A community approach could be the cure for Japan’s baby woes

Throwing more money at families is unlikely to result in a meaningful increase in births

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida vowed in his speech to the opening session of the Diet in January “to implement unprecedented countermeasures” to bring the country back from “the brink of being unable to maintain social functions” due to its shrinking population.

In his speech, Kishida cited the three pillars of his planned approach: offering more subsidies for parents, expanding childcare services and promoting workstyle reform.

While his initiatives may be marginally helpful, they will fail to move the dial because they are essentially just more of the same.

According to statistics published by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan’s chronically low total fertility rate — a measure of the average number of children that would be born to a woman in her lifetime calculated based on the fertility rates per age group — hit a record low of 1.3 in 2021.

In grappling with ever-diminishing births, Japan is far from alone. There are few examples of rich countries that have successfully reversed a falling birthrate sustainably.

In Asia, South Korea’s total fertility rate has fallen even lower than Japan’s, hitting 0.81 in 2021, according to Statistics Korea. China had more deaths than births in 2022 , joining the long list of countries with a declining population.

While shortages of money and space are often cited as tangible culprits which deter would-be parents, I believe the root cause runs deeper.

Unsavory as it may sound, we must recognize that childrearing runs against the grain of the modern capitalistic mindset, which celebrates individualism married to the pursuit of maximum efficiency. Presenting a fundamentally different and appealing frame of mind is the only way to address deep-seated aversions to parenthood.

According to statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 27% of Japanese women born in 1970 were still childless at the age of 50 — the reason why is clear. Few of these women were child haters. But we, Japanese women, have celebrated numerous pleasurable alternatives in our childbearing years: careers, hobbies, romance and self-discovery. Having children, a lifelong commitment with a heavy upfront investment of time and money, is a hard sell in the absence of particularly strong motherly genes.

This is why dangling the carrot of a little extra time and money for parenting, as Kishida proposes, will fall flat. This approach originates from the conventional mindset that childcare is costly and time-consuming, which is why the government is helping, albeit in small ways.

But the proposal makes Japanese women suspicious. Are we being bribed into doing something we may regret in the future?

An explicit distancing from individualism and capitalism may be needed to produce an alternative mindset that encourages childrearing. It would help to pivot away from expecting nuclear parents to bear the full burden of childrearing and instead frame parenting as a collective endeavor to nurture the next generation.

In a commune or on one of Israel’s traditional kibbutzim, members help each other with tasks that otherwise would be handled solely by the family. While building a kibbutz in modern Japan may be unrealistic, the country boasts examples of thriving communal activity.

Kodomo Shokudo, literally translated as children’s cafeterias, are grassroots food service ventures providing free or low-cost meals.

Initiated by an entrepreneurial woman in 2012, Japan now has more than 7,300 Kodomo Shokudo. Tokyo is home to the highest concentration, with 839 outlets, according to Musubie, a nonprofit organization that supports operators.

The success of Kodomo Shokudo lies partly in the intentional flexibility of the operating model. Service days and times are up to each cafeteria’s operator, and many allow adults to also take meals. Most staff are volunteers. Donations from farms and companies provide crucial supplies.

Makoto Yuasa, the high-profile head of Musubie, told an online media platform interviewer that most Kodomo Shokudo operators are women in their 30s or 50s and 60s. The younger women often launch a new outlet after experiencing how hard it is to raise children themselves. The older women take up management in their post-motherhood spare time.

It is not only children and their parents who benefit from Kodomo Shokudo. Their value extends beyond food to providing a safe third place where multiple generations can mingle away from home, school and work. Being a member of such a community, as a volunteer or customer, brings a new yardstick for personal fulfillment apart from individual cost-benefit calculations.

Because flexibility is critical to the Kodomo Shokudo model, it is vital that government agencies continue to hold back from seeking to regulate the cafeterias’ operating hours, procurement or staff compensation. Operators need to be able to make adjustments to fit the running of the cafeteria into their life activities. Overregulation risks raising the entry barrier to new operators.

Megumi Kimura, a self-described city girl who moved her husband and child 200 kilometers from central Tokyo to the mountain village of Ogawa in Nagano Prefecture, in 2020, contrasts the modes of living in the two places.

“In Tokyo, if you want to stay in-shape, you buy organic produce at a premium at some high-end grocery, and you go to the gym, where you pay your membership fee,” she said.

“In Ogawa, a neighbor may spontaneously invite you and your child to harvest some seasonal vegetables in their farm,” she added. “In Tokyo, every transaction is translated into hard, clear-cut currency. In Ogawa, the exchange is more complex, and everything — exercise, relationships with your neighbors and food — is intertwined.” She is especially thankful that their neighbors “recognize my son’s face and are caring.”

Bringing such a richly communal frame of mind into urban life, rife with capitalist behavior, is still possible with systems such as Kodomo Shokudo. But will it singlehandedly reverse Japan’s falling birthrate?

Perhaps not. But reflecting on the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” presents a fundamentally different direction for addressing the birthrate challenge. Throwing more money at parents is unsustainable and unlikely to produce results.

Not only can communities that collectively mind children ease the financial and time burden on families, but the frame of mind they bring also reassure future parents that raising children need not be a lonesome venture reduced to a cost-benefit analysis. Childrearing is a generational project in which we all can take part.

This article was originally published by Nikkei Asia on February 28th, 2023.