Japan Press Weekly

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2013 April 3 - 9 [WELFARE]

Mothers shorten child-care leave so their babies can enter day nurseries

Many mothers in Tokyo give up taking the full amount of childcare leave they are entitled to because of competitive enrollment in public day nurseries, a recent Tokyo Metropolitan Government survey revealed.

Of working mothers who shortened their child-care leaves, nearly half did so because a daycare service they wanted to give their children would not be available if they waited until the end of their leaves.

According to the survey result, 25.4% of respondent mothers and 1.5% of fathers have taken leave to care for their children, up by 8.9 and 0.3 percentage points respectively from the previous survey five years ago.

However, there exists a wide gap between demand and reality. Of mothers who took child-care leaves, while 80.9% had wanted the length of the leave to be more than one year, only 36.5% could do so.

The reason why mothers returned to work earlier than they had planned to was because “they had to apply to day nurseries at a certain time of the year in order to have their children enter them” (46%), followed by “their employer does not grant them extensive child-rearing leaves” (41.4%), and “they worried about being unable to keep pace with changes in their jobs after a long absence.” (29.9%).