In a bold social-media post that quickly ricocheted through Japan, a few weeks ago, a mother wrote simply: “I’m quitting being a mom. I can’t take being lied to or having promises broken anymore. I won’t cook or handle anything related to school. Just act like I’m not here. Even mothers have limits to their patience.” The story caused an uproar throughout all social media platforms and was picked up by Unseen Japan. The message struck a nerve because motherhood (育母, iku-bo) in Japan is still treated as a near-sacred vocation, tightly bound in unspoken expectations of self-sacrifice, emotional endurance and domestic duty.
The post on X triggered outrage and panic in equal measure. The threads’ comments were blunt: “So selfish,” “Take responsibility if you gave birth,” “A mother should endure even if she’s angry — it’s her own child.” Some went as far as to call the woman a criminal for allegedly neglecting cooking duties. But quietly, and alongside the vitriol, came another voice: the voice of mothers who said “I’m in the same situation,” or “I’ve thought about quitting being a mother too.”
The controversy lays bare a deeper cultural fault-line in Japanese society. For decades the notion of “good mother” (良き母, yoki haha) has been intertwined with the image of the mothers who tirelessly balanced work, home, school errands, PTA meetings, and the never-ending chore list. The archetype of the 教育ママ (kyōiku mama) — the mother who pushes children through exam after exam into elite schools — still looms large. Meanwhile, according to a recent survey cited in the article, 42% of Japanese mothers said they “sometimes” feel like quitting motherhood, 23% said they had once felt that way, and 12% said they felt that way “almost every day”—for a total of nearly 80% who have entertained quitting motherhood.
It’s not just about personal fatigue. The structural pressures are heavy: in a society where 1.20 is now the average total fertility rate for women in 2023, and mothers often bear the lion’s share of childcare and domestic work, the burden is intense. A recent piece in The Guardian quoted author Sayaka Murata stating that in Japan “motherhood [felt] like a curse” and marriage a “hostage situation”, pointing to the suffocating nature of roles that expect women to exist for reproduction and conformity.
In everyday households this manifests in hidden frustration. One profile in the original article shared how a mother, overwhelmed, told her child: “I’m quitting being your mother,” after enduring years of relentless emotional and physical strain. Another single mother described how she distanced herself emotionally from her role, retaining practical obligations but abandoning the notion of the ever-available “mother” identity.
What’s emerging is a quiet reckoning with the assumption that motherhood must be all-consuming. For many Japanese mothers, the role has become less about parenthood than about servicing a social ideal: relentless dedication, invisibility of labour, and emotional suppression. The movement of mothers saying they might quit (辞めたい, yametai) is a crack in that ideal. It’s both a plea for help and an act of silent rebellion.
Schools, communities and workplaces are slowly acknowledging the imbalance. Articles have pointed out how women often resign from jobs or shrink their careers because of childcare obligations, while the myth of the “stay-at-home mother” remains powerful. To quote one mother in the piece: “It made me feel like a housekeeper.”
So what does this tell us? Culturally, the story taps into Japan’s shifting demographics, its ageing population, and the strain on gender norms that were designed for a bygone era. Socially, it signals a generational gap: younger mothers are less willing to swallow the idea that their identity must revolve entirely around motherhood, and more willing to call out the emotional and physical toll it takes.
For Japan, this moment is more than an online firestorm—it is a mirror held up to a society that still expects its mothers to absorb the cracks in the system. Whether the debate will lead to meaningful change—greater male uptake of childcare, fewer assumptions that mothers should be at home at all hours, more visible support for parenting roles—remains uncertain. But the chatter on X and TV talk shows isn’t going away. Mothers are speaking. And this time, they’re saying: enough.
If the silence of earlier generations was a whisper, this is a shout.
Sisters, allow Auntie to tell you something she has learned after decades of wandering through Asia’s kitchens, cramped apartments, community halls, PTA meetings, feminist circles, and yes — the occasional smoky karaoke bar where exhausted mothers sip a secret highball behind the neon. When have women in this region ever been truly free to choose their roles? When have mothers been allowed to breathe, to shape motherhood the way they want, rather than the way society scripts it? In Japan especially — and Auntie speaks as someone who has listened to many Japanese sisters whisper their private heartbreaks — the answer is almost never.
Japan dresses its expectations in polite language: ganbaru (do your best), shikataganai (it can’t be helped), oyakōkō (filial piety), and the infamous, suffocating idea of the “good mother.” But peel back the tatami mats and what do you find? Women carrying the emotional, mental, and physical labour of entire families while smiling for neighbours and bowing for teachers. In the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Bangladesh — the accents change, the patriarchies look different, but the pressure cooker is the same: Be a mother, but don’t complain. Be responsible, but invisible. Be perfect, but don’t expect help.
So when this Japanese mother went online and said, “I’m quitting motherhood,” my immediate reaction was not shock — it was admiration. Finally, someone cracked the porcelain mask. She dared to say the quiet part out loud: that motherhood without support becomes servitude; that emotional labour without reciprocity becomes a slow death; that responsibility without freedom is just another cage decorated with cherry blossoms.
And oh, the onslaught she faced! The insults, the judgment, the chorus of men (and some women) clutching their pearls and saying, “How selfish! How irresponsible!” As if women aren’t human beings with limits. As if exhaustion, resentment, loneliness, and burnout are moral crimes rather than predictable consequences of a society that offloads everything onto mothers while pretending to worship them.
Auntie says this with all the spice and all the compassion in her heart: freedom of choice is the key. Have children because you want to, not because society shoves the expectation down your throat. Have a family because you have the means, the partner, the social services, the childcare leave, the workplace culture that won’t punish you for being a mother. Anything less is not choice — it’s coercion dressed as tradition.
So, kudos to that brave Japanese mother. May her shout echo through every Asian household where a woman whispers, “I wish I could quit too.” Let’s stop pretending sacrifice is virtue and start insisting that mothers deserve freedom, support, and yes — the right to say “enough.”