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Nippon Life Insurance Co announced this week that starting from this year, the company will guarantee one week of paid childcare leave to all male employees. By giving new fathers a week off, the company said it hopes to encourage male participation in childcare, Tokyo Shimbun reports.
Although many major companies have childcare arrangements for their male employees, cases which guarantee paid leave are rare. In fact, "it's unheard of," according to a chief researcher at the Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training.
In Japan, childcare leave is usually taken from the date on which the child is born until the first March after the child becomes 1 1/2 years old.
Currently, Nippon Life Insurance Company has about 7,700 male employees. Among them, 280 were eligible for taking childcare leave as of the end of May, Tokyo Shimbun reported. However, so far, only 5% of them actually took the week off. Starting this month, the company's human resources department said it is checking those who haven't taken the childcare leave and will encourage them to do so before it expires.
© Japan Today
11 Comments
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sillygirl
How about sending fathers HOME at a decent hour so they can participate for more than a week.
Frungy
Incorrect. See the Child Care and Family Care Leave Law (revised 2008). Legally employees are allowed to up to 93 days of family care leave in their child's first year of life (source: Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare website http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/policy/affairs/dl/05.pdf) . This applies to both men and women.
Giving one week of paid leave and treating it as a privilege instead of as being short-changed is ridiculous and just shows how uneducated the vast majority of Japanese employees are about their legal rights.
Companies NOT providing their employees with information about their legal entitlement to leave should be heavily fined.
falseflagsteve
@Tokiyo
What is disposable income; Smartphones, Sky TV, a big car. Love and family come first.
Kronos
Good initiative but a week may not be enough. The burden is still on the mother.
Perhaps a good way to share the burden and also help the work force is to give 2 years of child leave to be shared between both parents e.g. the woman can take a year off and then replaced by her husband. This can also help keep the woman in workforce as well.
I also keep wondering while companies of a certain size do not have any in-house childcare facility. I guess it is because of the cost and the red tape in Japan.
Tokiyo
because everyone has all that disposable income lying around to only have to rely on one breadwinner in the house. Oh wait....
Yardley
@falseflagsteve
Exactly. Maybe if we all put our money toward only what was really needed instead of just wanted, one parent would be able to afford to stay home and take care of a child.
Maria
One week may not be enough, but it's better than nothing, and it works as a symbolic gesture, indicating that men should not be expected to sacrifice important family time for their job.
It's an ok start. I hope other companies follow suit, make the paid leave mandatory, and continue to increase that time.
moneyyen
This whole childcare thing for Men is a copout. I agree that there needs to be more childcare. But dawg it, if you decide to have a child, take care of and raise that child until he is at least a couple of years old. The husbands should be doing what they have always done, take care of the family. Work and take care.
Lance Winslow
One of the things that concern most insurance policy holders is the fact that there are claims that insurance company failed to pay life insurance. The insurance basically consists of those that people invest into in order to make them feel secured that by the time that emergencies or difficult situations come, they know and are sure that there is something which will back them up. http://www.insurance4motortrade.co.uk
Mario Fazekas
For those people who believe that it is better to be safe than sorry, legal insurance and legal expenses cover is a good idea. This article explains the benefits of being covered and what you need to look out for.
falseflagsteve
Society should encourage at least one of the parents to stay at home and look after the child in the first few years of its lives.Childcare should be a last resort, it provides too much risk as it is a magnet for paedophiles.