A survey shed light on the common but rarely discussed practice, with about 40% of towns in Japan saying they require their babysitters’ guardians to take their used diapers with them. “I never told the daycare that it bothers me because I don’t want to rock the boat. But it’s weird,” said one mother, who returns from picking up her child with three or four full diapers in a bag that she throws away as soon as she gets home. “Why should I take them home?” added the woman, whose two-year-old daughter attends a day care center in Kyoto, where the city government has implemented the policy since 2011, according to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. Baby Job – an Osaka-based child support company that supplies diapers to public childcare providers – surveyed all 1,461 municipalities that run daycare centers and found that 39% followed a “takeaway” policy. The company placed cities and towns on the list, even if only one of the centers it operates has parents coming home each day with used diapers. The poll showed that 49% had no such requirement, while 11% were unsure or simply answered “other”. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The main offender was Shiga Prefecture in western Japan, where 89% of kindergartens asked parents to take their child’s diapers home, compared with 17% in Tokyo and 5% in the southern prefecture of Okinawa. . Facilities gave several reasons for making the request, with most saying it gave parents an opportunity to check their child’s health by examining their stool, while a smaller number said they didn’t have the facilities or budget to fly the diapers themselves. An official in the southwestern city of Fukuoka said the practice was a hangover from the days when reusable diapers were more common. “We want the children’s guardians to monitor their health status, such as the number of times they misbehave,” Yukinori Abe, from the city government’s future children’s office, told the Mainichi Shimbun. “Guardians buy crayons and other items used by individual children at the center … the same applies to nappies, with the guardians bearing the cost of their disposal.” Yuiko Fujita, a professor of sociology at Meiji University, said the policy reflected Japanese society’s antiquated approach to childcare. “It’s allowed to go on because our society has little awareness of co-parenting,” she said. “The idea that it’s the mother’s responsibility to take care of children and their excrement is deeply ingrained.” While the number of births in Japan fell to a record low of 810,000 last year, anger among working mothers over a lack of childcare facilities has prompted local governments to dramatically increase places in public daycare centers. The number of children waiting for preschool slots in Tokyo has dropped to about 300, compared with more than 8,500 five years ago, while 80 percent of towns and cities no longer have a waiting list, according to the welfare ministry.
