The high cost of children
— don't kid yourself
(This article, which first appeared in the
Japan Times of December 6, 2003,
is reproduced here in Eyes on Japan by kind permission of the
author.)
At lunch with an old pal, I cannot help but notice
the puffy bags hanging beneath his eyes.
"Yeah," he groans. "I just wish they
were moneybags. Why didn't somebody tell me marriage in Japan would be so
expensive?"
I gulp down an image of his wife breezing through
Harajuku boutiques while wrapped in the latest fashions and munching on a
Pretz dipped in caviar. But his next words snap that vision in two.
"It's not my wife. She's got the frugality of a
drowning man on his very last breath. Every yen she surrenders has her claw
marks on it.
"Nor," he goes on, "is it the cost of
living — by itself, that is. For two can indeed live cheaper than one,
even in Japan. The problem comes when the numbers multiply to three, four,
five and beyond."
Ah, the clinker clanker of little hands shaking the
family piggy bank.
"So to make ends meet, I work three jobs. If it
wasn't for my commuting time, I'd probably get no sleep at all."
I tell him such complaints must sound familiar to
parents everywhere, not just Japan. For all kids pop budgets like bubble
wrap. In the States, for example, a middle-income family generally needs 160
grand to raise one child to age 18.
My friend shrieks. "Is that all? For 18 years?
What a deal!" Then he begins to ring the cash register on child rearing
in Japan, international-style.
"First," he says, "comes the Great
Divide, where wise parents are separated from those with loose wiring. Do
you or do you not enroll your young in a high-priced international
school?"
For some, he explains, this is a non-decision. If
you live in Hooterville, Aomori, there IS no international school. Others
might have the tuition to such bankrolled by their companies or, in the case
of many missionaries, their churches. Such parents can by and large send
their kids anywhere they want.
Parents with a decision to make are those who live
near international opportunities but have no benefactor flipping silver
dollars behind them.
"Here's the choice. You can pay for Japanese
public education. Or you can begin paying college-caliber tuition right from
kindergarten."
An empty box could make such a decision, my friend
says. Still, many parents
— either out of uneasiness with one system or overrespect for the
other — plunge into the financial maelstrom of international
education.
"Just what kind of a hurricane are we talking
about?"
"At the worst? A quarter of a million dollars
up through grade 12, just for education . . . for one kid."
One would then wager that the other side of the
Great Divide would be rolling in dough. But that's not a smart bet either.
"Because if you get caught in the 'Keeping up
with the Tanakas' trap, you've always got a bill collector banging on your
door. Piano lessons, swimming lessons, cram school fees . . . the money
disappears faster than popcorn at a video party.
"Then heaven help you if your whelp joins a
club. For Japanese tuition covers nothing. Uniforms, equipment, training
fees, transportation — it's all on the parents' penny.
"So I encouraged my first boy to be a geek. You
know, to collect baseball cards and stare into space a lot. But noooo. He
wanted to PLAY baseball — the club fees for which add up to a over million
yen per year."
Some, he notes, may consider home-schooling a
practical third alternative to this twin dilemma, but for couples with split
language and culture, such an option is not so practical at all.
On top of education then come the added costs of
every international parent:
Air fees so junior can spend time with his overseas
relatives and brush up his language.
Gifts and hush money so same said relatives will not
come to see junior as a cute but persistent parasite.
Overseas books, films and music to keep the little
lad's foreign language from being lapped by Japanese.
And all of this is heaped on what all parents have
to pay anyway: food, clothing and shelter.
"Before children," he says, "my bride
and I had a cozy love nest at an affordable rent. Now we have a house that
has an extra shoehorn of space but takes an extra boot-full of rent
money."
Next we swap horror stories of how much our children
eat.
"My first son," he says, "can eat an
entire large pizza, complete with chicken, mashed potatoes, bread and salad.
And that's at his 5 o'clock snack before dinner."
"That's nothing. My two sons drink so much milk
that dairy cows in Hokkaido keep collapsing from the stress. Some cows have
been seen swimming to Siberia to escape."
"Oh yeah? Well, my two boys combined consume
more rice than many entire nations. I'm thinking maybe we should apply for a
seat at the U.N."
The cost for all this food adds up. "But it
could be worse," I remind him. "We could have had girls."
We blink at images of hair stylists, makeup kits and
racks of dresses with price tags still attached. Then we both cross
ourselves and offer quiet prayers of gratitude.
"All in all," he sums up, "my wife
and I would be close to millionaires without children. Instead, we race like
rats to avoid the poorhouse."
I myself have been on both sides of the Great Divide
and have the requisite wiring to prove it. But I still have enough spark to
light one final argument.
"C'mon. We ARE millionaires. Both of us! And
it's because we have kids! They're what makes us rich!"
"Yeah," he sighs. "You're right. But
in the end, I think your kids make you richer than mine."
"Does that mean what I think it does?"
"Yeah," he says. "You can pick up the
tab."
©Thomas Dillon for the Japan Times 2003. All rights
reserved
Editor's note: Sincere thanks to the author for
his kind permission to republish the above article, which first appeared
in his regular Japan Times column "When East Marries
West".
This page last updated 2008-06-16
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