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Rally for more daycare centers

23 Comments

Makiko Morohoshi, holding her two-year-old son Amane, speaks next to her husband Kazuhiko during a rally in support of mothers and fathers whose children failed to secure places at daycare center, in Tokyo on Sunday.

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And and while they rally get these government hacks to raise the pay of these child care workers. It's poverty level wages they work for, do a job that many would rather not. It is a sad situation.

3 ( +6 / -3 )

Japan needs more daycare if you want people to have more children

5 ( +6 / -1 )

in support of mothers and fathers whose children failed to secure places at daycare center, in Tokyo

Don't do the demo to 'support' the parents (what that brings to dry together ? ). Instead, DEMAND that the city of Tokyo and the government to do their job and use your tax money to provide childcare. Invade the top officials' offices with your toddlers as long as you have no dedicated place.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

I agree 100% with @sensei258 (Japan needs more daycare if you want people to have more children.)

1 ( +2 / -1 )

@Burning Bush

What kind of mother would willing abdicate the responsibility and pleasure of raising their own child to a stranger.

One who has to work to feed and clothe her child... (Even for some couples, the father sometimes doesn't earn enough for the family).

5 ( +5 / -0 )

What kind of mother would willing abdicate the responsibility and pleasure of raising their own child to a stranger

The kind who needs the money - the kind who wants Abe's vow to incorporate more women in the work place to succeed - the kind who has a career and wants a child - the kind who leaves work at 5:00 to be with her child - the kind who would rather raise her child but whose family business needs her help...

Most women in the world raise children and work. In richer countries, they have the option of paying for others to raise the child in a healthy nurturing environment; in poorer countries, the babies get strapped to mon's back while she does the work needed to survive.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Back when you had multigenerational households, this problem didn't exist. If the government would subsidies cheaper accommodation and special tax exemptions then you could have at home mothers. Plus, there aren't enough teachers to staff daycare centres that do exist.

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

What's wrong with this picture? Instead of using their time and resources opening and running day care centers they are protesting that the government hasn't opened enough day care centers. And people wonder why nothing gets accomplished.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

I agree with Yubaru. I read an article by a principal of a daycare center, and he stressed on how ridiculously small the wage of a daycare worker is , and that people just don't want to work hard for , basically, peanuts. I'm lucky to have my kids in kindergarten, and a daycare before that, and I've witnessed how hard and for long hours they work, in super noisy and stressful environment, which is , undoubtedly, physically and mentally draining. Still they are always smiling and joking and kind, even when I'm on the verge of losing it with my own kids. They are skilled in music, play several instruments, sing beautifully, have amazing organizing and leadership skills, excellent self control, never once got sick, even with all these sick kids around them, and their art skills are a very high level. They are able to find the right approach to every child and eventually all kids get to love them. To hear how low their wages are is a real shame!

6 ( +6 / -0 )

Wolfpack,

These people are protesting the lack of city-run daycare centers. For a city-run daycare center to be built, the city has to approve. If they want to start their own privately-run daycare center, they still need city approval but won't get the money or subsidies so fewer people will use them.

Plus, since 2004, the national and prefectural subsidies for city-run daycare centers stopped and the city now must provide 50% of the subsidies (before 2004 it was 25%). If the city can't afford it? No new daycare centers.

Also, many parents already have jobs; indeed most of the men probably have careers and can barely afford food, housing, insurance, and education as it is. And you want them to quit and build a privately-run daycare center? In Tokyo? Where land prices are a bit high? A daycare center that will take at least a year before any profit, if any? Not a risk I'd want to take.

https://www.jetro.go.jp/ext_images/en/reports/market/pdf/2005_69_p.pdf

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Pro-Korea Tokyo governor Masuzoe decided to use a plot of land about 6,000 square meter in Shinjuku for a new Korean school although Shinjuku Office has been asking him to use it for a day care center.

-7 ( +3 / -10 )

Yubaru is right. Most preschool workers...even experienced and long working ones make around or less than 200,000 a month.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

The government subsidies these centers heavily, if you get in you don't have to pay much money, it is why the government doesn't want to build more. This should be Japan's number one issue, to build more and less hospitals.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

WolfpackMAR. 21, 2016 - 09:10AM JST What's wrong with this picture? Instead of using their time and resources opening and running day care centers they are protesting that the government hasn't opened enough day care centers. And people wonder why nothing gets accomplished.

Borscht made a pretty excellent rebuttal to your comment, but let me add another dimension to it. Government-subsidized daycare centers are also government-regulated daycare centers.

A week or so ago when the story about the daycare worker force-feeding a boy a piece of chicken covered in wasabi and threatening to hit him if he cried came out, everyone wondered how it was that such people could get into the system. A month or so ago when children in a daycare center died because what was it, something like they drowned falling into an unsupervised bathtub? These stories happened because they were un-regulated daycare centers unapproved by the government. Parents can't get their kids into the few government-regulated daycare centers, so they're forced to send their kids to an un-regulated daycare center, where there's no way to know if the people managing it are abusive or neglectful.

We can shout slogans for entrepreneurial capitalism until we're blue in the face, but the fact is that under the system that exists in Japan, government-managed daycare is a legitimate need.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

More daycare centers? As explained by the head of NHK a couple of days ago, women should stay home and make 2 or more babies. No need for daycare.

-6 ( +0 / -6 )

Japanese government must open more day care centers to help working mothers to balance their job and family responsibilities better and create more harmony in society.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Here's an article in Japanese from 2014 that quotes the actual cost of providing childcare using very detailed numbers given by Itabashi-ku in Tokyo. Apparently a place for a one-year old costs them 203,000 yen a month, but average parents pay less than 20,000 of that. The rest has to be subsidized by various levels of government. The 203,000 yen a month actual cost didn't surprise me given the cost of childcare for a 1 year old in the UK, but it is also sobering to note that even the 3-5 year old kids in big nensho to nencho hoikuen classes are still costing close to 80,000 each in subsidies.

http://www.childcare-ppin.com/cat5/post_222.html

For older kids, regular schools cost money to run too of course, but schools form part of compulsory education that governments have a duty to provide. Preschool is not compulsory, and for the most part does not teach life skills like numeracy, literacy, etc. You cannot really equate preschool with school.

There are countries where childcare is free for all, and that is a perfectly valid policy I tend to agree with. Such places though are high taxation countries where income, inheritance, and consumption taxes go way beyond those of Japan. In Japan, people seem to want extensive public services while moaning about very low taxes.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Yubaru is right. Most preschool workers...even experienced and long working ones make around or less than 200,000 a month.

Down here in Okinawa a daycare worker takes home about 120,000 per month. Some a bit more, many less, depending upon whether the facility is a public or private one.

kohakuebisu....the problems are not just in Tokyo.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I'm not saying it is a Tokyo problem, simply the article I found mentioned data on the cost of childcare provided by one of Tokyo's 23 wards. Such data is very difficult to find and most people haven't got a clue. My wife guessed the cost was just under half the Itabashi ku numbers. The value of the data is that it backs up the (common sense) notion that childcare in Japan costs a similar amount to other western countries, where parents pay close to 1000 GBP or over 1000USD a month. Japanese parents may not pay much, because that's because local governments are picking up the tab. The cost of the subsidies mean that local governments want to limit the number of places they provide.

The staff to children ratio is the same nationwide, so childcare will cost inaka governments a similar amount per child. The main cost will be labour, even at the pitiful wages given to nursery school teachers. fwiw, I hear the wages for many jobs are very poor on Okinawa. Its a beautiful place I like a lot, but the economic realities sound harsh for many people.

My main point is that for a serious debate about childcare, parents first have to realize how much it costs. That blogger who said "Die Japan!" two weeks ago did so because her local authority couldn't provide her one year old with a place at daycare. According to Itabashi-ku's numbers, such place would cost the authority two million yen a year on average. That is the other side of the story. I'm all for extensive provision of public services, but you can't have them in countries with low taxation and no resources. To use the Japanese expression, it is shikata ga nai.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Parents should be paid to care for their own children. The quality of daycare children attention span, behavior and ability to learn is massively lower compared to the regular kindergarten kid. I run an English school and have consistently seen the deficiencies of daycare children. Parents are the best care providers.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

daycare is one thing. but how about more institutions for disabled/handicapped/old people? at least with kids they are meant to be brought up by their parents anyway. its the people that need professional help but can't get it that I feel bad for.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Simply having more facilities is not enough -- they need to have the staff to run them, and they need to have PROPER wages for those staff, or else you're going to get more kids forced to eat wasabi, and the constant deaths at places we hear about. On top of that, there needs to be more government subsidised places, and not just the places that have no licenses but that are allowed to run, which is ridiculous to begin with.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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