House Husband in Japan


There are some men who are dedicated to doing all house work and child care on behalf of their wife working on a full-time basis.  House husbands are still rare kind in Japan and we don’t really know how it is like to live as a house husband in Japan, but today, I found an article which contains the voice of Japanese house husbands.

 

"yto" some rights reserved. flickr

 

In this article, a house husband explained the reason why he chose to be a house husband; it seems he has always seen how hard his wife has studied and put effort to be a nurse, and he simply wanted to support her dream by becoming full-time house husband.  While his wife was on her maternity leave, the couple lived on maternity and childcare allowance, and they have never chosen to have two breadwinners so that they can spent more time for childcare on their own.

I agree with their concept on the childcare, and it will always be great if one of parents could stay at home as a full-time housewife or house husband, but I assume there is still a big jump you have to take for a man to be a house husband when the vast majority of those who stay at home to protect family are still women in Japan??

Well, it seems it does take time to stop worrying about how people think about them being a house husband.  A popular blogger, who writes about his daily life as a house husband, admitted that he hesitated to tell his parents in law that he was a full-time house husband for the first few years.

Like other Asian countries, men are supposed to be a main breadwinner of a household in Japan, so his worry is understandable…

 

There was even a guy expressing his frustration during the interview for the article as he often gets told by his working colleagues that they just envy house husbands, guessing it must be easy and fun. But they seem to be able to get over it because being able to see their kids growing so close is not something everybody can do especially when people have to work.

I can see that the situation isn’t too good at the moment, but I’m glad that those house husbands are at least finding a happiness in their way.  I hope that their surroundings allow them to think that their decision to be a house husband was correct one in a next few decades 😉

 

What do you think about today’s article?

Please let me know your story about house husbands in your country, too  😛

 

Source: R25 web

 

This is JAPAN Style!