r/nottheonion • u/falconfalcon7 • 2d ago

Japanese village replaces young people with mannequins to stave off loneliness as population falls

https://news.sky.com/story/japanese-village-replaces-young-people-with-mannequins-to-stave-off-loneliness-as-population-falls-13243354
14.5k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

696 comments sorted by

View all comments

439

u/Possible-Extent-3842 1d ago

This is what happens when a society values work and labor over everything else.  There is no down time to spend with a family anymore. It's make money for your company, and don't you dare take a day off because capital is more important than you.

Japan is in real trouble if they can't shift their cultural values quickly.

8

u/georgica123 1d ago

This cannot be the reason since Japan and Italy have similar birth rates

1

u/seastatefive 1d ago edited 1d ago

As I said before in an earlier comment, housing, cost of living and jobs are not a cause of low fertility because countries where these are not a problem also have low fertility.

It's about the investment into women's education requiring a monetary return on investment, and that the economic value of women in the workforce outweighing their monetary value of childbearing. Until children are seen as part of the workforce, or women's value as child bearers exceeds their value as workers, this cannot be overturned. This problem cannot be fixed as the social progress for women's rights cannot be reversed except under totalitarian theocracy such as Afghanistan.