Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks at an Upper House plenary session on Jan. 27. (Koichi Ueda)

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is drawing heavy fire for suggesting the government could help parents to acquire professional skills or an academic degree during child care leave.

“We will give full support to people who are willing to get retraining during child care leave and other circumstances,” Kishida said.

That reply came in response to a legislator of Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party who called for government assistance to businesses that help retrain employees while they are on leave to care for their children.

The remark came only a few days after he vowed in the Diet unprecedented support measures to families raising children to reverse the alarming pace of the fallen birthrate.

Critics say the prime minister’s comment at an Upper House plenary session on Jan. 27 demonstrated how little he knows about what it takes to raise a child.

Akira Koike, secretary-general of the Japanese Communist Party, appeared appalled by Kishida’s comment during a news show of public broadcaster Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) on Jan. 29.

“How can a parent fully tied up with caring for a child possibly do reskilling?” Koike said.

He said child rearing turned into an enormous challenge in Japan because of a patriarchal system instituted during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) and that Kishida’s comment showed the concept of a male-dominated society has deep roots in the LDP.

Katsuya Shinba, secretary-general of the Democratic Party for the People, also expressed dismay.

“I was disappointed to hear a call for a parent to receive retraining while on child care leave,” he said on the same TV program.

On social media, numerous posts blasted Kishida’s suggestion to undertake retraining while rearing a child.

“What is child care leave for?” novelist Keiichiro Hirano said on his Twitter account. “The prime minister should try working to earn an academic degree while taking care of a child himself.”

Yoshihisa Aono, president of a leading IT company Cybozu Inc., noted in his social media post that taking care of a baby is far more difficult than working a regular job.

“The prime minister’s comment is not surprising for a politician who did not do anything with regards to caring for children,” he said.

Kaori Suetomi, professor of educational administration at Nihon University, acknowledged that the prime minister’s remark “showed a lack of understanding of childbirth and what was involved in rearing a child.”

She said child care leave is “not days off” but an almost endless task requiring a mother to feed, change diapers and nurse to sleep and so on.

For many people, retraining during child care leave is “unrealistic,” she added. 

Kishida was in damage-control mode on Jan. 30.

He told a session of the Lower House Budget Committee that he “meant to underscore the importance of creating an environment that would support people, regardless of their stage in life, who wish to retrain, if they so desire to.”

The number of newborns is estimated to fall to less than 800,000 in 2022, eight years earlier than a government projection.

Japan’s chronically low birthrate is partially blamed on a surge in nonregular workers with fragile job security and the traditional role for women to raise children without much support from their husband, employer or society. 

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