About the Child Care and Family Care Leave Law

I would like to reiterate our TOP message regarding "childcare" that we sent out in the October Management News.

This is about “The Child Care and Family Care Leave Law”, which has been revised and has been in effect since October.

The law expanded the scope of childcare leave for men, establishes "Paternity Leave" to allow couples to work together to take care of their children during the difficult postpartum period, and allows couples to take childcare leave in installments so that they can take turns taking childcare leave.

When I started working, Sumitomo Electric Industries, to which I belonged at the time, established a "Childcare Leave System (for women)”.

I remember when the union came to my workplace to explain the program, and I asked, "Why is this program only available to women? And not men? “

At the time, people around me looked at me as a strange person.

I was not allowed to take childcare leave, but when I was raising my children, the first thing I did when I returned home from work was to feed them milk, and I went out with them every weekend, covering almost all parks and facilities in the Tokai area.

There are many things that you can notice in child rearing.

Through my own experience, I realized that child-rearing helps parents grow as human beings as well.

With the development of legislation, I believe that our thoughts on child-rearing are finally changing in Japanese society.

I strongly hope that this amendment to the law will spur people to take childcare leave.

And I would like you to combine telecommuting and other means to spend more time with your children.

You can only be involved in childcare for a certain period of time in your life.

I really hope that you will spend this precious time in a meaningful way.

This time, I asked a member of the human resources division who explained the system to me,

"Why does childcare leave only include parental leave? Why don't you consider offering grandparents childcare leave, for example?"

I may have annoyed them a little, but Miyagi Prefecture has already announced the introduction of “Grandchildren's Leave”.

As society changes in the future, we need to be flexible in our thinking in order to improve the "Job Satisfaction" of members who work for our group.

I do not have grandchildren yet, but I definitely hope that such a system will be in place for when I do.