As stated in the article the law on the books regarding surnames has been around for more than a century, so why try and propagandize this as a major issue now?
Also if it is really that big of a deal then a couple can choose to use the woman's surname instead.
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15299988
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15808567
Also, it's "kowtow", not "cow-tow".
seunosewa•2h ago
Traubenfuchs•2h ago
smeeger•2h ago
dofubej•2h ago
aprilthird2021•2h ago
It's a modernity problem, imo. More people than ever live isolated away from large support networks of people, substituting online connections for real ones. We also work longer on average, and both spouses work, so childcare and home economics has to be paid for with either money or increasingly previous time. Even a single income household is very aware that they are paying for kids with the lost potential revenue. That choice is harder and harder to make and then justify to increasingly polarized people, some of whom think staying at home is anathema and others who think the exact opposite. Another thing is that people are less connected to their cultural roots and we have less of an old world mentality of "continuing our bloodline" and less desire to sacrifice for "legacy" etc.
A lot more factors I could get into, but in such an environment saying "Oh we're not planning to have kids" is so much easier, no wonder countries around the world are facing this crisis.
porridgeraisin•1h ago
This. Here's my thoughts based on personal experience that backs just that. Copy pasted from an earlier comment:
People keep trying to find a purely economic reason for why folks are having less kids. I think I'm satisfied with the very simple reason that raising kids is hard work. Most people feel like 1 kid already gets their hands full. That's really it IMO. Whenever it was that joint families split up into disparate nuclear families, obviously the load of raising say 5 kids that was being shared among 20 people, suddenly fell on just 2 people. In the places with high fertility rate, you will almost surely observe joint families. I'm from India where we have such demographic variety that you can see adjacent areas with completely different fertility rates. In one, you will see old-style large houses with courtyards and 15+ people in them living as a joint family. Invariably these people have more kids. But in the next town with more nuclear families and modernish apartments, you will be lucky to see 2 kids per family. [1]
This is what births the secondary economic incentives which are mentioned a lot in popular discourse. For example, if you're already living in a house with 15 people your financial realities will require a similar number of people in the next generation to continue the same lifestyle.
[1] Wealth is not a confounding factor here. The specific two areas I have in mind are both more or less equally wealthy, one has folks running a coconut business primarily and the other is a small town with the usual assortment of office jobs.
SoftTalker•1h ago
I think the time to have kids is when you are young and full of energy and still have youthful fearlessness about the future. Fertility for women starts dropping at around age 25 and certainly by 30. Then you're dealing with seeing doctors trying to get pregnant, the stress of careers, approaching middle age, and declining energy levels.