Every five years, Japan's National Population and Social Security Research Institute conducts a survey on attitudes toward marriage and childbearing. The results of the most recent study have just been released and enthusiasm for both family-building activities has cooled compared to the last iteration.
Responses were collected from 7,862 single men and women between the ages of 18 and 34. When asked what they think about the idea of getting married, 17.3% of men and 14.6% of women answered " I never intend to get married " , which represents an increase of 5.3% and 6.6% with respect to the previous survey. At the other end of the spectrum, 81.4 percent of men and 84.3 percent of women said " I want to get married someday , " both figures are the lowest since the survey was first conducted in 1982.
However, the most dramatic change occurred when respondents were asked if they wanted children after marriage. 55.0 per cent of men and 36.6 per cent of women think that " if you get married, you should have children ", which represents a decrease of approximately 20.0 per cent in the case of men and approximately 30.0 per percent for women, compared to just five years ago. Even those who want children want to have fewer. When participants who have a romantic partner they plan to marry were asked how many children they expect to have, the mean for men was 1.91, down from 1.82 in the last study, and for women it was 1.79, down from 1.79. 2.02,which is the first time in the history of the survey that the average number of desired children is less than 2.
Although both marriages and births are trending down in Japan, there are a couple of things worth keeping in mind that make the results a bit more complex than simply " Japanese are not interested in romance. " and in making babies .” As mentioned above, the survey is conducted once every five years, but the results being announced now were actually collected in 2021, the first full year of the pandemic in Japan.Considering that COVID-19 vaccines weren't widely available until the second half of 2021, it's understandable that even fewer people than usual have fantasized about getting married, seeing how many singles' love lives were put on hold during the extensive social distancing initiatives.
The pandemic probably had a similar effect on the prospect of having children, and especially the idea of having many children. Japanese houses tend to be small, without much extra space designed on the plan. In 2021, working from home had become the new normal for many people, but the sudden change meant many people's "offices" were a makeshift workspace crammed into a corner of their living room.With space in Japanese homes even tighter than usual, the idea of adding multiple children to the situation, perhaps attending classes remotely themselves, was probably not particularly appealing, or at least less appealing than a once families return to a lifestyle where everyone is not indoors most of the day.
Source: Yahoo! NewsJapan
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