>>1617006>the general assumption must be that both parents work, except perhaps in the rural areas.Funnily enough the general assumption when a women gets pregnant in white collar Japan is that she quits the workforce to focus on child rearing. Children and their proper upbringing being of utmost importance to any sane society that doesn't let tv or youtube raise their kids accompanied by fastfood or tv dinners.
Even women that want to continue working through the manageable parts of their pregnancy are usually pressured to stop. It a reason why companies may be reluctant to take on a female worker of child rearing age as it's assumed that once she marries and gets pregnant she'll have to leave. Presumably once they get ripe enough management assumes they're a foregone christmas cake and that there's no longer any worry about them eggs getting cooked. Fathers on the other hand are expected to work themselves literally to death. They've even come up with a word for it. They never see their kids and spend their lives as salaryman drones.
This is the tradeoff, and hence why mothers are so important as they're the ones that are going to have more actual time contact with their children.
This is one of the many reasons why japanese don't have many, or any, kids when they're in japan; it's just too much.
However I've noticed a strange phenomena in the asian country I'm in with, pre-wuflu, the largest Japanese working population (families) outside japan. The japanese here seem to have 3 kids each. They're happier, and totally different compared with when they're back in Japan.
I was working with a guy who fronted a Japanese firm my company was interested in doing business with and had to meet him quite often. Amiable guy, lots of fun. Went drinking every night in the japanese part of town.
Months later I met him in Japan and he was like a completely different person. Like a robot. Mind you his superiors were present but it was like a switch was flipped. I've heard similar accounts from people that have worked with Japanese outside of, and then within Japan and they've noticed the same thing. The manager of a firm my father worked with was desperately trying to keep his family here rather than return to Japan when his term was up as he knew his kids wouldn't have the same overwhelming societal pressures here than back in Japan.
It's not like they went full native mind, they have their own schools, their own shops, their own barbers and bars and restaurants. They've crafted their own little Japanese microcosm where they can be comfortable but without the pressures of actual Japan.
