Parents raise children. That isn’t news. But children, in some sense, also raise parents. Children teach adults patience, self-sacrifice, and care. Pope John Paul II taught the importance of the family in nurturing our shared humanity. Everywhere one goes in the world, one finds these daily lessons underway. It is often not fun to learn to put others first. But children demand it, and parents pass through the hard course of study that their station in life entails.

What happens, though, when people stop having children? And what happens when a government, noticing the lack of future taxpayers, starts meddling with the ancient familial bonds and in the process turns parenting from a learned art into a part-time job? The short answer is: nothing good. Society suffers, and so do its members, children most of all.

The consequences of the neo-liberalization of childrearing, and the endless rounds of government folly that enable this ongoing disaster, are laid out in a splendid book by Matsui Kazu titled Mama ga ii!, which I translate loosely as “We Want Mamma!” Matsui spent many decades in the United States working in Hollywood and in other creative pursuits. In the US, he witnessed the social disruption caused by the country’s embrace of divorce and out-of-wedlock pregnancies. He watched as domestic violence and incest rates skyrocketed in the wake of the crumbling American family. And now he is trying hard to keep the same thing from happening in Japan—although the sad reality is that children here are already suffering.

Matsui believes children should be raised by their parents, because families teach us how to be caring human beings. Non-parental childcare, he says, should be in the hands of people who have made early childhood education their lifework. Matsui laments what he calls the “businessification of nursery schools,” which has rendered them unsuited to the task of nurturing kids. Meanwhile, he contends, parents who shunt babies off to nursery schools don’t learn how to love and care for their children—who grow up feeling unsafe and unwanted. Children bear the brunt of adults’ foolishness and selfishness, and as a result, Matsui argues, Japanese society is coming undone at the seams.

As Matsui explains, the government’s desire to solve the problem of Japan’s falling birthrates  has led bureaucrats and politicians to implement policies—such as providing childcare for up to eleven hours a day—designed to make having children more attractive to working parents. But here, Matsui tells us, we can see a crucial disconnect. Government seeks to increase the tax base. Therefore, it needs both fathers and mothers in the workforce—a policy promoted, for example, by the late Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who pushed a program called “Building a Society in which All Women Can Shine” (Subete no josei ga kagayaku shakaizukuri). But the government also needs current taxpayers to provide future taxpayers. Women “shine” by having children and then putting them in daycare as quickly as possible, so they can get back to work.

Matsui dissects this contradiction in “We Want Mamma!” The purpose of childrearing is not to provide the government with the next generation of taxpayers. Childrearing builds families. It is very, very hard work. But without it, society disintegrates. Struggling Japanese parents have traditionally sought the help of nursery-school teachers, who were and remain masters of the art of caring for young children in body and mind. When parents sent their children to nursery school in dirty diapers, for example, or unwashed clothes, these teachers would intervene, first by gently asking questions, then by offering advice—sometimes stern advice, as needed. Parents had a guide. Children had a champion. Society had a rock-solid base. Child abuse was stopped, in many cases, before it could begin.

Today, as those born during a couple of postwar baby booms head into retirement and advanced old age—and with not enough new babies to take their place—the Japanese government is facing a huge and worsening tax shortfall. Hence, the “society in which all women can shine” pitch. The government wants children to spend long hours in daycare so their mothers (and fathers) can work long hours and pay taxes, though there are not nearly enough professional, dedicated, nursery-school teachers to act in loco parentis. Part-time staff, with little to no training and, sometimes, little to no dedication, are brought in to make up the difference. Here is where the bottom begins to fall out. The positive cycle of dedicated teachers showing parents how to be good parents, and of parents and children growing in love for one another as a family, is broken.

Caught in the middle of this manmade disaster are not just kids, but also these childcare professionals. The system is unsustainable. Children are suffering neglect in the “facilities” designed to take care of them. Dedicated women and men who became nursery-school teachers out of a sense of love and duty are quitting, unable to bear being a part of what’s happening. So more part-timers are brought in, and the machinery buckles further. All the while politicians smile and come up with more schemes for collecting tax receipts from working-class women and men.

That marriage rates are declining in Japan along with the number of babies being born suggests that Japanese young people, like young people everywhere, want more from life than to please government accountants. They want the hard road of self-giving love. Take away the sacrifice, smooth the path of obstacles, and marriage and childrearing become tasks rather than vocations.

“We Want Mamma!” was published in 2022. It has already been through at least seven printings. I went to listen to Matsui speak at a pro-life event in Tokyo last summer and could feel the urgency, love, and pleading in his voice as he related the downfall of Japanese society, one disregarded, abused child at a time. Everyone thinks Japan has a population problem. What many don’t realize is that, at heart, we have a family problem. The government is making it infinitely worse. I pray that, with the help of Matsui, and the many other people of goodwill who are committed to turning things around, children will be back with their mothers very soon. Because, as any child will tell you, with mamma is where he or she really wants to be.