Japanese Women Shy From Dual Mommy Role

[MountainLaurel]

Good for them! :applause: Now, if only American women would do the same.

"I have never met a Japanese man who did not want me to be his mommy."

That is the reason, Takako Katayama says, that she has not married. At 37, she has carved out a comfortable life here in Tokyo, with her own apartment, a good job at a cable television network, and a network of family and friends.

She has not closed the door on marriage and children. When she meets girlfriends for dinner, they ask each other, "Where are the good guys?" But she refuses to settle for a man who works long hours, declines to share in child-rearing and sees marriage mainly as a way to acquire lifetime live-in help.

"I want a mature, equal-partner kind of marriage," she said. "Anyway, there are complete lives without a baby."

Therein lies a dismal prognosis for Japan and for many of the other prosperous nations of East Asia. In numbers that alarm their governments, Asian women are delaying marriage and postponing childbirth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/27/AR2008082703194.html?hpid=topnews

[Book Lover]

1. And of course, it is all teh women's fault

"Feminine foot-dragging on the way to the altar has been identified by demographers as perhaps the primary reason for the region's plunging birthrates."

Oh no, nothing at all to do with the apparent fact that men just don't grow the fuck up. It's *our* fault that we want equal partners.

[ThomCat]

3. If men won't grow up then the women have to.

Maybe then more men will wake up and follow.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. I spent a year in Japan at the age of 27 many years ago

I wasn't even tempted to take up with a Japanese boyfriend.

I blame the male-centered culture there. For generations, sons have been little princes, never required to do any work around the house, treating their mothers like maids, even hitting their mothers with impunity, even assuming that any woman or girl they meet will cater to them.

I was once visiting a home in Tokyo, and a 10-year-old neighbor girl dropped in. She was watching TV with us when the twenty-something son said, "Kaya=chan, pour me some coffee." Now the coffee pot was on a tray on the coffee table right next to the couch where the son was lying, but Kaya-chan jumped up, poured out a cup of coffee, and deferentially asked whether he wanted cream or sugar.

On a visit back to Japan in 1985, I got together with some friends from my student days, and they took me along to a social gathering with some friends of theirs. Most of the women were married with children, and there were about eight children at the gathering all together, including two early teen boys and an eleven-year-old girl, while the rest of the kids were ages two to seven.

Guess who was told to watch the smaller children and was scolded when two of the littlest kids started arguing, while the older boys sat in another room playing video games.

I love being in Japan, and I know that some of the younger Japanese men are wonderful (even some of the older ones are), but I totally understand why young Japanese women either have no interest in marrying or gravitate towards foreigners.

[gaspee]

4. Good

If only men would get it through their stupid thick heads: women don't hate men; however, we do hate the way you treat us.

We are not your slaves.

I think Asia has some major blowback coming from their historical mistreatment of women.

[Ellen Forradalom]

5. They are looking at a choice of "adapt or die"

in the most literal sense possible.