Not Having Children Is Chosen or Supposed?

Not Having Children Is Chosen or Supposed? 

Kiyotaka ISHIKAWA

Recently, I have celebrated my female classmate in the university for her marriage in her 25 and suddenly realized that I am also in a marriageable age. The next lifetime event supposed to take place in her life is childbirth while the country’s birthrate has been at the historically lowest level under 1.4 and not supposed to be improved for the time being. As women’s lifestyle diversified, more and more women choose childless lives especially those highly educated like the friend of mine. On the other hand, the rising economic cost of raising a child and unemployment among the young in a down economy build up structural barriers that keep women who want to have a child from putting it into practice. Is today’s fertility crash because she chose it or was supposed to do so, and why is that? 

Motherhood is not an option for every woman

It is almost a consensus over developed countries that women tend to have fewer number of children, and some choose not to have one, as the economy grows, and this is often seen as a result of the inflation of the cost for raising a child. According to the statistic of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan, an average cost of raising a first child is approximately 13 million yen, which decreases to 10 million and 7.7 million for the second and third child respectively. If you plan to send your child to a private school in the entire education, the figure will be doubled or even tripled. Although affordability is not the only necessary condition to have a child, this is enough for many women of childbearing age to be discouraged to give a birth to a child. Especially for those who have to work even after childbirth due to economic reasons, it would be a tough choice to take care of children while having a job for the family and the fund of the future education.  

Motherhood is not an obligation but an option

These spendings on a child are bearable for highly-educated women with an expectation of good salary like my university classmate; however, the leading population of childless women consists of women like her. The proportion of women expecting to remain childless is greater among those with high income; when American women grouped into three income range, 1 in 8 women among the top income class is childless while 1 in 14 with middle income and 1 in 20 with low income. This is because higher education often leads to higher opportunity costs of giving up the career, which average value is worth as high as $1 million in lost salary, lost promotion and so on. Furthermore, women who are successful in the business and the private without a child have less incentives to have one because they feel advantageous about being free from all sorts of troubles that come with children. 

The dual structure of the low birthrate affair

Even if so, those rich and childless women will hardly answer to such a question, “Who is going to take care of you when you’re old and lonely?” The conventional measures to increase birthrate have focused mainly on women with a will to give a birth and a financial problem, but career women who have rare opportunity to have a child are also very good potential mothers, because they are more or less interested in having their own children. Therefore, the social affair of low fertility rate needs to be re-considered from two points of view: not only the poor but also the rich require supports for motherhood.

*The Child-Free Life, Lauren Sandler, TIME issued September 16, 2013, pp.34-41