 |
Do mothers work in Japan? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
The number of mothers who hold a job while they raise their children is on the rise in Japan. In 1985, the number of households including children where both parents held jobs was 49.4% of the total. By 1992, however, that figure had gone up to 54.9%. The percentage dropped a little after that, reaching 51.7% in 1996. Over the same 1985-96 period, the percentage of total households where the mother stayed at home and the father worked fell from 49.9% to 41.4%.
The percentage of mothers who work is greatly influenced by the age of the youngest child in the family. The working rate among mothers is highest in families where the youngest child is between 15 and 17 years old. The following table shows that 1996 percentage of mothers who held a job of any sort and those who worked 35 or more hours per week according to the age of the youngest child in the family.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
