by contributor Michael Preston

“Japan’s fathers spend less time on child care and housework than their counterparts in any other developed country” says a recent Reuters article about the new “Iku-men Project” in Japan. This project is part of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry’s direct response to Japan’s bottomed-out birthrate. For the past few years, the Japanese government has been trying to encourage families to have more kids and now, with Iku-men, to promote a new paternity leave law (which seems unfathomable in a country where slavish devotion to the job, long hours, and long commutes are the norm, and workplaces are still heavily dominated by men).

“Iku-men” is a neologism, combining the Japanese word “iku,” roughly to “raise a child,” and the English word “men,” perhaps in deliberate contrast to the more widely recognized idea of the “sarari-man” (salary man). The ministry’s website offers guidance for dads and features the profiles of particularly successful Iku-men, called “Iku-men stars,” who are somehow selected by an expert panel–which for me evokes images of the Iron Chef panel of celebrity know-nothings weighing in on some poor new dad’s diaper-changing skills.

Don’t expect any sudden surges in the number of stay-at-home dads. The Iku-men Project’s goals are ambitious: 13% of dads taking paternity leave by 2020. They still have a long way to go, with only 1.72% of Japanese dads heeding the call in FY 2009, according to a Yomiuri article that cites paternity leave rates of 89% in Norway, 78% in Sweden, and 18% in the Netherlands. Undoubtedly the US figure is a lot closer to the Japanese one. Even at my comfortable academic job, I had to take vacation time or unpaid leave to stay home when my kids were born, therefore amounting to only a couple of weeks at a time.

Yet attitudes seem to be changing in both countries, perhaps in direct correlation to attitudes about work. In the US, the newest generation of dads seems more interested in parenting and, perhaps in response to shifting employment certitude, in making time with kids an integral part of the mixed-up schedule that now constitutes a work day. With both mom and dad juggling flexible schedules, freelance, and part-time jobs, the burden of childcare seems to be shared more evenly. Meanwhile, in Japan, the era of “lifetime employment” is slowly grinding to an end, and younger generations feel less defined by their careers than their parents did. Still, for many, employers remain the real arbiters of paternity leave, since their policies and workplace norms are what ultimately make any kind of leave possible. Maybe the Iku-men Project is aiming at the wrong target?

What were your paternity leave experiences? How long and under what circumstances did you take leave, if any?