Good thing I'm not a mother in Japan.

I'm sure the mothers who don't decorate their kids' meals adequately feel tremendous shame and commit seppuku

It comes across as being competitive in a strange way.

Not a lot of dual working families I take it...

I hear it's quite hard for women to keep working after having a child, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20053254

That gets a *wtf from me.

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I live in Japan. Married with kids. My wife works though, so we don't have time for this kind of thing. As @HugeJerk said it can be competitive--there are definitely neighborhood housewives who are trying to one-up each other. However, I think a lot of them are just looking for some kind of creative outlet.

As @deathcow and @oritteropo noted, the number of dual income families is much lower compared to many western countries (though with Japan's economic downturn lasting for so long the number has been steadily increasing).

There's always been a social expectation here that women will give up their careers (and basically their lives) to raise kids. To be honest, many women (like my sister-in-law who is getting married this weekend) want to quit their careers--glass ceilings very much exist in many major Japanese companies and you will very rarely find women in high-level positions, so why fight the current, right? Even those that do make it (we have a female family friend who is a CEO) face condescending attitudes from their male peers. The CEO friend, being the only female in the room at a business meeting one time, was expected to make and serve the tea to everyone else.

So on the one hand, I think it's cool that Japanese moms make these cool-looking bentos, but on the other hand I find it really sad that for many women doing things like this is really their only creative outlet because societal demands and pressures limit other possible avenues of expression.

And Japanese government officials wonder why Japan continues to have a decreasing birth rate...

>And Japanese government officials wonder
> why Japan continues to have a decreasing birth rate...

imagine how quick world overpopulation could be controlled by a worldwide group decision among women alone... only women hold the power to save the Earth just 60 years... would make an interesting movie where 1 in 20 women over the next 60 years was allowed to have a single kid

OK, well men could band together too but I don't trust our achieving the level of discipline required as much in some situations

*news

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*british

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