensus" among an entire gender on a topic like feminist identity and inter (and intra) gender relationship dynamics, particularly at the level of social and cultural expectations, is sexist and diminishing. >The goal, of course, is to be an eligible mate - or not ineligible - for all of them No, the goal is, or should be, to support human rights, because that is what womens' rights are. Men should be allies of women and of feminism because the belief that women have the right to bodily, social, political and career autonomy is the morally correct position to hold, not as a pretext to maximizing their chances of getting laid.
- rolltiide 7y agoI agree with you Many people deciding what feminism is are speaking on behalf of their whole gender and leave no oxygen for others to point out the lack of consensus on these matters. Its the same filter bubble seen on other polarizing topics, your echo chamber agrees with you and everyone that disagrees is an irreconcilable deplorable. I agree people should be treated as individuals Lack of consensus accurately describes my frustration
- dclowd9901 7y agoIs the problem here that Japanese men so stubbornly hold onto traditional morays? I’ve never been and am only passively familiar with cultural tradition, but it seems like the “company man” tradition is still very much alive, along with a lot of other very dated concepts.
- selimthegrim 7y ago*mores
- freetime2 7y agoThere’s really quite a bit of bias here in this short statement that I’d like to highlight: * Assumes that falling marriage/birth rate is a bad thing. But there are some benefits as well such as fewer unwanted births and unhappy marriages, less environmental strain, affordable housing costs, low unemployment, etc. * Assumes that only men “stubbornly hold onto traditional mores”. Surely women do this too. * Assumes cultural differences in Japan are “dated” (and therefore inferior) compared to elsewhere. Note that I’m not even a cultural relativist. I do think that some cultural traits are objectively better than others. But you do need to be careful to avoid bias. Finally I’d just point out that marriage and birth rates are on the decline in much of the developed world. Which leads me to believe that the cause must more universal than a single population of men refusing to abandon their stubborn traditions.
- rolltiide 7y agoI feel like every generation has this in some capacity, and the movement just dies off due to lack of reproduction. Leaving just their artifacts from their writings to inspire a similar distribution of people in a future generation, who also fail to create offspring to instill similar ideals in. Whereas the counterparts are reproducing in heteronormative relationships. Is there enough data to study this now, just to confirm (or accept completely different findings)
- leftyted 7y agoYou can view this as the result of the emancipation of women. Or you can view it as the sacrifice of the private sphere (family, children, home and hearth) at the altar of the economic sphere. I suppose I view it as a bit of both. I certainly don't like the idea of people being forced into marriage. But I'm also skeptical of the rejection of marriage. I don't think a career can replace a family. The reason I have a career is so I can have a family. A lot of people in their 20s seem to think that their dayjob is actively involved with "making the world a better place" and will lead to fulfillment. I think "brainwashing" is a fairly accurate word to describe that mentality.
- gcheong 7y agoIf having children is so wonderful one must wonder why men still haven’t by large decided to pitch in when it comes to the nuts and bolts of child rearing. While I would agree that any vocational claim of making the world a better place is dubious, certainly that is equally true if not more so of bringing more people into the world.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago> If having children is so wonderful one must wonder why men still haven’t by large decided to pitch in when it comes to the nuts and bolts of child rearing. It's, by and large, because those are not the men that women select to have children with. When women consistently choose the man with the six figure salary, but that implies working long hours, what follows is predictable. There is also a high degree of adverse selection there because a woman can't tell how much a man will help with the children before she has the children, by which point the father is already chosen. So they choose based on what they do know (e.g. salary) which is inversely correlated with that.
- dnjdrbdhdbs 7y agoBingo. I was on the kind of career trajectory for a million dollar salary. The most famous school, name brand employers, etc. But when we had a kid I fell in love and I wanted to spend tons of time with him. It’s my wife who had to be OK with moving out of the Bay Area, cutting our expenses, while I transitioned to a job where I basically work 5 hours a day and make less than $200K. Most wives would have said no fucking way. We are going to have more kids and I may even go full stay at home dad.
- rufusroflpunch 7y agoThey didn't even attempt to talk to a single married woman in Japan who likes her life.
- hurrdurr2 7y agoThat wouldn't have fit the tone and bias of the article... there's a good reason why I rarely read the NYT anymore.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- raincom 7y agoI think it is good for other species, if more and more women won't find suitable partners to procreate. Right now, only the poor and the wealthy are procreating.
- pray-for-death 7y agoTime to commit suicide.
- sharadov 7y agoI don't think Japanese women have a say in the society, you see very few women rising up, the gender roles are strictly enforced. Had a female friend who was fairly ambitious, she left and moved to the US, since she said there was no way she could pursue those there
- mrknowitall 7y agoI know a Japanese women who went to college in the states and had the opposite opinion so she moved back to Tokyo. I guess our experiences cancel one another out!
- downrightmike 7y agoBoth of your experiences are valid for each other.
- ezoe 7y agoIt's not just women, but men also opt out of marriage. Because we have no reason for marriage anymore. The writer, as usual, don't mention the elephant in the room. It must be intentional because she probably want to write about women's right and nothing else. The reason is nothing but for the lack of money. We, the average Japanese, cannot afford to have a child anymore. We just barely afford to have a life for themselves. Why did we have to have a marriage? Because of the children. Because in the Japanese society, the children is assumed that they have a parent consists of one male and one female in marriage relationship. Since we cannot afford to have a child, there is no reason to marriage anymore. What other functions the marriage offer? Asset management and inheritance? No. We can't afford to have a reserve or real estate. There is no use for that. Bonding the families? No, as rural areas are more and more abandoned and everybody concentrate toward a few big cities, there is no traditional bonding of the families in one area. Sex? Well, Not anymore. Japanese marriage system assume that the marriage is a exclusive sex relationship between single male and single female. It support very narrow traditional sexuality and excluding today's most of the sexuality. The marriage system is now outdated. Ironically, the traditional marriage system is one of the cause of birth decline. It's an obstacle. Some people still want to have a child driven by natural instinct, but the current Japanese society assume a marriage between a male and a female who share their asset as the one, agree exclusive sexual relationship. Not following that pattern and you have huge negative impact on tax, school, health insurance and everything which makes those who want to have a child but don't agree on traditional marriage system holding to have a baby. Conclusion: The marriage is outdated.
- georgeecollins 7y agoWhat if our world doesn't really need more people and the economic incentives (not everywhere, but in the west now and maybe everywhere later) are discouraging children? You could see that as bad if you value tradition. But maybe people used to have a lot of children because they were valuable to work the land and now the incentives are different. In the long run is it bad if people have less children for a while? There are more people alive today than ever before.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoThe US also has a lot of people putting off sex, marriage, etc. I suspect part of it is just there's stuff to do 24/7. If you have internet access, you can read, educate yourself (with or without credentials), talk to people around the world, watch porn etc etc any time of the day or night. A former hippy once told me "TV shut off at 9pm. There wasn't anything else to do but sex and drugs." We have the opposite of that. There are so many things to do, lots of people seem to be forgoing sex. Because: Meh.
- mrknowitall 7y agoFew houses have electric driers. Japan's energy consumption rate is also lower than America's. The good and the bad.
- zadhi 7y agocan you check out this, do you satisfy the theory and reasoning they have given. https://geniesmag.com/being-single-women-new-freedom-trend-japan/ https://geniesmag.com/being-single-women-new-freedom-trend-j...