Why mothers of upper-elementary school children quit their jobs

Today, I would like to write about why mothers of upper-elementary school children quit their jobs. This is about my own experience, and it is a question I originally had myself.

If you think about it normally, once children reach the upper grades of elementary school, they can mostly take care of themselves, and the burden on parents decreases, so it feels like you could fully commit to work. In fact, this is the time when stay-at-home mothers start looking for part-time jobs.
There is no need for childcare like in nursery school, so why quit a job at that point? Is it really necessary to quit a job just because a child refuses to go to school? That is what I used to think.

Once you become the person in that situation, reality is not that simple.
My current view is that some people end up quitting due to a combination of the nature of the parent's work, challenges related to the child's growth, and environmental factors.

Problems with the parent's work (Japanese-style long working hours)

In my case, I was working full-time at a foreign-affiliated company (though the corporate culture retained many domestic, Japanese-style elements) and held a management position.
If it were a gung-ho foreign company, decisions would likely be made smartly from the top down, but because it was a company that valued Japanese-style discussions for better or worse and encouraged bottom-up approaches, there were just so many long meetings.
Since my daytime hours were filled with meetings, I had to do my own work at night.
The pay was very good, so the cost-performance wasn't bad, but the time-performance was terrible.

Work-style reform has been shouted about for a long time, but that is a story for general employees.
In white companies, making work styles 'white' is a must-achieve goal, so they put effort into adjusting everyone's work and it gets accomplished. However, with the overflow of work and the recently popular 1-on-1 meetings eating up time, it was difficult for me as a manager to achieve work-style reform on my own.
Everyone agrees in principle, and they tell me they will lend a hand so that even a mother can be a manager, but to actually change things, there are many things that need to be done, such as decision-making mechanisms, organizational culture reform, resolving chronic labor shortages, and abolishing the 'playing manager' role. The realization that this wouldn't change for a while was the final deciding factor.

I think I might have managed if my husband were a freelancer with flexible hours, or if my parents or in-laws lived nearby. Or perhaps if there were someone like a nanny I could trust and whom my child was open to.
I have been involved in organizational culture reform several times myself and have achieved it, so the fact that I knew it would take several years to change things from the roots might have also influenced my decision.
If I had accepted a career downshift and could have shortened my working hours that way, there might have been a different solution.

In any case, Japanese-style long working hours combined with a long commute is the worst possible match for child-rearing. Both the declining birthrate and the promotion of women's participation are too difficult to address under these conditions.

Challenges related to child growth and finding a place to belong

Watching the neighborhood children in upper elementary school, I think that children's development really varies from person to person.
Even in the first grade, there are children who can manage their own schedules—piano today, calligraphy tomorrow, swimming on Friday—and go and come back on their own (or because their parents told them to). There are children for whom it is absolutely no problem to have no after-school care or to be packed into summer school courses during summer vacation.

I understand very well that such children exist. But my child is not like that at all.

When children reach the upper grades of elementary school, it is a time when their sense of self gradually begins to establish itself.
They want to do this, they don't want to do that, they understand what their parents are telling them (and probably understand that it is correct), but they just don't want to do it.
They thought they could do anything until now, but they realize they are not good at something compared to their friends.
Human relationships, which used to be simple—just playing together—become complicated as they gradually become able to compare themselves with others and calculate gains and losses.
Depending on the child's temperament, some may start not wanting to go to school.

When emotional problems arise, children need their parents or trusted adults, but what happens if neither the parents nor the school teachers listen to them?
In the first place, how many places are there for today's children where they can feel safe and secure?
Do they all have an environment where they can go to a park or a children's center and find someone to play with without having to make plans?

I live in what is called the suburbs, and my honest impression is that there are surprisingly few safe places for children to be as they grow up.
The after-school care center we used was a wonderful 'third place,' so there were no problems at all during the lower grades, but finding a place for them after they reach the upper grades is difficult.
When I ask children of stay-at-home mothers, 'What does everyone do after school?', the answer is usually lessons, YouTube, or video games.

They are at an age where it's not appropriate to hire a babysitter, but I don't want to leave them home alone to get addicted to YouTube and games, and I don't want to just throw them into cram school either. What is the best thing to do?

More than adults realize, children observe and understand their parents and the adults around them very well.
I suspect there are many children who are not actually okay, but who feel they cannot voice it or shouldn't voice it because the adults seem busy or seem to be having a hard time.

Environmental factors (so-called timing)

It goes without saying, but in life, things often overlap when they happen.
A company's early retirement program is announced, a husband's work situation, caring for parents, a child's school refusal, one's own health condition...
There are many things, aren't there?

There are many things that time will solve, but there are also many things where timing is crucial. Even if you have plenty of free time after your children become college students, the time for child-rearing will not return.

When multiple problems erupt at the same time, if there is a solution and it can be solved, it is a task. You just need to act one by one toward solving the task.

But for some reason, multiple factors can become intricately intertwined and appear as problems that cannot be easily solved.
In such cases, I think the only thing to do is to act according to your own values. No matter what the world says, there is no solution other than deciding for yourself and taking action.

Honestly, I feel that quitting a job can be one viable option at such times.
This is because, until now, I had never realistically given myself the option of quitting my job as a company employee. I didn't think I had the ability to earn a living as a freelancer, and I was bad at household budgeting and asset management; there were plenty of reasons why I couldn't quit.

I imagine there are many mothers who quit when the timing just happens to align.
For starters, isn't it possible that their fatigue has reached its peak from being a working mother for so long? Returning to work, working reduced hours, women's empowerment—it is all too much for mothers in Japan.

Summary

I have thought about why mothers with children in upper elementary school quit their jobs from a super personal perspective.
I believe that the nature of the parents' work, the challenges related to the children's growth, and environmental factors are all case-by-case. I also do not believe that the choice to quit a job is necessarily the right one.

But, honestly, it is tough, isn't it?

May the world become a kinder place for working mothers.
May the world also become a place where it is easier for everyone who supports working mothers to work as well.

Thank you very much for reading this long post.