OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTHS RARE IN JAPAN\Social pressure, abortion keep incidence at fraction of U.S. rate.

Byline: Sheryl WuDunn The New York Times

This was a grandchild whom Mika's parents did not want.

Mika, then 19, was living secretly with her boyfriend, so her parents were startled when she told them she was eight months pregnant. Her parents met her at the train station, whisked her inside and kept her hidden from the neighbors until they drove her to the hospital for the delivery.

"I made a mistake," said Mika, now 21, who spoke on condition that her last name not be used. "At the time I was ferocious about raising a child. I didn't think it would be so bad for my kid. But now I've cooled down and, as I look back, I think my parents were right."

Mika gave up her baby, and she is not the only one in Japan who thinks that having a baby outside of marriage is a terrible idea. Although the numbers of single young women giving birth is soaring in countries all over the world, Japan is a striking exception.

In America the proportion has soared in recent years, fueling a debate over family values. In Japan the proportion has tumbled. Japanese women of child-bearing age in the 1990s are much less likely to become single mothers than were the island nation's women in the turbulent years after World War II.

In 1994, 14,700 babies were born to unmarried mothers in Japan. With twice Japan's population, the United States had recorded more than 80 times that number of births to unwed mothers - 1,240,172 - in 1993, the latest year for which official U.S. figures are available.

The number in Japan in 1994 was only about one-tenth as many as there had been in 1947, the first year for which figures were made available.

Why has Japan not had a surge in single motherhood? For a start, it may be that Japanese teen-agers are less active sexually than young people abroad. Also, abortions are easily available - and common - for those who become pregnant.

But the most important factor may be social pressure. Single mothers face economic and social discrimination. In Japan, having a baby without being married is still a humiliation.

In the United States there is a great debate about whether welfare programs encourage births to unmarried women by creating financial incentives for them to have babies. Such an incentive also exists in Japan, where a single woman who would not otherwise get benefits might receive them if she has a baby.

But even unwed mothers prefer to find work and day care in Japan, rather than go on welfare, and the result is that fewer than 7 percent of single-parent households receive benefits.

It is tough to gauge how sexually active Japanese teen-agers are. Many Japanese say that by their standards the young people are very promiscuous.

"I get the impression they have sex very frequently," Kunio Kitamura, who runs a family planning clinic, said of teen-age girls. "Even a 13-year-old once came to me."

But surveys suggest that Japanese teen-agers are much less active sexually than young people in America or Europe.

"I don't want to have sex until I go to college because I'd feel sorry for my parents," said Ayako Kitagawa, a 16-year-old student at an all-girls high school. "I'd feel bad because I'd be lying to them.

"Having sex is just an outrageous thought for us. We don't even have boyfriends. Those girls who supposedly have had sex are flashy bad girls, so I wouldn't pity them if they became pregnant."

When they do get pregnant, Japanese girls often get an abortion. While doctors prefer parental consent from teen-agers for abortions, many perform them without it.

Even if an unwed Japanese girl insists on giving birth, she often ends up buckling to family pressure by marrying the baby's father or by giving up the child for adoption, as Mika did.

Social pressures are also intense. Marriage prospects for those born out of wedlock are slimmer, and sometimes even funeral services are affected. In one case relatives refused to enshrine the ashes of a man in the family tomb because he had been born out of wedlock.

There is ubiquitous name-calling and bullying, high schools sometimes turn down the children, and companies often will not hire the parents.

Some older children of single mothers have reported being told by teachers that even if they excel in national examinations they will not get into prominent schools.

And if all these pressures were not enough, official discrimination against single mothers and their children is still overwhelming. Children of single parents, for instance, have weaker inheritance rights. Their unusual status is recorded on their family registration, a document the government requires every family to file.

Japanese tax policies discriminate against women who choose single motherhood. Mothers who were divorced or widowed after having children can take a few thousand dollars in tax deductions against their income.

In contrast, there are no deductions for single mothers whose children were born out of wedlock. Not only do they pay more national and local income taxes, but by reporting higher income - because they do not get the deductions - they also pay higher public day-care fees and, in some areas, higher health premiums.

"It seems the national government thinks that if you allow single motherhood to proliferate, it would damage Japan," said Shuhei Ninomiya, a law professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, who has researched children's rights.

"Japan accomplished high economic growth through this very established system of families, in which people took care of their parents.

"The national government feels that if single motherhood proliferates, Japan's family system would break down, and family morals would collapse."

Keiko Nakada, a 40-year-old woman who is raising her 1-year-old son, Tsukasa, worries that he may be mistreated.

"If it happens, I will fight for him," she said, as she cuddled him in her studio apartment. But she feels bad that even her two older children, who are in the custody of her first husband and his wife, are being warned by their relatives: "Kids grow up fine when both parents are around, but when one is missing, there are doubts about how they will be raised."

After her first marriage failed, Nakada got married again. She was pregnant when her second husband divorced her, and she continued with the pregnancy.

She thought she could count on her experience as a mother, but she was unprepared for everything else.

Now her parents have refused to visit, her sister does not help out, and even welfare officials are rude. She was turned down for housing five times because she was a single mother.

After she found a place to live and was late a few times in paying rent, her landlady complained to Nakada about her unstable social and economic status.

Most high schools expel pregnant students, so teen-agers sometimes go to great lengths to disguise their sexual activities. Kazuko Yokota, who runs Motherly Network, a small adoption foundation, described the case of a 16-year-old high school student who was impregnated in a rape that she never revealed to her parents.

She always wore loose outfits. As she grew larger, her parents thought she was sick and took her to the hospital, only to find out that she was due to give birth in a few weeks. She wanted to continue school, so she went on keeping the pregnancy secret from school officials and got a doctor to make up a medical excuse for her to stay home until several weeks after the birth.

"Single mothers are not permitted in Japanese society," Yokota said.

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Photo Keiko Nakada is a target of social discrimination and fears her year-old son, Tsukasa, also will be because she bore him after a divorce. The New York Times