One Child or One Career: Choice for Working Mothers in Japan

21 Sep 2025 | #parenting | #japan

We had our first child 1.5 year ago in Japan, and she started nursery about a year ago. Now that we are expecting our second kid, it is becoming painfully clear how hard the Japanese system is for working mothers who want to have more than one child. This was especially surprising for me, since the declining birthrate has been a major issue for Japan for decades, and all levels of government is trying to solve it, but still the end result is a system that pushes mothers to choose between career or multiple kids.

Types of work

Since we are talking about working mothers, let’s start by examining the types of work one can be engaged in. (This is based on my experience and doesn’t aim to be an exhaustive list.)

Full time employee (正社員)

Usually considered the best employment option: being a regular, full-time employee of a company. You do your hours, and get the fixed salary, plus the yearly bonus (which is more-or-less guaranteed). As long as you show up, you can’t really be fired.

It often feels that this is treated as the only “real work”. For example when looking for mortgage, any other types of work will make it much harder to get financing and might result in a larger down-payment and higher interest rate. Same for applying for nurseries, or government subsidies: this makes everything the easiest.

Maternity leave (産前産後休業): starts 6 weeks before the due date, and last for 8 weeks after giving birth. Payment is 67% of salary, but it’s exempt from income tax and social insurance contributions, so the take-home pay drops to only 80-90%. Paid by the health insurance not the employer. (source1, source2, source3)

Child care leave (育児休業): up to the first birthday of the child, but can be extended for another year if the child fails to get into nursery (some nurseries will give you a rejection letter if asked, or you can see which place have a long waiting list and simply apply there). Payment is 67% of salary for the first 6 months, then 50% of salary. This is again exempt from income tax and social insurance contributions, so the take-home pay drops to only 80-90% for 6 months, then to 65-70%. (source).

Part time workers (パート、バイト)

These part time workers usually have a fixed term contract or work in a shift-based system where they and the employer decides how much they work. This includes work like cashiers, restaurant staff, but also TA (teacher assistant) work at a university that my wife did during her studies.

No (long-term) fixed hours, you get paid for the hours you work. The company usually handles your taxes (I believe).

Maternity and child care leave: maternity leave can be available, but child care leave requires at least 20h+ per week of work and a contract that runs until the child turns 1.5 years old, so not available for most cases.

Contractor, sole proprietor, freelancer (個人事業主, フリーランス)

This is what my wife does, so I know more about it. You work as much as you want, invoice your clients, deduct business expenses, and file your taxes in February/March.

Maternity and child care leave: none, since you only get paid for work you do.

The work culture issue

So the best is to be a full-time employee, then take the 1-2 year child care leave, right? On face value, yes, that’s essentially the ideal way. However in practice cultural norms make this difficult, especially if one wants to have multiple kids.

The issue comes from the fact that most companies handle child care leave as any other paid leave: they don’t hire a replacement, simply expect the rest of the employees to pick up the extra work. (The inability to fire people, the historically low fluctuation, and the low growth likely also contribute to this: if they would hire someone new, then what would they do when the mother comes back from the leave?) And this is happening in a country where half of the employees use less than half their regular paid vacations (source) partly to not inconvenience their team members (who would need to pick up their work while they are away).

This system turns people against each other: it is understandable that colleagues are not happy for the additional work (e.g. assuming a 5 people team, if one person goes on leave, everyone else has 2 hours extra work per day), however they shouldn’t be mad at the person who got the kid, they should be mad at the company for forcing them to do extra work.

This is also where multiple kids get subsequently more difficult: the team might be okay to pick-up the slack for a year, but being out of work for 2 years, then working for a few months just to go on leave again can easily create a work environment where one doesn’t want to return to.

This system also makes timing difficult: many women feel bad going on maternity leave shortly after joining a company. However if one has worked at a place for a few years, then they likely got good at their job, so leaving then puts more work on their colleagues (who now need to learn all what the person knew).

Moreover in teams where there are multiple people wanting to have kids, sometimes they will have to coordinate their pregnancies in order to not go on maternity leave at the same time.

Doing this is often called マタハラ (short for maternity harassment) and is illegal, but likely hard to prove in court (source1, source2, source3).

The real solution would be a cultural change where companies would stop expecting the team to do the same amount of work when members are on extended leave (or hire contractors to help out during this period). However until then most mothers face a difficult choice between quitting their job altogether (assuming their partner’s income is sufficient) or only have a single child.

The same issue applies for father taking paternity leave too. To combat this, from next month SMBC (one of the major bank) will start mandating at least one month paternity leave and give both the father as well as his team mates 50,000 yen bonus (source). This second part highlights that the team member’s attitude is definitely a contributing factor for not taking parental leave.

Nurseries and kindergartens

The system continues to make the life of working mothers hard when it comes to nurseries. As discussed in my post on nurseries, there is a shortage of nurseries in most major cities, so places are allocated based on need. Licensed nurseries have a point system where the more both parents work the more likely for the kid to get accepted, but even unlicensed nurseries (only the Tokyo licensed types as those receive subsidies from the government) have a mandatory requirement that only kids of working parents can attend (this varies per city, but both Mitaka and Musashino require at least 48 hours of work per month from both parents).

And this is where not being a full-time employee makes things very difficult: the system is set up in a way that points and requirements depend on the hours worked per month, which is easy for regular employees, but hard to measure and prove for freelancers (e.g. here is a form one freelancer had to create to prove their working hours - it has hourly breakdown of the work she did). But whether a proof like this is accepted, is up to the city hall worker you end up talking to. And if it isn’t accepted, your kid might need to stop attending nursery (yes, this is evaluated not only at application time, but also afterwards, and can result in getting your kid kicked out of nursery - at least in the city we live in).

Our case

I’m working as a full time employee, so my situation is easy. However my wife works as a freelancer and was attending university when we had our first child. This actually helped when we were looking for nursery, since being a university student counts as full-time work. However we recently learned that after graduation she should have notified the city hall about her work, or if not working, then our kid should have stopped attending nursery.

At this time she was looking for work, and to our luck she registered at Hello Work (the employment service center), so the city hall considered her job-seeker for 3 months, which made us eligible for nursery.

By that time she found work on her own, however since we were planning our second kid soon, she decided to join as a fixed-term contractor instead of full-time employee (she didn’t want to burn bridges by going on maternity leave within the first year of working at a new place).

She had to make sure this contract run until 2 months before the second kid’s due date, since 2 months before and 3 months after the birth she is considered busy enough to justify the first kid going to nursery. Also during this work she had to prove that she worked at least 48 hours per month to qualify for nursery.

However the way things look right now, there is a chance our first kid will have to stop going to nursery when the second kid turns 3 months old. Musashino city hall told us that for freelancers there is a declaration form which says that they are taking a one year childcare leave but will resume their freelance work afterwards. (Similar to how regular employees can take one year off from work.) If the city accepts this, then our first kid can stay in nursery until the second kid turns one.

Nursery is free in Tokyo, but is it?

Since September 2025 nurseries are free in Tokyo. The way this got implemented is that certified nurseries are simply free (no tuition to pay), and kids attending non-certified nurseries receive a subsidy equivalent to the price of the certified nursery (which for us would cover 80-90% of the fee). Except, in our city this subsidy has a requirement of both parents working 120 hours per month or more (page 57 here - this is from last year but this years rules are the same), which is about 6 hours per weekday, almost full-time.

So for now we will keep paying out-of-pocket and hope that our kid can continue to attend nursery after March. Then in a year, we will look for nursery for the second kid and my wife will look for work of 120 hours or more. There will be a bit of catch 22 here as well: we get points for the certified nursery application if she works, but she can’t start working until we find nursery.

And then we also want a third kid sometimes soon.

Summary

Overall it feels that the way the system is setup makes it difficult for mothers to work and have more than one child. The possible options that I can see are like this:

• work for a good company where taking extended maternity leave even in short succession is accepted - we have a friend who had a baby 1.5 years ago, couldn’t find nursery so extended the leave for 2 years, and will have the second baby before that 2 years is up. She is on leave for 3-4 years minimum, but her company and colleagues are fine with it, so it works.
• quit work and stay at home for at least a few years to look after the kids. Accept that this will make getting into nurseries harder.
• have grandparents nearby that can provide childcare - this helps with not being able to get into nursery
• balance freelance/contractor work with childcare and hope that the city hall staff will be supportive

At the end of the day it seems that the issue comes down to not having enough nursery spot available. This is what pushes the cities to prioritize the people in the most need of nurseries leading to the additional paperwork for non-regular workers.