Cup Noodles in a Pile of Used Diapers! Women Who Left Their Children in an Infant Care Facilities Have Higher Risk of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault!

— “I thought I couldn’t raise my baby on my own. I thought I couldn’t raise my baby by myself, so I decided to leave her at an institution.

When I interviewed parents at infant homes, I was often told this by parents in a weary tone. Many of the parents suffer from mental illness or were born with disabilities.

Support for children who are not raised by their parents at home is known as “social advocacy. After abuse, the second most common reason for children being placed in institutions is parental mental illness or disability.

For example, in Japan, there is an institution called an infant care center that accepts children between the ages of 0 and 2 years old. 2018 In terms of statistics for fiscal year 2018, of the reasons why parents entrusted their children to institutions23.4 percent of the reasons for parents leaving their children in institutions were “parental mental illness. This is a result of abuse (26.9 This figure is second only to abuse (9%). This is the second highest rate after abuse (9%), and is about compared to 20 years ago. 10 percent higher than 20 years ago.

The “Young Homeless” series follows young people who have lost their homes. In this issue, we would like to shine a light on these parents and their children.

In Japan, the number of people diagnosed with mental illness or disability is on the rise. There may be various factors behind this trend, including changes in the social structure, the spread of medical knowledge, and changes in the living environment.

Abuse risk is 13 times higher

However, people with such handicaps are vulnerable to various risks in their daily lives. In particular, it has often been pointed out that women are at increased risk of violence and sexual crimes.

Specifically speaking, children with disabilities are at a higher risk of abuse than their healthy counterparts. 13 In particular, children with disabilities are at more than 13 times the risk of abuse compared to their normal counterparts. The same may be true for spousal domestic violence.

In addition, according to an overseas study, women with disabilities are three times more likely to be involved in sexual crimes than normal women. However, the risk would be even higher given the very large number of cases that are not manifested as incidents.

In an infant care center. 20 One woman who has worked in an infant care center for more than 20 years says

I have certainly seen many cases where parents with mental illness or disabilities have their children placed in infant homes. What concerns me is that many of these parents, especially mothers, are unmarried.

They are often run away or abandoned by men when they become pregnant. If women, who are handicapped to begin with, do not receive adequate support, raising children becomes difficult. They come to us for help when they can no longer manage.

Even if they have a spouse, some of them are suffering from domestic violence or are in great financial difficulties. Even under such circumstances, women become codependent and cannot leave their husbands. So they are sometimes left with only their small children.”

Of course, not all women with mental illness or disabilities are affected in this way. What she is saying is that when we focus on the special environment of the infant home, we see a relatively large number of such women.

She also says

She also says, “There is a lot of talk in society about being gender-free and diversity. Maybe in the conscious world of large corporations, there is a trend. But being in the world of social advocacy, I frequently see handicapped women being targeted, attacked, and hurt as if they were herbivores. It is true that society is changing, but at the root there are many sad realities.”

The same is true of the cases we have discussed in this series.

Women who have been prostituting themselves from one Internet cafe to another, women who have lost their housing due to violence by their boyfriends or husbands, and women who have been living in their cars for more than six months. Many of them were mentally ill or disabled.

These women are unable to find stable jobs or even to become independent. What would be their fate if they became pregnant and could no longer receive support from their spouses and families? One answer to this question is the reality of what happens to these women in the infant care centers.

How did these women give up their children? Let us look at some specific examples.

Debt with a credit card in the name of a woman

0 Kazuha Omiya (pseudonym)

Kazuha Omiya was born in an industrial area in the northern Kanto region. It was later discovered that she was born with mild developmental and intellectual disabilities.

When Kazuha was three years old, her parents divorced. Since her mother was mentally ill, Kazuha was taken in by her father.

From elementary school to junior high school, Kazuha attended regular classes. Since her disability was mild, it seems that her father’s wish was to do so. In high school, Kazuha went to a boarding school outside of the prefecture.

Just before graduating from high school, her father was diagnosed with a serious illness. Therefore, upon graduation, Kazuha left home and went to work at a factory with a dormitory. The place was equipped with a cafeteria, and breakfast and dinner were served if she paid.

There were many male employees at the factory, and the young Kazuha was often courted. Within a year, she became pregnant and was forced to have an abortion by a man.

A year and a half after joining the company, Kazuha had some trouble in the dormitory, and she was unable to stay there, so she decided to move in with a man she was dating at the time. 43 She moved into the apartment of a 43-year-old man she was dating at the time. However, this man had racked up credit card debts in her name, and when he found out she was pregnant, he immediately kicked her out of the apartment.

Kazuha had no choice but to return to her parents’ home, but the time for abortion had already passed. She could not contact the man, nor could she consult her father, who was in and out of the hospital repeatedly due to illness. She had no choice but to give birth to a baby boy on her own.

At first, Kazuha had planned to raise a baby boy on her own. However, she had been living in a dormitory and had not developed many lifestyle habits before raising her child. The house quickly became like a garbage dump.

In addition, she had a substantial credit card debt, so she was at a financial standstill. When the public health nurse visited the house, Kazuha was in a pile of used diapers and was feeding her 0-year-old child cup noodle softened with water.

The public health nurse feared that she was not only incapable of taking care of her child, but was also suffering from mental illness, and suggested that she should either enter an institution or leave her child with him. Kazuha said.

I don’t know what to do anymore, so I want to leave my child with you.”

The father had just finished an operation and wanted Kazuha’s help. Taking this situation into consideration, the child was placed in an infant home.

As this case shows, women with mental illness or disease are at high risk of being cheated by men, and their problems can snowball with childbirth. At that time, if they have not learned the lifestyle in their lives so far, raising a child, which is already a difficult task, becomes even more difficult.

Who is supporting these women and how? How do they change as a result?

In Part 2, we will consider the specifics of this question.

Part 2: Women in the Maternal and Child Living Support Program: “Neglected and Lost” Childhoods