Marriage Promotion as a Policy Response to Low Fertility: Insights from Japan

• In Event: 50466 - Public Policies, Family Dynamics and Well-being

Abstract

In response to a rapidly declining and aging population the Japanese government has implemented a range of policies to support families and increase childbirth rates. This paper examines how one such policy—marriage promotion—operates within political discourse and shapes the everyday experiences of Japanese men and women. Given that childbirth in Japan occurs predominantly within marriage (with less than 2 percent of children born to unwed mothers), marriage promotion initiatives assume that facilitating partner-seeking opportunities and educating individuals on forming committed relationships will lead to increased marriage and fertility rates. Drawing on 27 months of fieldwork in Japan—including policy analysis, ethnographic observations of marriage promotion events, and more than 150 interviews with various actors involved in marriage support—I find that contemporary marriage promotion efforts, shaped by the legacy of past state interventions into the intimate realm (most notably the wartime policy urging women to “give birth and multiply”), avoid direct references to reproduction. Instead, they frame marriage as a modern partnership benefiting both spouses and as an avenue for self-actualization. As the same time, these initiatives continue to foreground traditional gender ideals—particularly men’s breadwinning and women’s reproductive capacities—as key prerequisites for marriage. In the context of rising socioeconomic inequality and women’s increased labor force participation, I suggest that such classed and gendered expectations may paradoxically discourage rather than encourage marriage. Moreover, the model of the Japanese family underpinning marriage promotion efforts marginalizes alternative family forms, especially same-sex and single-parent households. Ultimately, this paper probes the limits of governance through marriage by revealing how the marital ideal operating in policy discourse constructs and instructs marriageable subjects and regulates boundaries around marriageability.

Author

• Anna Wozny, Princeton University