<Book Release Commemoration> Dual-Income Couple × 1-Year-Old = Zero Overtime?

Finally in book form! Packed with new content

It's been a year since I returned from childcare leave.
This series, 'Male Copywriter Takes Parental Leave,' has officially concluded, but I've been granted one final revival. The series has now been published as a book. This is to commemorate that.
The book's title is Male Copywriter Takes Parental Leave ( published by Daiwa Shobo). While the title is straightforward, the content is anything but.

 

Not only did I revise and add to all the original serialized manuscripts, but I also wrote approximately 45,000 new words. In terms of volume, a full half of the book is newly written material. I'm sure it will be a satisfying read even for those who followed the web serialization. Since a book is a physical object, you could wrap it up with a ribbon (it's probably thick enough for that) and give it as a gift to someone.

Now, while the book covers events up to autumn 2018, I'd like to take this opportunity to share some recent developments not included there. Over the past few months (*1), my daughter Kokeko has grown tremendously. She now speaks in "two-word sentences" (*2).
For example, Kokeko says things like, "I want to see it as it is." She means she wants me to play the music video for the theme song from the movie Frozen. Or she'll say, "Glasses, here they come! (laughs)" This is from the scene in the movie Kiki's Delivery Service where Kiki is watching and Tonbo talks to her.

Every night, as the one responsible for putting her to bed, I tell Kokeko the story of "Momotaro" (ad-libbed). After doing this for a month, Kokeko seems to have grasped the basic outline of "Momotaro" to the extent that it's "a story about a 'baby' leading Wanwan, Aiai, and Kiji to defeat 'Bikkinman'" (*5).
By the way, after telling the story, I realized something: isn't it hard to narrate the part after they land on Oni Island? How exactly did they defeat the demons? The details are way too vague. Someone please tell me the key points.

It takes 40 minutes to get home from daycare

Setting aside Koke-ko's recent updates, the biggest change in my corporate life is that my monthly overtime hours have dropped to zero. Ah, zero overtime. It finally happened.
Over the last three months or so, my daily schedule has solidified quite a bit. First, let me show you what it looks like.

As I wrote in Parts 9 and 10, dropping her off at daycare falls to me since I work super-flex hours. Lately, though, I've also been picking her up five days a week (sometimes four). That means almost every weekday. What I want you to focus on is how we split up the evening duties.

First, here's my wife's (currently on reduced hours) schedule:
At 4:30 PM, she forcibly ends her work and leaves the office. She buys groceries at a supermarket near our home, then returns. She then starts preparing dinner. This is around 5:45 PM. She prepares dinner for Koke-ko and herself in about 45 minutes. She rushes through this part nonstop, without a moment to catch her breath.

Meanwhile, what about me?
First, sometime around 4 PM, I send my wife a quick LINE message to confirm: "Kyomu kae ikemasu." This is short for "I can pick up today," but lately it's been further abbreviated to "Kyomu re masu" – a strange string of characters that could be mistaken for some kind of nihilistic nonsense. A new "household slang" (※6) is born.
Then, I leave work at 5:10 PM. I have to get to the daycare by 6:00 PM (being just 5 minutes late means extended care charges apply) (*7), but it's usually a close call every day. Even if I finish work while out on a business trip, I make sure to get back in time to arrive by 6:00.

Picked up Kokeko at 6:00 PM. Had a brief chat with the nursery staff, then headed home.
The distance from daycare to home takes an adult about 8 minutes to walk. But on the way back, I make Koke-ko walk. This means constant detours, backtracking, getting lost, and sitting down, stretching the trip to 30-40 minutes. Honestly, it's quite a hassle, but taking 40 minutes here is important—no, necessary.
Because, meanwhile, my wife is preparing dinner. Patiently accompanying Koke-ko on his detours also buys time for that (*8). It's a team effort like that.
We get home with Kokeko around 6:40 PM. Dinner for Kokeko follows shortly after. The rest is as shown in the diagram.

As a result, I become virtually unreachable for work calls from around 5:00 PM every day.
Keeping both hands free to prevent Koke-ko from darting into traffic, feeding him, brushing his teeth, reading picture books aloud, letting him sit on my lap to watch TV, washing dishes, drying his hair with the dryer after his bath, putting him to sleep with Momotaro, giving him a lap pillow... doing all this leaves no room to properly operate my smartphone, meaning I can barely handle calls or emails.

Illustration: Yuki Miyake, Second CR Planning Bureau

Zero Overtime by Default

By the way, I work full-time (though under a super-flex schedule). At Dentsu Inc., you're required to work "7 hours per day (※9) × the number of business days in that month." But looking at the timetable above, I'm only working 6 hours and 45 minutes per day. That means I'm short by 15 minutes every single day. So how do I handle that?

I set aside one day per week, or one day every two weeks, to work longer hours.
If I work only 6 hours and 45 minutes for five consecutive days, I'd be 75 minutes short for the week. I make up those 75 minutes by working longer hours, say, on the following Monday. On that day only, I ask my wife to handle picking up our child from daycare and evening care for Koke-ko (aside: I almost wrote "Koke-care" instead of "Koke-ko" just now).

This is actually why my pickups aren't strictly 5 days a week—some weeks are 4 days. Occasionally, it even drops to 3 days.
As a result, my monthly working hours end up being just barely "7 hours per day × the number of business days that month." No overtime. In other words, zero overtime.
I only take on a workload that can be managed within those hours. For better or worse. You could say I don't work overtime because my workload is light, or that I can't take on more work because I don't have the time for overtime. It's a chicken-and-egg situation, really.

In terms of work-life balance, I think I lean a bit more toward the family side. Well, I'm doing it intentionally. Why?
Because I want to spend lots of time with my kids? Of course that's part of it, but it's not the whole story. Because I feel bad if I don't, the burden falls too much on my wife? True, I strongly want to make dual-income fair, but that alone isn't it either. Basically, for the sake of our marriage? That's part of it, but it's just one of them. Did I want to experiment with what zero overtime feels like? Well, maybe that's part of it too.
It's probably a mix of all the reasons I listed above. My desires (want), my sense of obligation (should), and necessity (must) all got jumbled together, resulting in this daily routine. For now, anyway.

And I want to make this clear: I don't think this setup is ideal. The accurate nuance is that, as Kokeko approaches two years old, trying to live facing my family (not running away from them) has inevitably led to this situation.
I'd really like to hear from copywriters, regardless of gender, who work under similar work systems or work styles (though whether you can even call it a style is questionable).

Let me be selfish for a moment

Living like this, I've realized something surprising: part of me genuinely wants to work more. This is astonishing, considering I hated working so much during my student days that I couldn't even stick with part-time jobs (*10).
When it comes to jobs involving ideas and planning, there's definitely a quality that only comes from quantity. I've arrived at the extremely simple fact that I actually enjoy persevering to write good copy. What a perfectly normal thing to say, right? I've been a copywriter for 16 years! But it's true.
What I'm trying to say is, I don't necessarily think "zero overtime is the best!" That said, I also want to manage childcare as much as possible with a "two-operation" approach (※11).

So. What if there was a work style that let me keep my corporate job, work a bit more, and still spend the same amount of time with my family? I started daydreaming about it. Looking at the timetable would give the answer, but for now, here's an example. This is purely a fantasy, mind you.

① Work from 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM. Do things that require interaction with others, like meetings and presentations, during this time.

② If I feel like it, work (at home) from 10 PM to midnight. This is a buffer for when I personally feel I haven't worked enough. It would also be good to do tasks I want to focus on alone during this time.

For me right now, this is my (strictly personal) ideal. If I can achieve this, my satisfaction with both work and family life will undoubtedly increase a little compared to now.
But currently, this breaks the rules. Working after 10 PM isn't allowed.
Plus, in reality, I often crash right after putting the kids to bed. I want to exercise regularly to build stamina → But I hate running → Swimming is the only thing I enjoy → There's no time for swimming (even 24-hour gyms close their pools late at night). It's a real dilemma (*12).

In any case, whether it's the now-buzzword "work style reform" or "diverse work styles," what matters is finding a work style that fits each person's desires. Ideally, that means not "regulating when you work," but "making working hours more flexible."
I've tried to show in this series that salaried workers aren't entirely constrained, but this is precisely why I envy freelancers. Well, even if this doesn't change immediately, I hope you'll read it as a selfish wish for the future.

Girls' Life on the Battlefield

The future. Yes, the future. Beyond just work styles, I've been thinking lately about my child's future. Specifically, about "a girl's life." As you know, these days, the "suffering of women" is being articulated and made visible more than ever before. It's a reality filled with discrimination and misogyny (*13), one we'll likely have to fight against too. It's a "girl's life on the battlefield."

If Momotaro had been a girl, how would she have defeated the demons? How would the story unfold after landing on Demon Island? We must consider each step carefully. I want to enlist the help of every monkey, dog, and pheasant, and sometimes join hands with them.

What I can say for certain now is that since Kokeko was born, both my hopes and anxieties about the world and society have grown. That means I've become far more interested in the future than before (anxiety is also a form of interest). A child was born. And it just happened to be a girl. I feel that this fact helps my own imagination (towards others). From that perspective too, I am grateful to my daughter Kokeko.

※1
Specifically, this refers to the roughly three-month period from November to February. The book covers episodes up to the fall of 2018.

※2
Phrases spoken by toddlers combining two words. The breakdown varies—subject and predicate, adjective and noun, etc.

※3
The Japanese-language movie version of "Let It Go" (affectionately known as "Rerigo" in Japan), which became a global hit in 2013.

※4
The 1989 Studio Ghibli version. The scene in question is a moment where Tombo casually calls out "Miss Witch!" to the heroine Kiki, who has just started living in Koriko Town.

※5
While the author never stated this explicitly, it became clear through exchanges like: "Who takes the monkey, dog, and pheasant?" "A-ka-chan." "Who defeats them all?" "...Bai-chi-man."

※6
For details on "Our Family Slang," refer to the second and seventh installments of the series.

※7
When extended childcare is used, an additional fee applies each time. In the 10 months since entering daycare, this has only happened once.

※8
Since my daughter is the type who cannot wait alone within the playpen in the living-dining area, kitchen tasks must either be done while she is out or when two adults are present. We have opted for the former.

※9
When working 6 hours or more, a break of at least 1 hour must be included. For example, this could be a lunch break.

※10
The author always chose part-time jobs with as few required workdays as possible.

※11
For convenience, we refer to childcare performed through effective teamwork between both parents (in a sense, the original form) as opposed to "single-parent operation," where the burden falls disproportionately on one parent.

※12
Swimming pools require lifeguards, and currently, very few gyms can provide this service 24 hours a day.

※13
A collective term for aversion, hatred, disregard, and contempt toward women and femininity. Starting in the late 2010s, opportunities to report on various incidents stemming from this and the words used to describe it increased (globally).