Friday, September 13, 2013

Not Another Harangue About Public Day Care In Japan

Every year about this time the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare releases the report on the state of the nation's public day care facilities as of April 1. In reponse I usually I lose my senses and compose a long post on how the statistics once again show that the provision of public day care by local authorities is really good, contrary to the reporting of journalists and assertions of Japanese day care activists. The purported failure of local jurisdictions to be responsive to the needs of working parents turns out to be that-- purported -- existing mostly only in lazy strings of anecdotes.

I will restrain myself this year. I will only ask readers to look at the MHLW press release (Link - J) and note:
- The total number of children attending public day care in Japan increased by 42,779. To put that in perspective, that represents the equivalent opening of 850 new day care centers (the newest one in my neighbor accommodates 50 children) in a single calendar year. This was the largest year-on-year increase in children ever.

- The actual number of new day care center that opened -- 327 -- indicates that much of the record increase in children was handled by existing facilities with excess capacity

- Only two prefectures have chronic day care deficits as represented by waiting lists: Tokyo and Okinawa. All other prefectures are either at zero children on waiting lists or are on a course toward that goal.

- Yokohama, the municipality that gets all the attention from the press and the politicians for zeroing out its waiting lists (Link) was not even in the top five among cities cutting back on its lists last year. The best performer in raw numbers was Nagoya, which managed to reduce its waiting lists by 73% in a single year. There were 1032 children on waiting lists in Nagoya in April 2012 but only 280 children a year later.

- Maintaining a reputation of success is costly. Keeping the promise to have no children on waiting lists within three years meant the Yokohama city government had to find or build public daycare accommodations for 3,740 more children in the last fiscal year. The Tokyo ward of Suginami, which won national recognition for its zeroing out of its waiting lists a decade ago, is still recovering from the consequences of earning a reputation of being "working parent friendly" and thus an attractive destination for young parents or would be parents. Of all the nation's municipalities Suginami had the largest raw increase in children on waiting lists.

- Despite immense efforts of local authorities, the number of children on waiting lists nationwide remained stuck above 20,000 -- though there was improvement, with the totals falling from 24,825 to 22,741.
The struggles of Yokohama and Suginami to keep ahead of increases in demand and the failure of the nationwide numbers to plummet, despite record levels of new children getting incepted into the system (an annual increase double the number on the waiting lists!) -- illustrate the difficulties of inherent in meeting the challenge of what reader JC calls the "out of the woodwork effect" -- where increases of the supply of a good increases the demand for that good, even with rising prices.

Considering that local authorities have little ability to raise funds for specific projects, that the total and relative numbers of small children are declining, that both the national and local budgets have to accommodate rapid increases in costs associated with the elderly (who vote) and all levels of government face severe fiscal crises, the effort being put into increasing access to public day care seems very respectable.

Not that you would ever hear about these successes from demagogues fishing for the votes of women (Link) or worse from men who wish to show their sensitivity.  For the record, public day care is used by families -- sometimes single-parent, most times not -- not women. In these families the men are very often equal partners in child rearing and the household. Indeed, in terms of beneficial social transformation of individuals, day care centers probably rarely make better mothers -- but they seem to make better fathers.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm an avid reader and generally love your blog. However, I have seen very few cases like this in years of experience with public daycare.

In these families the men are very often equal partners in child rearing

MTC said...

Anonymous -

Improvements in the division of labor too often flounder upon a unwillingness on the mother's side to cede territory. Japanese social relations tend to be highly genderized along traditional lines, with child rearing a stubbornly feminized zone. One of the consequences is women boxing themselves in, adhering to exhausting, antiquated social norms and practice despite having partners willing and potentially capable of doing much more.

Claire said...

I really like most of what you write, but wish you would stop harping on on this. Having put two children through the Japanese childcare system (one through hoikuen, the other one through yochien), I completely disagree with you, especially on your idea of "unwillingness on the mother's side to cede territory." Ask my neighbor, whose husband informed her when she went back to work that it was entirely her decision, and he was not going to do anything to help about the house or with the children. Ask many of my friends, Japanese and foreign women married to Japanese, who are in the same boat. Ask me, whose husband's working hours meant we might see him on Sunday afternoons if we were lucky. Please stick to talking about what you actually know.

MTC said...

Claire -

A question to you -- on what basis do you make the assumption that I do not know what I know?

Anonymous said...

I agree it is antiquated to view childcare as a female problem. Surely the answer to reducing a) the public cost and b) the remaining waiting lists, is to take it out of the hands of the State and open it up to the free market by encouraging/incentivising private nursery/day care provision. Parents are then empowered to choose what childcare model suits them best.

MTC said...

Anonymous -

The private sector and non-profit sectors are already invested in day care for children. All kinds of entities run municipality-approved (ninka) day care centers. Add in the ninsho day care centers and hoiku shisetsu and you have a menagerie.

Claire said...

MTC, sorry for the late reply. When you write about something I know well from personal experience, and make statements that diametrically contradict my own experience and that of many friends, I have to assume you don't know as much about the subject as you do about Japanese politics (on which I greatly respect your opinion).

MTC said...

Claire -

Let us then agree that we are both extemporizing from personal experience, mine being with day care and residents of Tokyo Metropolitan District municipalities.