Akiko Eto One day, you get married and have children. You and your partner work outside the home. You live away from your parents’ home and have no one to turn to for help at home. So, usually, your children attend nursery school. One day, your child catches a cold and has a fever. However, you cannot take off from work that day. What do you do at a time like this? Today, I stand here to talk about the present state of sick child care and how to support working women.
Sick child care is to take care of children in place of the working mother. Now, in Japan, there are two types of institutions for sick child care; one is an institution built with financial help from the national government; the other is an institution which NPOs set up as a business enterprise. The former can be enjoyed with subsidy, but 64% of them are now operating in the red because of specific constraints. The subsidy only runs short of paying labor costs. The specific constraints also cover usage fee. That is an average of about 2000 yen at one time in low price decision, and the usage fee becomes too cheap. So, at the moment sick child care has trouble spreading.
One day, there is one mother who has a child on the sick. She tried to take care of her sick child herself, but her child took a long time recovering until the fever was gone. So, she drew on sick child care because of work. However, she was refused admission because of limited capacity. After all, she took off from work and had to take care of her child. In addition, her company was outraged because she missed too many days from work. In the end, she had to quit the job.
“I really want to take off from work and take care of my child… ”According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2009, female workers hope to juggle work and family. However, in reality there are a high percentage of women who give priority to their job, and