Nagi Town, Okayama Prefecture, a miracle town boasting a birthrate of “2” while Tokyo’s birthrate is 0.99… What is the convincing reason for this?

For example, if you need temporary child care for your younger child while you go to the hospital, or if you need to take care of your child while you go shopping, there is a temporary child care service called “Smile,” in which the child is taken care of at a child care home or at the home of an assistance member. Nagi Town’s support program is characterized by the participation of local residents in providing childcare support, rather than leaving it solely to professional staff.

In addition, public health nurses and local love care committee members visit every home when a child is born, and a “1,000-day Birth Monitoring Study” is conducted in cooperation with Osaka University in the hope of preventing postpartum depression. Midwives provide on-site breastfeeding counseling and psychologists introduce prenatal and postpartum counseling, just to name a few.

Work and children are both possible.

However, there are still issues to be addressed, according to Counselor Kosaka.

Many young people leave the town when they go to college or start working. In fact, the town’s population is slightly decreasing year by year. The challenge for the future is to address the increase and decrease in the population. We would like to continue and promote the current support for child-rearing, and at the same time, create an attractive town that appeals to people outside the town, and increase the number of immigrants.

One of the more substantial child-rearing support measures is the assignment of one assistant language teacher (ALT) for each of the 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old classes at the preschool and for grades 1-6 of elementary school and grades 1-3 of junior high school, starting this fiscal year.

I think the town’s ability to provide English-language education and other cutting-edge education in rural areas will be an added attraction.”

Perhaps because they can raise their children with peace of mind, the number of dual-income households has been increasing recently.

As in urban areas, the demand for childcare services in Nagi is increasing year by year. In April this year, we integrated one nursery school and two kindergartens to open a “Kodomoen” with a capacity of 250 children to meet the demand for preschool care and early childhood education.

In other words, the number of families with three or four children, even while working, is increasing. If you live in Nagi, you do not have to worry about whether to have children or work. Nagi is a place where you can have both children and a job.