Birth in Japan Stories ~ Sunday Surf

http://improvingbirth.org/2014/03/sarah/

The care I received during third stage was just as gentle and honoring as the labor and birth support.  We enjoyed two hours of skin-to-skin together without any mention of interruption.  The room was filled with women caring for us, celebrating us, supporting us, and recounting what we had just experienced together.  A room full of almost strangers who treated us like family from start to finish.  I was grateful.

My baby's umbilical cord was not clamped until it had completely ceased pulsing and the placenta was birthed gently by me when it was ready and not a moment before.  My doula cut her cord once the placenta was born and we continued to snuggle as I inspected the placenta which was soon after picked up by a fabulous placenta specialist to encapsulate it, all the while chatting to my husband and staring at our incredible, perfect daughter.  She was later weighed (7lbs 9 oz) and was measured the next day.  We were tucked in later to our cozy private room in a double bed to co-sleep and nurse the night away with angel-nurses quietly and gently checking in on us every few hours and silently disappearing again.  It was the most gentle care in the most gentle space one could image for birth to take place.  I'm so thankful for the kindness of the welcome they provided me.  This birth center was truly a safe haven for me and my daughter and I am forever grateful for its existence and my experience there.

http://rixarixa.blogspot.jp/2010/09/birth-around-world-birth-at-midwife.html

you slid out into your father’s hands, and as i said, we both hovered over you, taking you in.  you were so distinctly you to my eyes.  not like your brother.  you had your own eyes, your own nose, your own hair.  just you.  your papa cut the cord and i took it all in. i could hardly believe the blonde haired, blue eyed babe in my hands was you, and you were mine.

http://gaijinmom.com/giving-birth-in-japan/

Much of the day was spent walking.  I feared that laying down would stop labor, and after having spent hours laboring already, there was no way I was going to risk slowing it down.  Around noon, I was completely surprised by a nurse bringing me lunch.  That’s right, the Japanese believe in nourishing women who are trying to push babies out of their bodies!  And MAN does Japanese hospital food taste good.

http://www.tokyourbanbaby.com/2014/02/birth-story-in-japan-by-izumi-iijima.html

When I had my first baby 4 years ago, I chose a general hospital and my experience there was not very good. It was all about pain. Fear of the pain overtook everything and I was confused, panicked, felt hopeless and got angry afterwards. I lost my energy struggling with the pain through the birth and I couldn’t push at the end. So that the nurse got on my belly & pushed the baby out and also vacuumed, I didn’t understand what was going on at the time. Luckily my baby girl was born safely, but I lost a lot of blood (1300ml) and I had postpartum depression for a while. I couldn’t have a feeling that “I” gave birth. I thought this experience was produced by that hospital system such as – nurses were too busy & didn’t have time to stay with me to support – they didn’t provide the natural birth, but also I myself didn’t study & understand well about the birth. So that this time I read a book to study about & chose a maternity center (Aqua Birth House in Setagaya) to do the natural birth. Aqua Birth House was such a wonderful place. Each & every checkup was enjoyable. They gave their time for us fully and took at least 30 min for each checkup. They listened sincerely to even small concerns or questions and gave beneficial advice.

http://www.tokyourbanbaby.com/2014/06/our-birth-story-part-2.html

Then we went up the elevator to the 5th floor and that’s when everything suddenly changed. The nurse couldn’t find the baby’s heart beat and was worried about the shape of my tummy. My husband asked me what is wrong and I said they can’t find the baby’s heart beat. My heart dropped. I was terrified. Suddenly everything changed, nurses and doctor ran in immediately, I was moved onto a stretcher and rushed into the operating room. Clothes stripped, spinal block in, curtain up, everything was a blur of running nurses and doctors. It all happened so quickly. I could even feel the doctor cutting my stomach. I felt everything and even some pain from the knife. I was panicking and asking the doctor about the baby, but she said she didn’t know yet. Just then my husband was by my side in his operating clothing and hairnet, and then I felt the doctor pull the baby out and we heard our baby cry. I can’t describe the relief. I started crying.

http://sistaintokyo.blogs.com/sista_in_tokyo/2010/12/my-birth-story.html#more 

I had a very positive birth experience. I wanted to try for a natural birth, but was very flexible and open to different things.  The most important thing for us was we didn't want to feel as if things were just happening to me and I didn't have a say. My birth experience involved every decision and choice being made by G and I with no pressure from my doctor or midwives, they listened and took cues from me and I am so thankful.

http://mikeandmary.net/tag/birth/

Finally, they gave him back to me.  They encouraged me to have skin to skin contact with my new baby and to try nursing him.  He stayed with me for a long time.  It’s amazing how quickly the memory of the pain fades when you look into the eyes of your new baby. He was finally here, and he was perfect! 

http://marriedwithchildreninjapan.blogspot.jp/2013/06/my-labor-delivery-story.html

Around 10pm I was in complete hysteria. The pain was so great that I just kept crying and begging to be taken to a hospital which performs epidural or at least get a C-section in my current hospital (which was denied). The hospital I chose is all about natural birth and don't usually give any painkillers, but the nurse's heart finally went soft on me and she suggested one drug. She told me it is a very strong one and supposed to work and allow me approx 3hours of sleep. She warned me the shot would be painful too, but at that moment I was ready for anything just to make the pain go numb for some time so that I can get some sleep. Well, and I still can't figure why, that "super strong and effective painkiller drug" had ZERO EFFECT ON ME. Like, really, zero! It actually became worse because I had to endure the pain from the shot, too. I was completely in tears from the huge frustration. I soooo hoped that drug would work and I can rest...

http://tinytien.blogspot.jp/2012/03/tinys-finally-here.html

He informed us that in order for them to proceed, they were going to need to perform an X-Ray on my wife in order to admit her into the hospital.  The reason that we were given was so that they could make sure her hips were wide enough to deliver the baby.  This immediately sent alarm bells ringing in both my wife’s and my own head.  Every bit of literature that we had read up until then had said that X-Rays while the baby was in the womb were generally regarded as a bad idea.  Considering the baby wasn’t quite full term, we were concerned about the safety of such a procedure.  When we brought this up to the doctor, he immediately began to get defensive.
He replied quite aggressively that all hospitals did that, which was the first time that we had ever heard anyone say that.  Up until that point, every examination we had undergone was done by ultrasound only.  When we said that this was not a common practice in the US, he replied with, “If you want to use American procedures, then you should get on a plane and fly back to America.”  This obviously rubbed us the wrong way, but we tried to keep an open mind.  Maybe he was just gruff in his manner.  We asked for some time to do some more research to make sure it was ok, and he responded with, “If you don’t accept this procedure right now, then we will not accept you at all.  You will have to leave, and don’t bother coming back.”  He followed that up with, “If you don’t do this, there’s a possibility the baby could die.”  Finally, he kicked us out of his room while we were trying to discuss what to do because he didn’t want us to waste his time.  Keep in mind that all of this is being filtered through our friend who was acting as translator, and the doctor would give her time to translate his responses, but would cut her off whenever she would try to translate what we were saying. 

https://becomingsherilyn.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/birth-story

I can’t find the words to describe how I felt at that very moment – relief, triumph, sheer amazement at what my body could do and the miracle of this beautiful baby boy that came from me (somehow, the c-section misses that last step). Another contraction later and I felt a huge blob (the placenta) slide out too. I cannot believe I actually pulled off a VBAC, and with absolutely no painkillers at that. I claim the honor of being the one successful VBAC at Todai this year.

http://community.babycenter.com/post/a35643106/birth_in_japan_-_inhumane

By this time I was really on edge. They would not administer any sort of pain relief and kept telling her to shut up. I felt hopeless to help her. So guilty.
The checked her over and said its time to go to the delivery room. We went in and I was told to stand behind a white line and wipe sweat from her head. Not to speak to get as it wastes her energy to listen. So I held her hand. Throughout the whole delivery they kept telling her to stop screaming and stop making facial expressions. I was so upset, worried and scared. They then cut her down there even though we asked not for that to be done and were told it won't be. (I have heard that hospitals like doing this in Japan and always will, even if you request not to)
So our baby was finally born. I was immediately told to leave and given the left over peice of umbilical cord in a bag.
And that brings me to now. I am no longer allowed to see the baby other than through glass for 10 mind per day. For a week. I am very happy yet very upset at this whole ordeal. I can't wait for her to get out and come home, it's like escaping a concentration camp. 

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Sunday Surf

Linkage for interesting reads~ enjoy!

Adoption and Parenting

http://mommymeansit.com/god-in-adoption/

It is damaging to tell a child that God called you to adopt her. This sets you up as a God-ordained savior to your child. It tells your child that she needed saving and that God did not choose her family of origin to do that saving. If your child comes from poverty or oppression, the message that God called you, an outsider, to adopt her, says that God didn’t care enough about her family or country to solve its problems so that families could stay alive and stay together. Instead, God played favorites and called you to swoop in and get her out of there, leaving her family and people to suffer while God figures out who to call for the next adoption.

http://www.thelostdaughters.com/2014/11/flipthescript-on-nationaladoptionmonth.html

Our stories vary. Some of us are in reunion; some are not. Some of us are birth parents; some are adoptive parents. But all our stories are valid and celebrated by all members of our group. When I need support, I know I can turn to my sisters here.

Adoptee spaces and communities are special places, and yet, many of us want to see our voices emerge in the mainstream media where struggling adoptees can feel validated. Our founder, Amanda, said it best recently in this video clip, “I think we need to flip that script,” as she introduced a new adoptee-focused project, Dear Wonderful You. This anthology of letters from adult adoptees to tween and teen adoptees begins the dialogue where no adoptee should feel alone.

It is time for the #NationalAdoptionMonth tag to include ours. If you tweet, please consider tweeting the adoptee voice once a day, and tag it with #FliptheScript and #NationalAdoptionMonth. Let’s elevate the adoptee voice!

http://redthreadbroken.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/twin-sisters-response

In the horrible situation of these twin girls’ separation, I think the most ethical thing to do would have been to perform the DNA tests as soon as possible instead of waiting six months when they were already settled, and unfortunately one of the families would have had to “make the ultimate sacrifice.” I’m sure this comment will not be well-received, but if we expect first parents to do it, I think we can expect one of these sets of parents could have done it as well, because it was in the best interest of both of the children. Of course the family would still love their daughter, but there were other options.

http://www.littlemissmomma.com/2014/10/autism-taught-far.html
(I share this link with a note to register my disappointment at her use of the adjective "broken". I guess it means something specific to her she hasn't bothered to define, but it bothers me enormously. Autistic people are not broken.)

Stop apologizing. 
That was the first rule I made when my doctor told me the diagnosis.  No more “I’m sorries”.  I’ve spent the last 5 years apologizing for my son…how horrible is that?!
I’m sorry he isn’t sharing. I’m sorry he didn’t say thank you. I’m sorry he won’t sit still. I’m sorry he’s having trouble waiting in line. I’m sorry he’s being so loud. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I cringe when I think of the shame I projected onto him in an effort to help him fit better into a mold I had created in my mind of what my quintessential child would most certainly be like. A few weeks after our doctor gave us the news, I felt that mold shatter into a million tiny pieces. And I remember feeling relief.  Screw the mold.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/fashion/how-apples-siri-became-one-autistic-boys-bff.html?_r=0

It’s not that Gus doesn’t understand Siri’s not human. He does — intellectually. But like many autistic people I know, Gus feels that inanimate objects, while maybe not possessing souls, are worthy of our consideration. I realized this when he was 8, and I got him an iPod for his birthday. He listened to it only at home, with one exception. It always came with us on our visits to the Apple Store. Finally, I asked why. “So it can visit its friends,” he said.

https://medium.com/the-archipelago/im-pregnant-so-why-cant-i-tell-you-271659d03f36

But after spending many years mourning the two babies she lost, my mother had other advice too: “Tell as many people as you like. Tell them now.”

“If something does go wrong,” she told me, “you’re going to need your friends. You’re not going to want to lie about how you’re feeling to everyone in your life.”

Philosophy and Science

http://www.newstatesman.com/europe/2013/11/germanys-new-intersex-law-and-dangers-our-gender-obsessed-culture

In the event, the new law has left some intersex campaigners unsatisfied. For them, the main issue remains the practice of surgical intervention to definitively assign gender and thus "correct" the apparent mistakes of nature. Intersex activists accuse doctors of interfering with nature, of making arbitrary judgements based on aesthetics or to fit cultural norms, of calling it wrong (in some cases, surgically-corrected "girls" grow up to identify as male, or vice versa) and of indulging in practices equivalent to the genital mutilation widely condemned when performed for religious or tribal reasons. Silvan Agius, for example, writes that "Surgical or hormonal treatment for cosmetic, non-medically necessary reasons must be deferred to an age when intersex people are able to provide their own free, prior and fully informed consent... The right to bodily integrity and self-determination should be ensured and past abuses acknowledged."

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/11/02/plastic-brains/

his is quite a nice talk by Daphna Joel on male brains and female brains — she’s making the point that there are no such things. There are differential responses by developing brains to the environment that lead to different structures…but because it is a property of interactions between sexual factors and the environment, it’s inappropriate to call the differences simply “male” or “female”.

 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2014/10/complicating-the-islam-is-especially-violent-narrative.html

If you look at the graphs above, you may notice that Muslim Americans are less likely to support individual or state violence against civilians than are other Americans. In fact, as you may recall from the first graph in this post, Indonesian and Pakistani Muslims are more likely than Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, and nonreligious Americans to believe that violence against civilians is never justified. In other words, it appears that Americans are more ready to justify targeting civilians than are many of the world’s Muslims.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/07/why-do-many-atheists-still-eat-animals/

Rather, my purpose is to explore how the very concept of religion — the belief in a higher power, in whatever form it may take — is antithetical to liberating nonhumans from the human perception that other species are ours to do with as we please. Of course, some religions are considerably kinder to animals than others, but there is not one that claims nonhuman animals and human animals have an equal claim to personhood or parity. Similarly, the secular community has been slow to acknowledge what a lack of human exceptionalism means to how we treat other animals. When that association is made by atheist luminaries such as Richard Dawkins (see his essay “Gaps in the Mind,” to which I will later refer), they do not follow up with appropriate action such as going vegan or vegetarian, or becoming advocates for nonhuman animals. Thus, a further purpose of this book is to explore the lack of interest in animal concerns within the secular world and to inspire freethinkers to think more seriously about the other animals with whom we share the Earth.

 Japan

http://odorunara.com/2014/11/05/missing-the-point-women-in-japan-series/

Amy Chavez’s “Women in Japan” series, first offering 5 “powerful reasons” to be a woman (?) in Japan–you know, if your only aspiration is to be a mother and you are in a heterogamous marriage to a man who earns enough and you have no fertility issues.

http://liuchiuan.com/2014/10/02/rare-u-s-photos-of-civilians-from-the-battle-of-okinawa/

http://colliersmagazine.com/article/okinawa-66-years-later

As for Okinawa, there's also little doubt that Japan's militarization in response to Perry contributed to its impetus to force the weaponless Ryukyu monarchy to accept its annexation to Japan. In that way too, America helped lower the quality of Okinawan life because most Japanese treated the racially mixed people a little like American whites of the time treated American blacks. However, the Battle of Okinawa was incomparably worse for them than anything they'd previously suffered. In the way that combat stress causes so much mental and emotional disorder, those three months of horror that Okinawans spent in the lowest level of battle hell ripped their society, which had been uncommonly healthy by any standard, to shreds in some respects. The beautiful sub-tropical landscape had become, as an Okinawan survivor put it, a vast field of mud, lead, decay and maggots. The tombs of their ancestors, on which their religious life had centered, were among the ninety percent of structures that had been blasted to rubble and dust. Crime and suicide, which had been virtually unknown before the battle, became, and remain, serious problems.

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Comfort: J-Bloggers' Carnival #3

Welcome to the third J-Bloggers' Carnival, and our first autumn edition. The theme this time was "Comfort", and I am delighted to share a wide range of takes on the topic.

Paul write about missing the scent of autumn in Japan at
http://www.jadij.com/2012/10/sweet-smell-of-fall-kinmokusei.html

Paul a.k.a Blue Shoe, was an ALT on the JET Program in Hyogo from 2008-2011. For the past five years he's been blogging about both the odd and mundane of life in Japan. Be sure to check out www.jadij.com for anecdotes, Japanese study tips, and general Japan-related musings and news.

Jamie  wonders what makes a comfortable life in Japan at
http://japansstyle.blogspot.jp/2014/10/spend-comfortable-life.html

Jamie is a part time seamstress (you can see her designs modeled exclusively on her), full time TV watcher, occasional movie goer, amateur vegetarian chef, part time Master's student and bookworm.  Frequently she gets lost in Japan and when not embarrassed blogs about it at http://japansstyle.blogspot.jp/.  She lives in Tokyo and is currently planning her wedding.

Chicchai Mitsu shared her daily comforts at
http://chicchaimitsu.blogspot.jp/2014/10/small-comforts-in-life.html

Stacey writes about the pleasures of autumn in Japan at
http://kajapan.org/general/eating-and-leaf-play-autumn-in-japan 

Stacey is an Australian, slightly forgetful mother of three boys living in Kobe. On top of working full time, she writes her own blog Can the kids speak Japanese? and for the KA mothers blog. What is KA? Just a bunch of kick-arse foreign mothers living in Japan and coping as well as we can!

While we don't usually associate pregnancy or visiting the doctor with "comfort", Life in Japan With Toddlers shows that in Japan these things can coincide at
http://daysofourlivesjapan.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/free-foot-reflexology-massage-at-my-maternity-hospital

My contribution actually looks at discomfort, just because I am contrary! I wrote about the role of food in culture shock.
sopheliajapan.blogspot.jp/2014/11/comfort-food-and-culture-shock.html#.VFQjwclIpsI

For more posts of autumny goodness, check out

http://dustinandlaura.blogspot.jp/2013/11/the-flavours-of-autumn.html

and

http://vivianlostinseoul.blogspot.jp/2012/11/nabe-and-onigiri-girl.html

A huge thank-you to everyone who participated, I hope to see you again for the next carnival!

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J-Bloggers’ Carnival 3, Autumn Edition: Call for Submissions

Photo Source (Before text was added)

The theme for the next carnival is “Comfort”, and submissions are welcome from anyone up until November 1^st, Japan time. Never participated in a blog carnival before and don’t even know what I’m talking about? No problem! It’s very easy. Just email me a link to your blog post (or even someone else’s post you think fits the theme and I’ll try to get in touch with them). It can be a new post you wrote just for the carnival or something ten years old, it really doesn’t matter. Just add a link in your post to either one link I’ll email you or if you are feeling very community minded you can link individually to each of the carnival participants, then once the carnival is live please read the other contributions and leave a comment for them. The idea is to build connections with other bloggers, get a different perspective, and have some fun! Some of my favourite blogs are ones I first encountered through carnivals I was participating in. The theme is intentionally broad so that you can adapt it to fit your blog’s focus and your own writing style. Plus, comfort is just the first word that springs (ha ha) to  mind when I think of autumn in Japan… kotatsu, gluhwein, a good book and roasted chestnuts.

The previous two carnivals were both in spring, but my original intention was actually to do one each season. I’ve been procrastinating about putting up a third because there hasn’t been a great deal of interest, but on reflection I enjoy it so what the hey, I’ll go ahead and if participation stays low I’ll just include links to some of my favourite relevant blog posts!

So, if you are interested please email me at sopheliajapan@gmail.com with “carnival” in the subject line. If you don’t have a blog but want to contribute something I am also very happy to host it here, and I welcome contributions in any format (photo essays, video and multi-media, comics… please don’t feel constrained but my text-heavy style!). I would also appreciate anyone who can sharing this call for submissions to help get the word out and hopefully round up some more participants :)

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Rural Depopulation, Japan Agriculture and the Failure of the Concrete Solution

Wild boar foraging for acorns by the side of the road: There is so much beauty when the pachinko parlors are out of sight!

Japan's ailing agricultural sector, demographic crisis and the death of rural towns and villages are not new topics, but I hope you'll forgive me bringing them up when you read this brilliant and passionate recent post:

http://thedelphinetwork.com/japanese-countryside-mutant-creation-worthy-horror-movie

I thoroughly agree with the criticism of how zoning laws make the Japanese countryside look dingy and messy when it could be so beautiful. What really interested me, though, are these comments about Japan Agriculture:

Japan’s agriculture actually contributes zero to GDP because the Tokyo Foundation estimated that subsidies balance the economic wealth generated by the agricultural sector.

Tragically, real farmers, who want to grow rice profitably, find it hard to buy farmland. Greedy gerontocrats sit on their micro-plots in the hope of a re-zoning windfall, and because owning farm land exempts their family from inheritance tax. Real farmers also find it hard to lease land because lessors are worried by the strong protection the law grants leases. Furthermore, non-farm investors like public companies are officially barred from buying land. These measures are all remnants of well-meant US efforts post-1945 to prevent the rise of usury, rural exploitation, tenant farming and absentee landlords.

In short, the farm lobby is ironically destroying Japanese agriculture. Their perverse policy of using tariffs on rice of almost 800% and of being paid subsidies NOT to grow rice in order to keep prices high has been disastrous. Although Japanese rice is good quality and in demand abroad, a lack of concentration and scale is preventing Japanese rice farmers from doing for agriculture what Toyota and Panasonic did for manufacturing – take the world by storm with excellent export products.

Many moons ago I studied the influence of Japan Agriculture in the LDP (the relationship is under strain at the moment) and the way voting district allocation gives farming areas a disproportionate representation that leads to extraordinary pork barreling (more so in the '80s and '90s). It's not a new topic. I do have a different perspective on it having lived in a rural area though. Just the other day we were driving up into the mountains looking for a river swimming hole and we passed through a small group of old farm houses, of which only three or four looked like they were still inhabited. There was an old overgrown gas station and an ancient looking vending machine facing the dirt road. Yet just on the other side of this little settlement there was a brand new, two story concrete JA office resplendently modern-looking with a car-park that looked like it had until recently been a rice field. When riding the local bus a recorded voice gives information about each stop: "get off here to transfer to south-bound routes" and so on. Before the bus stop that is actually named Japan Agriculture, however, the voice over tells me that Japan agriculture is defending Japan's farming culture and giving us safe crops we can be proud of, before playing the JA jingle. I'm deadly serious.

Autumn rice fields~ hard work getting a shot without power lines or (much) concrete in sight

So, as young people abandon the unattractive (in many senses) countryside described in The Delphi Network article, how are those communities responding?

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/demographic-crisis-empties-out-japans-rural-areas

The tiny Japanese community of Mishima was desperate to reverse its shrinking population so officials came up with what they hoped would be a game-changing plan: free cows. Anyone willing to pack up and move to the remote southern village of 379 residents would get a no-cost calf or 500,000 yen in cash.
Mishima’s bovine brainwave has fallen well short of expectations, however.
“The program has been going for more than 20 years, and so far there has only been one person who took us up on the cow, and that was two decades ago,” village official Shingo Hidaka told AFP, adding the cash had only a handful of takers.

http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Abe-seeks-long-term-plan-for-reviving-small-town-Japan

Japan needs to stop its population from cramming into the capital and create towns "overflowing with individuality and charm," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday at a roundtable on reinvigorating the countryside.

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/aug/15/yubari-japan-city-learns-die-lost-population-detroit

One unheralded Yubari success story is its rewilding, although no Japanese administrator would use that expression, which smacks to them of defeatism.

...
As humanity recedes, nature returns. By a railway station on Yubari’s somnolent branch line, a man who in a small act of public spiritedness is watering the bare concrete floors of the station building (“It keeps the dust down”) points to a Sika Deer doe in the nearby undergrowth. “Unusual to see one around here until just recently.” More deer vaulted in front of my car on Yubari’s main street the following day, forcing a swerve. Good use is being made of the return of nature, too: an abandoned elementary school has been turned into a nature academy, where big-city kids can kayak down the now pristine rivers and catch stag beetles.

 That last quote brings is very nicely to Alex Kerr, who wrote in Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan over a decade ago about the failure of the government response to dying villages and offers a different approach which he describes in this 2013 TEDxKyoto talk:

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The Eclectic Others of the Village

Stolen from HERE. The character for mother is literally a pair of breasts turned vertically.

Welcome to the ‘Look At All The Women’ Carnival: Week 3 – ‘The Eclectic Others’ This post was written especially for inclusion in the three-week-long ‘Look At All The Women’ carnival, hosted by Mother’s Milk Books, to celebrate the launch of Cathy Bryant’s new book ‘Look At All The Women’. In this final week of the carnival our participants share their thoughts on the theme ‘The Eclectic Others’ (the third, and final, chapter in Cathy’s new poetry collection). Please read to the end of the post for a full list of carnival participants. 

 In Japanese it is common to refer to everyone using kinship words irrespective of whether they are actual family members or not. All older men are 'grandpa' and all older women are 'grandma'. A running gag in anime is a cheeky young boy incurring the wrath of female characters by calling then 'aunty' instead of 'older sister'. Within families, parents refer to all other family members from the point of view of the youngest child. Fathers call their wives (excuse the hetero-etc-normativity, but in Japan this is how it is) mama and wives call their husband papa. A friend of mine began calling her husband papa while she was still pregnant with their first child. The elder children are called 'big brother' and 'big sister' and only the youngest child is regularly referred to by name.

A couple of years ago I was, without fail, 'older sister'. After we moved into a house in the burbs though, delivery men in particular began calling me 'wife' (a more natural translation would be 'missus'). Then Tiger came along and I became 'mother', or more often the English 'mama'. It's quite surreal for someone not used to the practice to have an elderly doctor refer to her as 'mama'.  So, I'm a mother, お母さん。

I love that my son is growing up an a place where instead of stranger danger, every stranger is his "sister" or "uncle" and "grandma". They aren't just words, either. Walking to school arguing about something or another and the "grandpa" walking the other way stops and says "listen to your mother!" Riding the bus and the "grandma" sitting opposite immediately whips out boiled lollies. Tiger comes home from playing at a friend's house with a guitar made from cardboard and rubber bands; his friend's grandmother taught him how to make it. I am not saying these are essentially Japanese experiences. I am sure they don't happen in big cities where there is little by way of community, and I am sure they happen in close communities all over the world.

There is a strong belief in some sections of the English speaking world that the nuclear family should be an island, that father and mother are the one and only thing a child needs. Yet despite decades of attempts to prove that a family headed by a heterosexual married couple is "best", usually in argument against blended families or same sex parenting or single parenting, the answer research consistently shows is that the best environment is one with an extended support network. Kids who are surrounded by people who care about them thrive. There are times in life, especially in teenage, when you need those "eclectic others", the aunties and cousins and the grandpa who listens patiently. As ex-pat parents we worry about living away from all of our relatives, but the "village" of aunties and grandpas surrounding us reassures us. Three cheers for the eclectic others!

Look At All The Women by Cathy Bryant

Look At All The Women is now available to buy from:
The Mother’s Milk Bookshop (as a paperback and PDF) – we can ship books around the world!
and as a paperback from Amazon.co.uk.
It can also be ordered via your local bookshop.
If you’d like to know more about Mother’s Milk Books — our submission guidelines, who we are and what we do — please find more details here: http://www.mothersmilkbooks.com/ Please take the time to read and comment on the following fab posts submitted by some wonderful women:

‘Heroines and Inspirations’— Cathy Bryant, guest posting at Mother’s Milk Books, shares two powerful, inspiring poems, and how they came into being.

‘Sensitivity’ — Marija Smits shares a poem, with an accompanying image, that gives a glimpse into the inner workings of a highly sensitive person.

Georgie St Clair shares her creative female heroines in her post ‘Creative Others: Mothers Who Have It All’ 

‘The Eclectic Others – Or What Would I Have Been Without You?’ — Kimberly Jamison posts to her blog The Book Word a thank you to the women of literature and history who have been in her life, shaped her life, saved her life and gave her a future.

‘Barbie speaks out’ — Ana Salote at Colouring Outside the Lines shares a platform with feminist icon, Barbie.

‘Her Village’ — An older (much older than most) first time mother, Ellie Stoneley from Mush Brained Ramblings firmly believes in the old African adage that it takes a village to raise a child. To that end she has surrounded her daughter with the love, mischief and inspiration of an extremely eclectic bunch of villagers.

Survivor writes about the inspiring life of La Malinche and her place in Mexican history at Surviving Mexico: Adventures and Disasters.

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Science! Look Mummy, SCIENCE!

Stolen from http://xkcd.com where it even comes on t-shirts!

I came home from work one day, and Tiger was watching Tom and Jerry. Boulders were rolling down a hill and a witch turned them into dandy lions. "Mummy, SCIENCE!" Tiger shouted, pointing excitedly at the television. The man person smiled and shook his head.

The program was Tom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz, which is wrong for a lot of reasons but I was at work so it isn't my fault. Anyway. Tiger wanted to know why the Wizard wasn't helping them, and the man person tried to explain that he couldn't actually do magic, his tricks look like magic but really he uses science. Between the man's imperfect grasp of Japanese and Tiger's imperfect grasp of reality, the take away message became magic=science, but this is a big secret. Thrilled with his discovery (he likes being in on secrets), Tiger spent the next few weeks yelling "SCIENCE!" whenever anything fantastical happened on television. While walking to school one day he asked if there was anyone who could really do magic, and I said no, which he didn't like. He thought about it for a little while then said "there are people who can do magic, except it's really science, right?" That's my boy, channeling Arthur C. Clarke's third law before he's even figured out how to brush his teeth f(^_^;

Check out the other posts in the ninth Carnival of Atheist Parenting

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Homeschool Graduates, Adult Adoptees and Nothing About Japan At All

I read a lot of blogs, on all sorts of divergent topics from dogs to vegetarian cooking to adoption to home schooling to Atheism and back again via academia and anime. Usually there is little relationship between anything I read. Lately, however, I have been noticing the same thing happening in two areas: blogs by home school graduates and blogs by adults who were adopted as children. Both groups are now, as adults, casting an often critical eye on their childhood experiences and making suggestions for how parents can prevent making the same mistakes with their children. Both groups are constantly being criticised by home schooling parents and adoptive parents for being “too negative”, “anti-“, in some cases having their stories challenged or dismissed altogether and of course, the classic “your parents just did it wrong, the system is fine!” / “Your experience was an aberration, the VAST MAJORITY [citation needed] had wonderful experiences and you should shut up and stop ruining it for everyone.”

From the comments thread of Homeschooling on the Open Seas

I find this baffling. Before going into adoption I wanted to be prepared. Part of that preparation was reading what adult adoptees, particularly transracial adoptees, have to say about their experiences. I read a lot of blogs by adoptive parents, too, but I place a higher value on what people who experienced being adopted, as opposed to adopting, have to say. One reason for this is how frustrating I have found it when my parents try to “correct”my statements about home schooling. They weren’t home schooled, I was. Being home schooling parents does not qualify you to talk about the experience of being home schooled. I say “baffling” but I guess it isn’t, really. Both adoptive parents and home schooling parents are making decisions they believe are in their children’s best interests, sometimes at great personal cost. I remember a home schooled friend’s mother talking about breaking down in tears when they made the decision to home school because she really, really didn’t want to but felt that she had to do it for the kids. I understand that it must hurt to receive not gratitude but criticism. When it isn’t just within the family, though, I really don’t get it. Every single time someone who was home schooled writes about how they struggled with social issues a dozen rabid home schoolers pop into the comments section and demand clarification: “Not all home schooled kids are poorly socialized! Not all schooled kids are well socialized!” Of course, this is true, and I have never seen anyone claim otherwise. On the other hand, how many home schoolers bother to clarify statements like “schools crush creativity and individuality” or this:

Image taken from When Homeschooling Gets Crunchy

And, in anticipation of the criticism I will get for pointing this out… no, this is not an anti-home schooling post. I don’t think all home schoolers are rabid, just the ones who stalk home school graduates. This is about parents silencing their adult children’s voices, whether it is an adult who was home schooled as a child being harassed by parents who are currently home schooling, or adoptive parents dismissing the pain expressed by an adult who was adopted as a child. First hand experiences matter, it is the reason blogs are so important to me as a source of information. If you are an adoptive parent, you have firsthand experience of being an adoptive parent but not of being an adoptee. If you are home schooling your children but were not yourself home schooled, please don’t tell us what home schooling is like. 

If you have no idea what I am talking about but are interested, here is some further reading:

Lost Daughters

Omitting the voices of adoptees of color and only asking white adoptive parents to recount their experiences of transracial adoption is a subtlety of structural racism.

Under Much Grace

I became acutely aware of the First and Second Generation Adult within or post-homeschooling when working with Hillary McFarland in the preparation of Quivering Daughters. SGAs, the “quivering daughters” themselves, loved the drafts. Their First Generation mother pioneers hated it far more often than not – and I had not anticipated the reaction at all.

 Family Ties

Adult adoptees have so much wisdom to offer because they know how it feels to grow up being adopted.  It is way past time for the industry, the media and legislators to acknowledge their voices without insulting their motives.

Darcy's Heart-Stirrings

For those of you invalidating our stories, saying "it wasn't that bad", can I ask you to take a step back for a moment? To gain a broader perspective? Because what may have been only a small part of your life, was our ENTIRE lives. You were adults when you chose to attend that Basic Seminar, when you picked up your first courtship books, when you decided to promote the modesty culture, when you chose to become part of a patriarchal system, when you made the choice to spend your kids' childhoods sheltered from the world in your own little reality and the culture you created. But us? We were born into it. We were raised our whole lives immersed in it. We spent the most formative years of our cognitive and emotional development in an alternate religious culture ruled by fear, shame, legalism, and authoritarianism. We had no choice. We knew nothing else. We had no other experience and knowledge and discernment to ground us like you did, to give us perspective, to compare anything to. For you, this was 10-20 years of your life. For us, it was our whole lives. It was all we knew. Our entire lives have been built upon a time period that was just a small part of your own life. So, yes, it was "that bad". Our experiences were nothing like yours and you'll have to see them through our eyes if you want to understand.

Gazillion Voices

 What do I want to write and talk about? I want to write about the number of adoptees who struggle with suicide and suicidal ideation because they lack a continuity with the past and because their attempts at continuity are denied by agencies that withhold birth family information, about the number of adult adoptees who are divorced because their identities are so wildly in flux it is hard for a partner to keep up, about adoptees who perform childhood even as adults. I want to write about loss; about issues with body image because for our whole lives, our faces did not reflect our immediate families or societal images of beauty; about attachment issues; about not eating or overeating as a representation of nurture; about substance abuse. I want to write about the structural inequalities on a global, political and economic scale that fully manifest when an adoptee attempts to hold the poverty of their birth parents alongside the privileges of their adoptive parents, and especially, when that adoptee tries to love them both.

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Working Mothers, Childcare and Limited Choices

Image by Magdalena Roeseler

Two events this weekend prompted these thoughts. On Saturday I attended a manga research symposium and the post-function dinner and spoke to several women who are career academics about gender issues in Japan. Sunday was my first mothers’ day. 

  

I recently shared Ken’s post on ‘who wears the pants in Japan’, and the content of some of my conversations reflected this perspective. We talked about female friends who had quit their jobs after marriage and how easy their lives were compared to our male friends’ situations. The guys work until late at night every day, while their wives enjoy hobbies and leisurely lunches at fashionable cafés with their friends. This is, of course, a highly classed perspective. Many women in lower income families are simultaneously responsible for 100% of house work and child care but also have to work because their partners’ income is not enough to live on. But among university educated women, this apparently spoiled existence seems common. The novelty probably wears off… at a cub-scout meeting recently a mother told me that after she finishes the housework she just sits alone and wonders what to do with herself. “What do you DO all day?” She asked me, looking a little desperate. Amid all sorts of moral panics about “herbivoremen” and NEETs, freeters and other apparently abhorrent versions of masculinity, few commentators ever mention that perhaps the whole system is just deeply unappealing to many young men. Sure, they may get a nice home they don’t have to take care of, but I’d feel pretty upset if I worked myself to death supporting a partner whose life seemed so much more fulfilling than mine. At a different dinner with a group of women in their sixties I was  saddened to hear them discussing encouraging their husbands to take up golf so that they could get them out of the house all day on Sundays (many Japanese people work six day weeks). “If he’s home I can’t relax” one said, as her friends nodded in agreement, “and I have to cook a full lunch for him. If it’s just me I snack on toast or go to a café.” Retired husbands are sometimes referred to as sodaigomi, over-sized garbage. There is even a name for the psychological distress wives experience when their husbands retire.

Before this starts sounding like some kind of praise for how great a gender segregated work culture is for women, let me elaborate on how this really is not a choice for women. One of the academics I was talking to had completed her PhD in Australia and we were talking about how abnormal it would be for a women in Australia to quit her job because she got married. “In Japan we can choose” she proudly said. She is single, so I can see why it seems that way to her, but when I began explaining the barriers to mothers working in Japan her jaw dropped. Even though I work just three days a week and my son is in school, I have found it extraordinarily frustrating.  If I had a pre-school aged child, I just wouldn’t work unless I had to. The majority of Japanese women I know who take their careers seriously are single and childless.

Maternity leave and day care are out of reach for many women.

According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, 24,825 children across Japan were on waiting lists for authorized nurseries in 2012.
Yet a survey by Hoikuen wo Kangaeru Oyano kai (roughly translated as parents looking into day care group) led by Aki Fukoin, who has been dealing with this issue since the 1980s, found that 55,222 children in 70 municipalities were waiting to be placed in authorized day care centers last year.
The gap reflects how the government defines “children on the waiting list.” The government figure does not count children whose parents declined admission from day care centers that were not of their choosing, or children who were accepted by unauthorized day care facilities that receive government subsidies.

The article continues

Experts cite several reasons behind the shortage of facilities. First, municipalities are generally reluctant to spend money on setting up more nurseries when the increase in senior citizens outpaces that of newborns.
In addition, despite deregulation in 2000 that allowed private companies and nonprofit groups to offer day care services, entering the market has actually been difficult because established facilities want to protect their turf.
“The Social Welfare Corporation (the main provider of authorized day care centers) opposed private operators from entering the market and colluded with local politicians to ensure their applications were rejected,” said Hiromi Yamaguchi, CEO of JP Holdings, the largest private operator of day care facilities.
Thus out of 23,711 government-authorized day care facilities, only 1 percent are currently run by private companies, welfare ministry figures show. But with Abe encouraging municipalities to authorize more company-run day care centers, things may change, Yamaguchi said.

Entering school doesn't aliviate the problems, either. Although either I or my partner are home by the end of the school day most days, we have still gone through a huge amount of hassle in the past month because the school keeps randomly sending our son home early, with sometimes only one day's notice. First we had two weeks of him coming home after lunch because of "home visits" by teachers (all of which were completed in three days, incidentally). Then there were some staff meeting and workshops that couldn't possibly have been held after 3, so again, all the kids were sent home after lunch. On Friday we get a notice listing the next week's return times, so if Monday is a short day I don't even have a single business day's notice to try and organise some kind of care. After burning through leave at a rate of knots, we looked into our school's after school care program. LOL. It's expensive, very few adults are supervising a huge number of kids many of whom have special needs, and there is a waiting list so long we didn't bother registering (thereby contributing to unreliable statistics on waiting lists...)

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/03/17/reference/after-school-clubs-falling-short-as-more-moms-work/#.U3AduVdIoxE

Many working mothers have had to give up their jobs just because they can’t secure spots for their children at such facilities. The problem has become so acute that there is now a term describing difficulties confronting working mothers with first-graders: “shoichi no kabe” (the hurdle of the first grade).
Even students who are fortunate enough to gain admittance to an after-school club benefit for only a limited time. Many clubs — particularly the traditional, publicly funded ones — accept students only through the third grade, meaning that older children often have nowhere to go after school. Many end up staying home alone, often with a TV or computer games as their only companions.
Concern for such kids has recently given rise to another term: “shoyon no kabe,” or the hurdle of the fourth grade.

The article continues:

A survey by the liaison council suggests that the actual number of children on waiting lists might be between 400,000 and 500,000, many more than are officially recognized.
“Of all the working mothers with first- to third-grade children, almost 70 percent of them work over six hours a day, which is considered full time. There are 1.32 million children whose mothers work full time,” said Yutaka Sanada, deputy secretary-general of the council.
“Only 880,000 of those students belong to gakudo clubs, which means that the rest — about 400,000 students — don’t have anyone to look after them after school.”

So what about women who, despite all the hurdles, persist in getting back to work? They face continued discrimination at work and may be labeled devil wives with no shame by wider society:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-01/japan-s-devil-wife-leads-motherhood-work-balance-tussle

“It was like a weekend marriage,” Suzuki, 45, who works at a Japanese telecommunications company, said of the arrangement started 14 years ago. “I had a satisfying job and really wanted to go back to it. In Japanese society, when a woman chooses work instead of staying at home to look after her husband, she’s called a devil wife.”

http://japandailypress.com/citizens-outraged-over-politicians-criticism-of-mothers-calling-for-more-day-care-0124271

Tanaka, 37, said in his post that while “woman power” is necessary to revitalize the economy, he thought that the mothers “had no touch of reserve nor shame.” “What I am saying is don’t force your child-rearing on society from the start. . . . (The mothers) should have the manners enough to say ‘Please help us raise our children,’ ” Tanaka added on his blog, adding that he was not married and had no kids.
A multitude of angry comments flooded the blog, with people expressing sentiments like not wanting to raise their children in a district with a representative like Tanaka and that it is because of people like him that Japan has a low birthrate. Tanaka was not available for comment.

More on the protests by Tokyo mothers at Japan Probe:

The reporters visit the house of a woman who lives in Itabashi ward of Tokyo. She gave birth to a baby a year and one month ago, and was planning to return to full-time work. Unfortunately, she was unable to find a nursery for her child. She applied for five places, and they all turned her down because they were full. Because her maternity leave only lasts until April, she will be forced to abandon her job.
Government-run nursery schools have pretty strict entry requirements. Because of a shortage of such facilities, they give preference to people in the worst financial circumstances. The woman they interview says she has heard about some couples getting divorced so they could have a better chance at passing the entry screening.

For some reason I can't embed it, but this is an interesting clip from a documentary titled "Mothers' Way, Daughters' Choice".


Despite constant talk from politicians and media about the need to both increase women's participation in the workforce and to get the birth rate up to try and do something about the aging population, nothing really changes. On the surface I have a certain amount of envy for women who seem to enjoy such carefree, unburdened lives without ever having to go to work, but it is delusional to see this as a choice. Choice only exists when the odds are not heavily stacked in favour of one option to the exclusion of others.

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