In Japan, out-of-wedlock births extremely rare
In Japan, out-of-wedlock births are 2% of all births. Holy ***! That’s amazing. How did Japan manage to totally buck global trends?
It’s not because of Christianity or any other religion. The majority of Japanese are atheists and only 2% are Christian.
And it’s not abortion. Theoretically, abortion on demand is illegal in Japan, but according to Wikipedia, “exceptions to the law are broad enough that it is widely accepted and practiced.” So Japan and Iceland have pretty similar access to abortion, but a vastly different out-of-wedlock birth rate.
There are two reasons:
(1) Japan has extremely low gender equality. Ranked 110 out of 144 nations. Gender equality leads to the end of marriage as we know it because the empirical evidence shows that when women don’t need men, they don’t get married.
(2) In Japan, they still believe in stigmatizing people for bad behavior. This NY Times article is pretty old, but the point is that relative to America and Europe, Japan is very different.
Why has Japan not had a surge in single mothers? For a start, it may be that Japanese teen-agers are less active sexually than young people abroad. Moreover, abortions are easily available — and common — for those who become pregnant.
But the most important factor is social pressure. Single mothers face economic and social discrimination. In Japan, having a baby without being married is still a humiliation.
In the United States, the Christian Right has been contributing to the increase in out-of-wedlock births, because they have been promoting the de-stigmatization of single-motherhood so that unmarried pregnant women won’t get abortions. (Probably, the de-stigmatization of single motherhood leads to more premarital sex without birth control because the consequences of pregnancy are not feared as much, which then leads to more unplanned pregnancies which then, ironically, leads to more abortions rather than fewer abortions.)
Lion of the Blogosphere 
Pretty soon no one will be born in Japan, period.
njguy73
February 7, 2019 at 1:19 PM
No, the world isn’t going to run out of people.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 7, 2019 at 2:24 PM
The world isn’t going to run out of people, but the long-term survival of certain ethnic groups is very much in doubt.
Stan Adams
February 7, 2019 at 2:37 PM
Japan might. Also I think you’re mixing up atheism and vedic philosophy again.
toomanymice
February 7, 2019 at 3:39 PM
Did I say “the world”?
njguy73
February 7, 2019 at 11:57 PM
There were over a million babies born in Japan in 2015. That’s more than enough. A shrinking population in a stable society is a good thing.
peterike
February 7, 2019 at 3:04 PM
A birth rate of 1.44 doesn’t mean that every woman has exactly 1.44 children. Some have zero, some have 3. The women who have 3 are the ones who will disproportionately pass on their genes for having more children, and the result will be a higher birthrate in future generations.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 7, 2019 at 4:00 PM
Japan deliberately pursued very high birth rate policies in the 20s and 30s because they had territorial expansion aims. That didn’t work out, and many hundreds of thousands of people had to be moved back to the home islands. I don’t know the exact number; huge numbers of people were relocated back from manchukou and korea. Japan was left with an even worse overpopulation problem, which they already had in the first place.
In the 50s Japan pulled a 180° and deliberately pursued a eugenic sub-replacement birth rate policy. There is no free money for having a kid. They had lost half their territory and were crammed into a few islands. A month long embargo means mass starvation. What other policy makes sense?
There are two reasons you hear this very noticeable drumbeat of criticism about Japanese birth rates. 1) The NYT people hate, hate, hate that Japan stands as an example that you don’t need immigration. It’s not some force of nature. You can set national policies and achieve results. The demographic transformation of America is their goal and they can’t have people waking up to the fact that it’s deliberate policy, not just a thing that is happening. 2) A huge fraction of people hate to hear about the idea of overpopulation: that a given area of land can only safely sustain so many people, and we might need policies that consider that fact. Japan decided on population reduction for national security purposes. This sort of thinking is anathema to many interests in the USA.
bobbybobbob
February 7, 2019 at 9:21 PM
No it doesn’t lion. You really should read a writer named Eamonn fingleton, an Irishman who lives in Japan.
he knows Japan intimately, having married a Japanese woman and being a longtime resident there.
he claims that the reason the Japanese have so few children is because in the late 1930s the elites decided that they would go for quality over quantity.
he also claims that, in the future, should they decide to raise their birth rates, they will do so successfully. That’s the way the Japanese are.
gothamette
February 7, 2019 at 9:28 PM
>In the United States, the Christian Right has been contributing to the increase in out-of-wedlock births, because they have been promoting the de-stigmatization of single-motherhood so that unmarried pregnant women won’t get abortions.
100% correct and brilliantly stated!
Monsieur le Baron
February 7, 2019 at 1:20 PM
Is that really true? I don’t think so. Yes it’s true that abortion is one of their issues, but I think that instead of promoting single motherhood, they just basically gave up on it, as they gave up on gay marriage.
it may seem as if any fact they promote single motherhood, but I think actually they’re quite dismayed by it.
gothamette
February 7, 2019 at 9:29 PM
Single mothers are a target the elites leave open for bashing. That the Evangelicals do not is basically support. Maintaining stigma is important.
Monsieur le Baron
February 7, 2019 at 11:20 PM
Whut?
When has the “Christian Right” been promoting the ” de-stigmatization of single-motherhood ?” Is anyone on this blog aware that Evangelicals regard sex outside of marriage as a sin?
I realize that Lion hates the “Christian Right” in general and Christians in particular, but not every, or even most, social ill is the fault of Christians.
Mike Street Station
February 9, 2019 at 9:41 AM
Fat activists often claim they are promoting healthy lifestyles. You have to look at their behavior.
Monsieur le Baron
February 9, 2019 at 11:18 AM
So in other words, you made a statement based out of some sort of resentment or prejudice rather than on any factual basis.
Pretty much what I suspected.
Mike Street Station
February 9, 2019 at 2:47 PM
I hate Lion’s bashing of the “Christian right,” but in my own experience, while evangelicals still do talk about sex outside of marriage being a sin, they’ve been sort of quietly abandoning the stigma against bastardy over the past 10-15 years, for fear that said stigma’s continuation would lead to more abortions.
During the 2008 Presidential election cycle, several of my evangelical friends had nothing but praise for the Palin clan, including Bristol’s “heroism” in not getting an abortion, and had no problem with the promotion of the sham shotgun wedding that never materialized, resulting in Bristol’s baby-daddy Levi Johnston being on the stage of the Republican National Convention.
Lawrence Auster wrote quote a bit about this at the time, highlighting and criticizing many examples of Christian conservatives going soft on sexual morality issues in an effort to be “pro-life.”
Hermes
February 9, 2019 at 3:46 PM
Mike, I understand Lion’s frustration. While the CR has never said that single motherhood is OK or that it is a good thing, it also hadn’t spoken at all about the increase of single motherhood among white working-class Christian women in the U.S. The CR’s single-minded obsession with abortion has contributed to the feeling that as long as a woman doesn’t have an abortion,nothing else about her child-bearing could possibly be bad. The fact is life is multi-faceted. They (the CR) should be able to handle more than one issue at a time.
maryk (the g-loaded guidette)
February 9, 2019 at 7:52 PM
” I understand Lion’s frustration. While the CR has never said that single motherhood is OK or that it is a good thing, it also hadn’t spoken at all about the increase of single motherhood among white working-class Christian women in the U.S.”
There is plenty to criticize the Christian Right for, but they are not the ones directing the culture. Their influence is miniscule, and barely covers their own evangelicals. So the idea that they are contributing to out of wedlock births is, I think, absurd.
Mike Street Station
February 9, 2019 at 9:59 PM
The Christian right definitely is not in control of the social narrative, and if anything they have talked less and less about the sin of unwed motherhood because they have no choice if they want to maintain influence, and keep a hold on their congregations. They don’t know what to do. They’re just along for the ride.
Lowe
February 10, 2019 at 2:37 AM
japan still seems like one of the most screwed up countries for gender relations. heaps of men grow into adulthood as virgins, never have a relationship, beat off to weird fetish and anime porn all day in their rooms.
james n.s.w
February 7, 2019 at 1:27 PM
I don’t know. That kind of reminds me of America.
Tanturn
February 7, 2019 at 7:00 PM
Of course cultural trends are the big dominant force in these measures. The US has lots of different cross-cutting trends. Within whites there is the conflict between gender norms and bourgeois norms. On average gender norms are more equal for elites but bourgeois norms are stronger. Asians are even more heavily tilted towards bourgeois norms and some shaming — especially Chinese, Indians, and Koreans — so the number of Asian moms willing to have out of wedlock kids is lower. And the more bourgeious are also more likely to be Christian — but not necessarily the most upper class. For blacks and latinos, Christianity is not strong enough to enforce bouregeois norms by itself. Lack of shaming and lack of bourgeois values undermines these other factors. And given low bourgeois values (cf. Charles Murray) welfare does a good job of totally destroying the family. Low class white due to lack of bouregeois norms and abundant welfare start to mimic NAMs.
ivan1917
February 7, 2019 at 1:41 PM
I disagree bourgeois society must be destroyed to better the west together with the underclass. This is what occurred in Russia during her communist era. The bourgeois west has degenerated into the cesspool we see today. Unknown to many but it wasn’t only the United States that shaped post-war Japan but also the Soviet Union.
redarmyvodka
February 7, 2019 at 7:27 PM
The elites also have the advantage of havibg feminist undercurrents for centuries. For them, feminism is a stable infection and lots of adaptive memes mitigate its negative effects. Feminism hitting non-elites was like smallpox in the Americas.
Monsieur le Baron
February 8, 2019 at 9:03 AM
Willing to bet a lot of other countries have low out of wedlock births too. India comes to mind. Big reason is social pressure. It is highly scandalous for unmarried women to have kids.
mpt
February 7, 2019 at 1:48 PM
I have to think some of this has to due with the extreme group orientation in Japanese culture. It’s the land of “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”, and the self reliant maverick archetype that is generally admired in the west has negative connotations of self-centeredness in Japan.
So the hard-working single mother going at it on her own would be seen as selfish and looked down on for going it alone.
Alex
February 7, 2019 at 1:55 PM
I vote for the stigma thing. It’s very difficult in Japan to be fat in the way that it’s difficult to be fat on the Upper East Side.
If you ever saw the Japanese (original) version of SHALL WE DANCE, there’s an affecting sub-story about a fat guy who gets ridiculed mercilessly. And he’s not even that fat, just a little plump.
gothamette
February 7, 2019 at 1:56 PM
That was an excellent movie!
And the anecdote reminds me of a 1910-ish book about the treatment of diabetes. A ‘grossly obese’ man in one case study was 180 lb.
toomanymice
February 7, 2019 at 3:41 PM
It was a wonderful movie.
Did you see the Japanese movie Departures? Also wonderful. Both of them are extremely emotional, which makes me wonder whether or not we know anyting about the Japanese.
gothamette
February 7, 2019 at 6:24 PM
Interesting analysis (other than the usual HS atheist nonsense).
However that link for Iceland seems very shaky- they didnt even capitalize the government bureau that supposedly produced it.
And what do you make of the reference to Greece: “Almost no children are born out of wedlock in Turkey or Greece. ” Does that mesh with your gender equality theory?
Lion of the Turambar
February 7, 2019 at 2:13 PM
Turkey is more like a third-world country than a European country, especially now that it has become an Islamic theocracy.
Greece, that’s interesting, and needs investigation.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 7, 2019 at 2:29 PM
I don’t think this is true. “Atheism” largely has significance in a monotheistic context, where you either believe in one god or no god. Japan doesn’t have a tradition of monotheism. Being atheistic can mean that you don’t believe in the one god, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t believe in gods or spirits or whatever. I think most Japanese have syncretistic beliefs that mix Buddhism, Shinto, animism, polytheism, folk religion, etc.
Tom
February 7, 2019 at 2:23 PM
Up until the end of WW2 the Japanese believed that their emperor was a god, and the Japanese were a master race. No doubt some still believe this.
Rosenmops
February 7, 2019 at 8:37 PM
Yes, but keep in mind being a god or divine has different connotations in different cultures. In monotheistic cultures, being a god means being the single all powerful and sole god, creator of all things, etc. In polytheistic cultures, there are of course multiple gods, and in some of the cultures, there can be golds, divinities, spirits, etc. everywhere. Marie Kondo was a Shinto temple attendant or something, and apparently she believes everyday objects that clutter your house and that you throw away have spirits.
Tom
February 8, 2019 at 12:28 AM
I don’t think this is true. Catholicism traditionally heavily destigmatizes premarital sex, and Catholicism is also traditionally the most opposed to abortion. Protestants generally have also been against premarital sex.
The de-stigmatization of single motherhood is due to liberalism, not Christianity. Single motherhood is common among blacks, and tends to be a cultural folkway among blacks, and thus liberalism cannot oppose it. Feminism is also a part of liberalism, and feminism upholds that single motherhood should be a worthy and viable choice for women.
Tom
February 7, 2019 at 2:31 PM
Feminists don’t really like single motherhood. What they really want is for few women to have babies, and for children to be raised by childcare professionals either at home or in an institutional setting so as not to disrupt their mother’s careers. My guess is that most feminists would be happy if all children were raised in boarding schools. Considering what a financial burden single motherhood is for most women, it should stand to reason that feminists would oppose it more than anyone else. That they can’t is due to the fact that voluntarily chosen single motherhood is an attack on traditional values, which to feminists (as to all liberals) represents the triumph of the human spirit. It never seems to occur to these bozos that traditional values became traditional for a reason. But if the individual wants something and it goes against social norms, we always have to believe that the society’s demands for conformity represent some arbitrary restriction on human freedom.
maryk (the g-loaded guidette)
February 8, 2019 at 10:42 PM
As recently as the late 19th century in the US, there was a strong stigma against travelling and cohabiting with a woman you hadn’t married. One of America’s greatest philosophers, Charles Sanders Peirce, was fired from his university job for it and basically blacklisted from working in academia and died in poverty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce#Johns_Hopkins_University
Tom
February 7, 2019 at 2:41 PM
WEIRDness, or in Japan’s case, the lack thereof.
JayMan
February 7, 2019 at 3:20 PM
Out of wedlock births are highest among blacks and Hispanics, so it wouldn’t be due to “WEIRD”ness.
Tom
February 7, 2019 at 4:37 PM
There were two distinct family patterns that emerged in Christian Europe throughout the Middle Ages. In most of Southern and Eastern Europe, marriage occurred between two individuals who had lived with their parents for a long period of time. The man involved was older, usually in his late twenties, and the girl was often still a teenager. … In contrast, areas in Northwestern Europe gave rise to a familial structure that was unique for the time period. The man and woman were typically around the same age, and would wait until they were in their early twenties to marry. Following the marriage, the couple would set up their own independent household (termed a “nuclear” household structure)…
this is still the case in italy today. tradition is for the most part good, but one should always be aware that what is today’s tradition may have been yesterday’s UN-tradition, or whatever you call it.
charles murray's black EX-husband
February 7, 2019 at 5:06 PM
“In the United States, the Christian Right has been contributing to the increase in out-of-wedlock births, because they have been promoting the de-stigmatization of single-motherhood so that unmarried pregnant women won’t get abortions.”
This is technically true. The thing is that the Christian Right has an influence on American culture that is so close to zero that it might as well be zero. Most out of wedlock births are not to girls who are members of the Christian Right, which is the place where they would have any influence at all.
dbp
February 7, 2019 at 3:22 PM
This is what I was going to say. It’s true that the Christian right is unfortunately totally cucked on this issue, but they are not the main drivers of the social change, rather liberalism is, as someone said upthread.
Also, a lot of people outside the Christian right don’t know that contemporary evangelicalism can be quite misandrist. There is a school of thought in contemporary Christian conservatism, driven by a misguided sense of extreme chivalry, that women are innately sexually virtuous and it’s in their nature to just want to be virgins until marriage and be conservative suburban housewives to nice guys, but evil, lascivious men are basically tricking them into living the Sex in the City lifestyle instead so the men can better use them for cheap sexual gratification. There’s a strain of this in Catholicism too; the famous anti-contraception papal encyclical Humanae Vitae from the 1960s expressed concern that contraception would lead men to just use women for sexual gratification instead of caring about their well-being.
Hermes
February 8, 2019 at 10:59 AM
The problem with the school of thought I described is that it’s false that women are innately sexually virtuous, not that it’s all actually a nefarious Jewish plot.
Hermes
February 8, 2019 at 12:46 PM
the famous anti-contraception papal encyclical Humanae Vitae from the 1960s expressed concern that contraception would lead men to just use women for sexual gratification instead of caring about their well-being.
Which turned out to be true. Humanae Vitae in and of itself nearly convinces me to become Catholic, it’s so obviously divinely-inspired.
S.J., Esquire
February 8, 2019 at 7:53 PM
Japanese Americans also have very low out-of-wedlock birth rates. Even if they’re highly assimilated and born in the US. Lion should know better. The answer isn’t any of those things, it’s HBD.
Doug
February 7, 2019 at 8:54 PM
Lion doesn’t believe in HBD/biology/truth, he only believes in status-signalling.
Panther of the Blogosphere
February 8, 2019 at 8:04 AM
The genes of white lower-class Americans can’t do a 180 in two generations.
Monsieur le Baron
February 8, 2019 at 9:06 AM
You are right and Lion is wrong. Even if the Eastern Asians became super feminist they still wouldn’t have out of wedlock births in large numbers because of two things:
1. HBD – high IQ, low T
2. Cultural factors – shame, face, and the fact that a lot of their cultural values coincidentally overlap with White UC/UMC values.
No matter how feminist and gender equal our world gets, the high IQ groups with UC/UMC cultural values won’t have out of wedlock kids at high rates. This includes the Ashkenazim, UC/UMC Whites, and Eastern Asians. Maybe high caste Subcontinentals too.
SC
February 9, 2019 at 9:59 AM
There are two avenues to out of wedlock birth. One is the poor stupid women avenue which manifest in places like ghettos, trailer parks or Mexico in general. The other is the feminist “empowered” I don’t need no man/marriage is a primitive construct which seems to be the Icelandic avenue to out of wedlock birth. Places like Greece or Japan don’t have either of those phenomenons, or at least not as strong. Feminism didn’t caught up with the middle classes in those countries and the lower classes are either more religious in the case of Greece or well mannered in the case of Japan. Those reasons lead to shaming of women who have babies out of wedlock as you correctly observed.
Hashed
February 7, 2019 at 9:11 PM
Lion, I wish you wouldn’t refer to the totally-worthless Global Gender Gap Index, in which Japan ranks 110th out of 144 nations, for anything at all.
It is deceitful female-supremacist garbage and penalizes nations when men are ahead of women but does not penalize them at all when women are ahead of men. A nation with perfect gender equality in longevity, education, positions in government, etc., etc. would get a perfect score, but so would a hypothetical feminazi dystopia in which women oppress men in every way.
Japan has fairly strong gender roles — the corporate boardroom is a male sphere but child-raising is a female sphere to an even greater extent — so it scores low. Men are also well-educated and live long lives, which doesn’t help. Many of the countries ranking “above” it are places where men are treated terribly.
Kyo
February 8, 2019 at 1:37 AM
I understand Leon’s point — that opposition to abortion equals promotion of single-motherhood. And it’s true that opposition to abortion may lead to some pregnant women becoming single mothers who might otherwise have had abortions. But that’s very different from claiming one promotes single-motherhood. Promotion suggests endorsement or approval, which is absolutely not the case. Single mothers may not be openly shamed as they once were. But no matter how much they try to sugarcoat an illegitimate birth by praising the ‘strength and courage it took not to have an abortion’, no one is impressed by some girl with an illegitimate kid. And this includes her parents, as well.
This is really about Leon being pissed off that a lot of christians oppose abortion. And we all know how much Leon likes baby killing. Don’t get me wrong. I grudgingly support abortion myself. Not because I like it but because I think it’s necessary. The alternative is a lot more low IQ women having kids they can’t afford. And most of those kids will only grow up to a burden themselves. But I still think abortion is gross as shit. Not Leon, though. That boy supports late term abortions, partial birth abortions and even killing live babies. Daaaaayum! So when he starts claiming that christians are promoting single-motherhood, people need to understand where it’s coming from. And just how extreme he is on this issue.
destructure
February 8, 2019 at 4:29 PM
“no one is impressed by some girl with an illegitimate kid”
No, Christians say they are impressed by the girl’s “courage” in not having an abortion, as if it requires courage to just do nothing and let nature take its course.
Lion of the Blogosphere
February 8, 2019 at 4:43 PM
Really??? “Christians” have told you this? Not any I’ve ever met. Someone may try to put a happy face on it. But I guarantee the person saying it doesn’t even believe it themselves. No one is impressed by a woman with a bastard.
destructure
February 8, 2019 at 9:07 PM
I agree with Destructure. The CR is horrified by the out of wedlock birth rate among white women in the U.S. The problem is that they don’t know what to do about it. It is the “silent majority’s” own moral decline that has caused this catastrophe. And an unspoken rule of all forms of conservatism – social, economic, etc.. – is that the silent majority can do no wrong. All problems are supposedly caused in some way by “elites.” Until some form of conservatism is willing to confront the American people honestly on this issue, we’re doomed.
maryk (the g-loaded guidette)
February 9, 2019 at 9:45 AM
And in fact, it is dishonest for them not to admit that a lot of these “unplanned” pregnancies really were planned by the girl. How difficult is it to get contraceptives today? You can buy them online (I assume – I’m past the age where I’d need them.) And the more acceptable and more common single motherhood becomes the less courage it takes to raise a child alone. It only takes a lot of courage when the stigma is high. People in the Christian Right are as capable of lies and self-delusion as anyone else.
maryk (the g-loaded guidette)
February 9, 2019 at 9:51 AM
“But no matter how much they try to sugarcoat an illegitimate birth by praising the ‘strength and courage it took not to have an abortion’, no one is impressed by some girl with an illegitimate kid.”
Well that’s part of the problem. They shouldn’t be trying to “sugarcoat” it at all.
“This is really about Leon being pissed off that a lot of Christians oppose abortion. And we all know how much Leon likes baby killing… And just how extreme he is on this issue.”
I don’t think Lion is particularly extreme. He was raised by New York Jews. I’m going to guess that you were raised by conservative Christian parents. If you were raised by conservative Christian parents, you were taught to view it as disgusting and continue to do so even after rational argument convinced you it was necessary. Those like myself who were raised by liberal or economics-minded conservative parents do not see it that way. It’s simply a medical procedure appropriate for a time and place.
Tanturn
February 9, 2019 at 7:48 PM
You’re so full of it. Japan has a birthrate of 1.4. The lack of equality between the sexes, and the lack of a government provided safety net, is going to kill the Japanese as a people. What they need to do is provide services to the people they want to breed (smart, disciplined etc) and if necessary pay them to do so, regardless of marital status.
You’re right that the Christian Right types have a profoundly dysgenic mindset, but yours is worse, because in your world you’re tanking the birthrates of the people you do want having kids.
Jesse
February 9, 2019 at 5:37 AM
How is it going to kill them? Explain in literal terms what is going to happen to them, to kill them all, assuming they continue with their current ways.
I think their birthrates will simply recover when the gene pool has changed slightly, b/c of non-reproducers being winnowed out, or b/c of a change in social attitudes. There will be more than enough physical resources to support future children, b/c they won’t have given any of them away to ungrateful foreigners.
Based on current trends, Japan as we know it will still be here in 200, 400, 1000 years. The United States will be unrecognizable in 100. Please explain a possible course of events that would lead to a different outcome.
Lowe
February 10, 2019 at 2:47 AM