This is a personal account of how one father took the initiative to apply for and take his paternity leave in Japan to care for his children. We hope this will inspire other fathers to do the same to change their work culture and support their loved ones at home.
Disclaimer: This personal account was kindly sent to The Tokyo Life by a contributor and does not involve the publisher.
Table of Contents
Background
I was lucky enough to have twins born in 2021. Unfortunately, with my extended family unable to enter the country due to Japan’s COVID restrictions, and my wife’s family living far away, we had comparatively limited local support to help us take care of two infants.
For the first three months, my mother-in-law moved in while my wife was on maternity leave. We also had some support from our local ward in the form of a discounted in-house helper who could clean and cook while we looked after our children. After the first three months, when my mother-in-law went back home, things began to get especially difficult.
Additionally, my wife works in a very specialized field where her role is extremely important in her small company. Six months after our children were born, her company was asking if she would be able to start the transition back to work, and to work remotely a few days a week.
We had some other family come and go during this time, helping out when they could, but it wasn’t a long term solution. At this point, my wife hadn’t been working for almost a year, and she was anxious to get back up to speed. Our children were scheduled to enter nursery school in April, but that was still five months away.
So we began to do our research into paternity leave in Japan.
I had been a fulltime employee of my company for well over the minimum requirement of one year and could legally take paternity leave. “Legal” in Japan, and actually being able to, are often quite different. So not only did I brush up on the laws protecting my rights as a parent to take leave, I also brushed up my resume and applied to a few other jobs. If my company was not able to comply with the legal requirements to allow me paternity leave, I was preparing myself for the worst, and would leave the company.
The Discussion
In December, I had my biannual review with management at my company, and that’s where I told them of my intention to take paternity leave for February and March (as a minimum of one month notice is required when taking paternity leave). I had done my homework and knew that they legally had to allow me a similar, if not the same, position when I returned back to work. I also understood that without me at work, my team of engineers would be unable to have their work prioritized and prepared, and multiple people would be significantly impacted negatively. With my research in hand, I proposed that during my leave, I would maintain a few select responsibilities up to a maximum of 15 hours per month. This would still allow me to 1) qualify for my paternity leave payment 2) allow me to work during nap time and after I put my children to sleep at night 3) help the company maintain our products during my leave.
My company accepted the conditions of my paternity leave, and immediately after the meeting, I sent emails to HR and upper management informing them of the same.
Changes
My company is quite large, but they had never had a new father take paternity leave. There were a lot of unknown aspects of what the company needed to do to handle this, and they were in constant contact with Hello Work to prepare all the appropriate paperwork.
My leave was also a chance for the company to begin to get together a workflow for how to handle paternity leave requests. In April 2022, the laws regarding paternity leave changed, allowing new fathers to access benefits more easily and encouraging more of them to take leave. The silver lining of me taking my leave in February and March 2022 was that the company could understand more about the process before these laws went into effect.
My coworkers were mostly supportive in my decision to take leave. I got some snide comments from other fathers, along the lines of, “Why didn’t I get to take paternity leave when I had my kid?” My response to these kinds of comments was, “Did you ask?” And inevitably, no, they hadn’t.
In many companies, there is still a strong sense that childcare leave is the mother’s responsibility. But seeing another new father take this leave really helped others realize that it was a right for us too. The former managing director of my company approached me to ask questions about paternity leave, as he and his wife were planning a second child. I had several similar conversations with other coworkers that wanted to hear the details of my leave so they could plan to take their own.
Once the workflow for how to process the paperwork is in place, and the company culture shifts to recognizing that paternity leave can be managed without a negative impact to the company, I feel like many more fathers will be more comfortable using this benefit.
Paternity Leave
Paternity leave was the most difficult two months I have ever experienced.
Work is a breeze compared to taking care of two infants fulltime. My wife did it by herself for several months, and while I tried to empathize with the difficulties she faced, there is no way I could have understood what she was going through until I did it myself.
I was in a lucky position to be able to support my family financially for the two months on leave while we waited for our leave payments to be processed. If you and your partner are lucky enough to be in a similar situation, I cannot recommend paternity leave enough. It will be the most exhausting but rewarding period of your life. You essentially get paid to hang out with your children. You can’t beat that.
Need help figuring out life in Tokyo? Check out our Tokyo 101 guides for more posts like this one.
Photo by Mikael Stenberg on Unsplash
1 Comment
[…] One Parent’s Experience Taking Paternity Leave in Japan […]