Toshihiro Nikai is the latest politician to criticise people without children, amid low birthrates in the country
A senior Japanese politician has described couples who decide not to have children as “selfish”, and cited the postwar baby boom as evidence that hardship needn’t be an obstacle to having bigger families.
Toshihiro Nikai, the secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic party [LDP], is the latest conservative politician to urge people to have more children, as demographers warn that Japan’s population will decline dramatically in the coming decades.
“During and after the war when people were living on the edge of starvation, nobody said it’s better not to have children because it’s too much trouble,” Kyodo news quoted Nikai as saying at a meeting in Tokyo on Tuesday.
“These days, some people have a selfish idea that it is better not to have children.”
The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has vowed to raise the birthrate and the number of women in the workplace, but his government is struggling to deliver on promises to meet demand for childcare places.
In a recent survey, 70% of parents said they would like more children but were deterred from having bigger families by financial worries and difficulties balancing work with home life .
