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Contemporary Japanese families: what is changing and what is not
Organizer: Ekaterina Korobtseva, University of Oxford, Wadham College, United Kingdom
Chair and Discussant: Susan Orpett Long, John Carroll University
At least since 1989 the Japanese family has been repeatedly viewed, within the Japanese media in particular, as an object of “moral panic”. Many social phenomena from the demographic crisis to problems of socially withdrawn youths are attributed to the failings of the family. Such stereotypes notwithstanding, statistics show that Japanese families are still much more stable and conforming compared to those of most western industrialised countries. The papers in this panel document some of the areas of change in family structures which arguably give rise to gloomy perceptions of the family, while also attracting attention to some of the less publicized forces that explain at least some of the persisting family stability.
Two of the papers in this panel show how men and women are renegotiating family roles in the changing social environment. The first paper analyses whether and how the wider acceptance of working women affects women’s choices between work and family. The second paper conversely throws light on how men deal with long working hours now that they are expected to be more involved with their families. The other two papers look at unconventional families and families in crisis. These studies investigating families where family relationships are under strain, and families which by their make up prevent their members from fulfilling the prescribed family roles, put the more conventional ones in sharp relief.
Changing middle-class mothers in Japan
Ayumi Sasagawa, Musashino University , Japan
A few decades ago Japanese women customarily left the workplace upon marriage to be full-time housewives, and many female employees in fact did so without much hesitation.
Since then, however, social norms have changed considerably in favor of women who wish to pursue careers. Starting in late 1980s several pieces of legislation have been introduced to encourage women to continue their work uninterrupted by marriage or childrearing. Moreover, today there are more child-rearing support services available than before.
Nevertheless, 67.4% of working women quit their jobs after the birth of their first child in 2001.
This paper will address the question why the obvious changes in both objective environment and social norms are at most only partially reflected in young mothers’ behaviour. Is there any discrepancy between the notions of the “gender-equal” policy promoted by Japanese government and the lifestyles middle-class mothers at an individual level want to choose? What do mothers consider to be the relationship between wife’s role and husband’s role in the changing society? In sum, I will explore the way in which social changes affect women’s attitudes towards their lifestyles, and also how women contribute to social changes.
I will show that while middle-class mothers welcome the trend towards a gender-equal social system, they also want to take advantage of the idea of gender-specific roles and domains when possible. These apparently contradictory attitudes suggest that for many Japanese women gender-equality represents the right to fulfilling life and not necessarily attaining the labor market equality.
The Norm of Overwork and Middle-Class Japanese Men's Involvement in their Families
Yuko Ogasawara, College of Economics, Nihon University, Japan
The culture of overwork has come to be regarded as a social problem in many industrial societies, but the situation in Japan is particularly serious where men (and some women) literally die and kill themselves from overwork. Nonetheless many Japanese men continue to dedicate most of their day and evening time to paid work, leaving care work to their wives. Based on interviews with men married to women who are employed fulltime continuously, this paper examines how Japanese men accept and reject the norm of long hours of work. Some men are found to sacrifice their career in order to share care work responsibilities with their wives. A number of husbands share care work while refusing to scale down their paid work and become “superdads.” The rest are breadwinners and free riders who do not share care work responsibilities with their partners. The ways in which men make adjustments to paid and care work are analyzed in relation to how men construct their gender identities. Breadwinners insist that they single-handedly provide for their families. While super dads and free riders discard the traditional sole-provider model, it is important for them that they remain competent workers. Only men who are free from both breadwinning and competent worker identities are successful in rejecting the norm of overwork. These men, however, face the risk of marginalization at work or in the society, and the paper concludes with discussion on how such marginalization can be overcome.
Perceptions of parental roles in unconventional families
Ekaterina Korobtseva, University of Oxford, Wadham College, United Kingdom
The previous two papers have highlighted the fact that in Japanese families it is typically the mothers who shoulder the bulk of childcare. The fathers on the other hand either prefer or are forced to contribute to family welfare mainly financially. An average father with an employed wife and a 0 to 6 year old child spends 24 minutes a day on child care.
Today more and more women work and the female/male wage ratio is rising. Against this background it seems reasonable to suppose that as long as they find themselves able to provide for themselves and their children, more women may consider the constantly absent fathers an optional part of the family. However this does not appear to be the case in contemporary Japan.
My interviews with Japanese lone unwed mothers showed that most of them are extremely distressed about raising their child in fatherless families. Among my interviewees, the strength of the concern about the absence of the father in the family did not appear to be very much related to their income, or to how socially adjusted their children seemed to be at the time of the interview. In this paper I analyse why most lone unwed mothers perceived lack of the father in their families as such a terrible disadvantage for their children in spite of the ample evidence that in generally men tend to spend very little time with their families.
The paper is based on 67 interviews with lone unwed mothers carried out in 2004 and 2005.
Mass Arrests, Sensational Crimes and Stranded Children: Three Crises for Japanese New Left Activists’ Families
Patricia G. Steinhoff, Dept. of Sociology, University of Hawaii
The image of family crisis in Japan is of intimate, face-to-face interaction that occurs inside the privacy of the home, with outsiders resolutely excluded. The real family crises I will discuss differ radically from this image; they were set in motion by the political activism of a young family member whose initial conflict was not with the family at all, but with the Japanese state during the politically charged late 1960s. They became family crises when the student was arrested, but only some of them became family conflicts. Why did some become family conflicts, while others reinforced family ties?
The paper examines three different types of arrest crises that activists and their families have faced, and the roles played by state actors and the New Left’s support system as the crisis unfolds. The first type, the Mass Arrest Crisis, arose during the initial period of mass arrests at the end of the 1960s, when the greatest number of families faced their child’s arrest for political activity and the New left’s support system helped them deal with it. The second type, the Sensational Crime Crisis, was provoked when the activist child had committed a serious, widely publicized crime, and the family faced both public censure and the child’s grim future. The third type, the Stranded Child Crisis, was provoked when an activist parent was arrested, leaving a child stranded somewhere.
The paper is based on interviews with participants, participant observation of trials and support group meetings, and documentary sources.