Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
72
In the decades after World War II, the child’s schooling garnered increasing
importance in the families’ value system (Dore 1958). By the end of the 1960s, costs related
to the education of children, and to childrearing in general, came to occupy a large share of
family budgets (White 1987; Tsuru 2005). The rising costs of childrearing started to influence
birth rate levels since families felt they were not able to provide financially for more than
one-two children (Yoshizumi 1995: 4).
22
On the other hand, the growing affluence of average
Japanese families, the declining birth rate and the spread of consumer life brought about new
patterns of indulgence. Spending on the child has become socially accepted as well as
desired. A number of terms invented by the media highlights this phenomenon, such as the
expression, ‘five-pocket child’ (sometimes called also ‘six-pocket’) which describes the child
– one with few siblings in the family – as spoiled with gifts and affection by all adults of the
wider family (parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles) (Creighton 1994).
23
In association with this development, the child’s ‘consumer value’ increased (Kond
ō
1999). Expenditure levels of goods and services related to childrearing grew substantially in
the 1980s. This was the period when the effects of the declining birth rate began to be
perceived. Between 1981 and 1999, the average annual expenditure on a child within the
family doubled (growing from 164,000 Yen to 378,000 Yen) whereas the birth rate fell from
0.89 (in 1981) to 0.54 (in 1999).
24
The children’s market has since become one of the most
lucrative (Creighton 1994). As a result, the number of magazines and services linked to
childrearing grew enormously. By the 2000s, these magazines have become the main source
of information on childrearing issues for women who – due to the atomization of the family –
lacked the network of female relatives that used to provide information on childrearing in the
past (Shintani et al. 2003: 30-33).
22
The total fertility has never risen above 2.0 since 1973,and it has continuously decreased since then.
In 2010, it arrived at 1.3 (Source:
access: 2011, January 20).
23
Another example is the term
ichiji g
ō
kashugi
that could be translated as ‘luxurious one-child-ism’.
The phenomenon is comparable to the situation in China where the one-child policy of the
government, launched to control population growth, brought about the so called ‘Little Emperor’
syndrome referring to excessive forms of indulgence with which Chinese children are treated by
family.
24
General Affair Department, S
ō
much
ō
, Survey on household economy (source:
, accessed 2011, October 10).
