[Special Feature: Japanese "Ways of Resting"] What happened when a male faculty member at SFC took childcare leave.

2019/04/05

I took childcare leave for about two months starting from late September 2016. The main reasons were that my wife wanted to return to work as soon as possible after giving birth, and since we lived apart—I lived in Chigasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, and my wife lived in Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture for work—I wanted to take leave in some form after the child was born. When a male faculty member takes childcare leave, the following problems generally arise. Under the current system, men cannot take maternity leave and can only take childcare leave. Since faculty members are in charge of classes, it is practically difficult to start leave in the middle of a semester. For this reason, it was necessary to plan for childcare leave well in advance of the birth.

That said, the fact that male childcare leave (and partial salary compensation) is guaranteed is a system that did not exist at my previous university in the United States; at my previous school, negotiating with the dean might result in a slight reduction in the number of courses taught. Because of this, during the 2015 academic year, I consulted with the Dean of the Faculty of Policy Management, Takeshi Kawazoe, about taking childcare leave.

At the beginning of the interview, Dean Kawazoe offered his congratulations, but then asked, "How many days of leave do you need?" Having intended to take leave for several months, I was somewhat surprised by this question and could only manage to reply, "No, well, on a monthly basis..." It was the moment I realized that in Japan, few men take childcare leave, and even when they do, it is likely only for a few days. To be honest, if it were only for a few days, I wouldn't have bothered asking the busy Dean for an interview. However, to my further surprise, Dean Kawazoe was not surprised at all by my answer and proposed a childcare leave plan for me, saying, "Then how about something like this?" It was as follows.

Most courses at SFC run for 14 weeks per semester with one class per week. However, by using the four-quarter system and holding classes twice a week for the first or second seven weeks of the semester, it becomes a 2-credit course just like the former. Since the birth was scheduled for early July, if I concentrated my classes in the first half of the spring semester, I would have no teaching duties by the time of the birth, except for research seminars. From August to late September is summer vacation, so there is almost no need to worry about university business. The fall semester is the reverse of the spring semester; I just needed to concentrate classes in the second half. This way, even if the official leave is only two months, I could actually devote myself almost entirely to childcare for about six months from June to November.

This was certainly a brilliant idea. Regarding classes, I had long thought that the American style of twice a week was more educationally effective than the traditional once a week, in the sense that students do not forget the content of the previous class.

My wife returned to work within three months of our eldest son's birth. My life devoted to childcare began in Nagoya. My wife left for work early in the morning and returned at night, so I was the one looking after the baby during that time. This might be obvious to those with childcare experience, but living with a newborn baby involves many inconveniences. Naturally, it's not a situation where you can do work, but you can't even step out for a moment to take out the trash, and you have to be careful when taking a shower or thawing and heating breast milk, as you can't take your eyes off the baby. I had heard that babies spend most of the day sleeping, but my experience was completely different; it was closer to spending most of the day crying. Between changing diapers for bowel movements that happened with little regularity and preparing meals, there was absolutely no time I could use as I wished. I went shopping using a so-called baby carrier, and when I felt like I was going to get depressed just staying at home, I went for walks with this carrier. Perhaps because it is rare to see a man shopping with a baby during the day on weekdays, I remember being frequently asked by elderly people in Nagoya to "show me the baby's face" or "let me touch the baby."

In this way, life with a baby was completely different from my life up to that point, but as a researcher, I was still constantly thinking about my research. Therefore, I used Skype for meetings with collaborators and participated via Skype in a dissertation hearing, which is one of the requirements for obtaining a degree for a student in the Ph.D. program for whom I serve as a secondary examiner.

On these occasions, since I didn't know in advance whether the baby would be asleep, I placed the bed behind me so that both my son and I could participate in the Skype call. By doing this, if something unusual happened, either I or the person on the other end of the Skype call would notice. In fact, I sometimes received comments pointing out that he was crying (which might have meant he was being noisy) and other times people would kindly say, "He's sleeping, isn't he?" While there were parts of my work during leave that could not have been accomplished without the understanding and cooperation of my colleagues, there are many things for a newborn child, such as health checkups and vaccinations, that require going to a designated place on a designated day. I believe childcare would have been extremely difficult without taking leave. Of course, my childcare leave period was a very precious time for me to spend with my newborn son.