Has Intensive Parenting Increased in Japan? Evidence from cohort trends in childcare time and expenditures

This paper examines whether intensive parenting, that is, an increase in the economic resources devoted to each child, spread in Japan between the 1951–55 and 1971–75 birth cohorts, across which completed fertility fell from 1.98 to 1.40. We estimate lifetime childcare time and lifetime childcare expenditure by birth cohort and compare the two generations. Lifetime childcare time per child, adjusted for economies of scale, rose about 1.5-fold, from 0.74 to 1.12 years (one year = 365 × 24 hours), and total lifetime childcare time per mother rose about 1.4-fold, from 1.08 to 1.54 years. Real lifetime childcare expenditure per child also rose, by a factor of about 1.11, from 6.99 to 7.72 million yen, whereas the total per mother remained almost unchanged, at 15.5 and 15.3 million yen. Categorized by child age, the increase in childcare time was concentrated among children aged 0–5, with no increase at ages 16–18, the years leading up to university entrance examinations. The increase in expenditure was likewise driven mainly by preschool childcare costs: about 60 percent of the increase went to ages 0–5, while household spending for ages 16–18 did not change. During the university years, higher enrollment raised tuition payments, but remittances to students living away from home fell, leaving the total almost unchanged. Thus, although the resources devoted to each child increased in Japan as well, the increase was concentrated on young children. This differs from the type of intensive parenting, driven by intensifying competition for university admission, that has been discussed for countries such as the United States and South Korea.