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The economic independence of these young women means that they can be more choosy about whom they marry and when. Several decades ago it was considered by many to be an advantage for a young woman to live with her husband's family so that her mother-in-law could provide built-in babysitting and domestic services while the young wife works at her outside job. Today, however, with fewer children and somewhat improved daycare facilities, most young women do not want to live with their in-laws. Consequently, many young men who want to get married are having a difficult time in finding a wife. Even if a young bachelor promises his girlfriend that once they get married they will live in their own apartment and that he will help with the domestic chores, many young women remain unconvinced.
As a consequence, in recent years the fertility rate in Japan has declined significantly, to an average of only 1.3 children per woman during her childbearing years, compared to 2.1 children per woman in the United States. This low fertility rate has led to much worrying in Japan about the prospects of a population that will begin to decline in this decade, a work force that is too small to sustain the Japanese economy, a rapidly aging society with the associated heavy costs for medical and social services that the elderly require, and the fear that a new generation will grow up without siblings and the social skills that come from the give and take of daily family life.
Pocket World in Figures, 2005 Edition. London: The Economist Newspaper Ltd., 2004.
An increasing pattern for the young married couple, if they are going to live with either set of parents, is to live with the wife's rather than the husband's family. The groom may or may not be adopted into his wife's family, taking her family name and becoming the successor in his wife's family line. Care of the aging parents may be the reason for moving in with her parents. It is assumed that multiple generation co-residence and elder care giving is more harmonious if the primary caretaker is a daughter rather than a daughter-in-law. The fact that Japan has the greatest longevity in the world and universal health insurance means that the elderly frequently are able to care for themselves well into advanced ages. Nevertheless, it is assumed that ultimately they will need care, and it is for that inevitable condition that they look to one of their children for support and ritual attention once they become ancestors.
If the daughter is the designated care giver, her husband may become an adopted husband, muko-yōshi, in which case he will be entered into his wife's family register, the koseki, and his name will be stricken from his own natal family's register. He then becomes the successor to his wife's father as family head, and together with his wife the couple becomes the primary inheritor of the family estate.
There is a long history in Japan of adopted husbands marrying into their wives' families. With the low fertility rate and the chances of having a son decreasing, the adopted-husband phenomenon has become more frequent. The advantages of this practice for the adopted husband include living conditions better than what a newly married couple normally could afford on their own, the wife's family connections that may be useful for career advancement, and in some cases the adopted husband may succeed his wife's father in a prestigious position such as representing the local district in the national Diet, becoming president of the family business, or carrying on the family position in an artistic or theatrical tradition. The disadvantages of becoming an adopted husband are in the power relationships within the family where even though he is a male he is weaker because he is the newcomer coming from the outside. Also he must give up his family name, just as a young woman must give up her family name when she marries into her husband's family.
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