Shu Matsuo Post: What I Learned From Taking Paternity Leave in Japan

It was one of the most nerve-wrecking conversations that I had in my career. My palms were sweating, and my heart was pounding. I was about to ask my boss for something. Something I had never asked him before. So, the conversation went something like this: (Japanese) Good afternoon Mr. Takeda. I have some news to share. My wife and I are expecting a baby in September, and I’d like to take some paternity leave. - Congratulations, Shu! Is this your first child? - Yeah, yeah, it’s our first one. Thank you so much. - So, how much time off do you want?” (Exhales.) I took a deep breath. "For seven months." The moment of truth. I was afraid to have that conversation because I fear not being man enough. I fear that I would be a burden to my employer for not being there as an employee. I fear that this will negatively affect my career when I return. Because, as a man, I believed that being a provider is what I was supposed to do. And that’s your social expectation, right? Japan is one of the most gender-rigid nations in the world. While my parents gave me and my brother everything we needed, from the love, the attention and affection, they played traditional gender roles at home. My dad was the sole breadwinner at home, he would commute 3 hours to and from Tokyo, just so that he could provide for his family. My mom would wake up at 6 am just to prepare obento for all of us, so we can have healthy and balanced meals for lunch. My favorite was the onigiri that she made. There is nothing wrong with this, it was absolutely perfect. In fact, I’m so grateful that my parents did that. They played their roles really hard to provide for us. It’s just that all my friends’ parents did the same thing. The father was the sole breadwinner and then the mother was the stay-at-home mom. I just didn’t know if a family could function any other way. What about you? What was your experience like growing up? As you may know, Japan ranks 120th in the 156-country Global Gender Gap Index ranking in 2021, which is the worst among G7 countries. To compare with the U.S., the country ranks in the 30th place. Which explains the limiting belief that I used to have about what it means to be a man in our culture. You know, growing up, I would get constant messages from the media, from school, from advertisements, from billboards, from magazines, from family, from school, everywhere around me, about what manhood was supposed to look like, what masculinity was supposed to look like. Boys were supposed to be strong and stoic, calm, and never show emotions, right? Never cry, don’t act like a girl. As if being a girl was a bad thing. And as I aged, the narrative evolved a little bit. And now, you’re a man, now going to the workforce and earning as much money as possible because now you’re a breadwinner, you’re a provider for your family. And what about girls and women? From young age, girls have been told to be nice, to be gentle, to be empathetic, to be emotionally available, to be submissive, to be nurturing and to be care-taking. Which are all beautiful qualities. It’s just that it's so gendered. Feminine and masculine qualities, right? These are all beautiful qualities. Human qualities. And I hate to admit, I used to believe in this binary thinking. I used to believe that, as a man, as a boy, I only had to be this way, I had to be this way, the masculine way. And it took me way into my late twenties to realize that it didn’t have to be that way. Something happened in my life. I met my wife. She challenged me on the limiting belief that I had, and I started to change a little bit. So let me tell you a little bit about my wife. She is a teacher. And she teaches English literature to high school and middle school students. I knew that when we first started dating but what I didn’t know was that she actually taught gender and language as one of her units. And later she would school me into having these conversations around gender. So let me give you an example. So, when I would demonstrate traditionally masculine qualities like always trying to pay for dates because I’m a man, she would ask me a question with genuine curiosity: “Hey I really appreciate your kind gesture, but can I ask why you are doing this? Because you know I’m working too, I can pay, it’s ok.” And my go-to answer would be, “No no no, it’s ok. I got this. You know, let me do this. Don’t even question it. I got it”. But in my head, I was thinking: “Well, I'm doing this because I'm a man. This is what I’m supposed to do”. The supposed-tos. You know, that’s what I had in my head. So, these conversations really started my journey into feminism. As we kept dating, I started to change. I started to question everything I knew about what it means to be a man. I started to undefine what masculinity meant for me. I started to appreciate and express the emotional side of me. I started to cry a little bit more often. I started to cry after I watched a good romantic comedy. I stopped going to the gym to lift weights only to look good, but I started to exercise because I wanted to feel healthier and more energetic. I started to question why these traditional gender norms existed. Now, depending on where you are from, you might believe that gender norms might actually be a good thing. It’s always been that way. And they might have served you well up to this point. But what would the world look like if we all challenged the traditional gender norms that we have? Has anyone asked you that question before or have you thought about that before? Well, it took me almost three decades to ask myself that question, or someone to ask me that question. So, what can we actually do? Well, to start off, we can start to have more conversations about gender. So, what I decided to do was to have a conversation with my boss about taking paternity leave. And that way, I was able to challenge the gender norms. So, speaking on parental leave, here is something interesting. Japan actually offers one of the most generous parental leave systems in the world, in terms of the pay and the length. So, both mothers and fathers can take up to 12 months of paid governmental leave and you can have your job back when you return to work. Again, to compare with the U.S., parents in the U.S. can take up to 3 months of leave, unpaid. 12 months of paid leave and 3 months of unpaid leave. Huge difference, right? So, imagine making your ends meet by taking time off at work and taking care of your new-born baby for up to 12 months, full-time. Would you think more men would take advantage of this generous system in Japan? Hmm okay, maybe not, maybe not. It’s not that they don’t want, many men do. It’s just that they haven’t had those conversations to free themselves from the gender expectations. Let’s take a look at some statistics. [80%] This is the percentage of men entering the workforce here in Japan who say they want to take paternity leave. I’m assuming they’re young men who probably recently graduated college. Since we are at a university, let me ask the men in the audience. So, men, raise your hand if you want to take paternity leave. Okay, lot of hands up, great! I say that’s about 80%, awesome! Okay. Now... [7.48%] This statistic. This is the percentage of eligible men in Japan who actually took paternity leave in 2020. 7.48%. Want to take it and actually took it. Huge gap Okay, what about this number? [83%] This is the percentage of eligible women in Japan who took parental leave in 2020 in Japan. Again, different genders, different results. So, what does this all mean? This means that both men and women are all playing gender roles. Now, I’m not saying that we should always go the opposite way of the traditional gender norms. So, for example, if a mother wants to stay at home full-time to take care and be nurturing to her baby, that’s amazing. You know what’s also amazing? The same mother going back to the workforce and building her career. Or a new father leaving the workforce entirely to take care of his baby, full time, and decide to become a stay-at-home dad. My point is, having options. You know, that’s what’s important. It's important to free ourselves from these gender expectations so that we can live our lives without worrying about what other people think about us. So, who am I to tell you all this? I happen to be one of those 7.48% of fathers in Japan who woke up changing diapers. So, I took seven months off work to take care of my newborn and realized that I was being emotionally supportive to my wife, I was educating my son, and I was also nurturing him, which are stereotypically a woman’s role. And it felt great. Let me explain a little further. By spending a lot of time with my son, I was able to witness a lot of first moments together. I saw him smile, I saw him laugh, roll, crawl and stand for the first time. And if I wasn’t taking this time off work, I’m not sure if I got to witness these moments. if I went back to work full-time right away. I also got to spend a lot of time with my wife, which strengthened our partnership. And I’ve been able to educate my son that a man can be a caretaker as well. And by freeing myself from gender expectation, I was able to deepen my relationships and have open conversations. So, I’m not going to lie, paternity leave for me wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. You know, raising a baby is a handful. But I will tell you this: it was transformative, frustrating, exhausting, and disorienting. But most importantly, it was absolutely priceless. I can’t imagine not having done it. For those who are thinking about becoming a parent one day, or those who choose not to be a parent- I guess everyone in this audience- here is my advice to you: have open conversations about what gender roles mean to you. Talk to your family. Talk to your friends. Talk to your partner. Talk to your school. Ask your school what kind of programs they have to change this. Talk to your employer. Talk to your future company that you want to work for about their view on gender roles in the workplace and paternity leave. I’m not telling you to take parental leave, even though, I highly recommend it, personally. What I’m telling you is this: by taking paternity leave, I was able to free myself from the gender expectations that I had in my head previously. So back to the conversation that I had with my boss, how did it end? He said yes right away, on the spot. Which made me feel so valued. And it was so refreshing to realize that the fear that I had was all in my head. And what’s really cool is that since I took paternity leave, two other new fathers at work decided to take extended paternity leave as well. Freeing yourself from gender expectations, it’s about doing something good for yourself, for your family, for your friends, for your community, for you company, and for our society. But most importantly, it’s about living your truth. Because the freedom to make choices without gender expectations and to live your truth, it feels really good. Thank you. (Applause)