Child Welfare and Development: A Japanese Case Study by Sachiko Bamba and Wendy L. Haight (review)

While parents throughout the world are motivated to nurture their children, they do not all do so in the same way. According to sociocultural theory, adults in a given community construct themes or discourses about what it means to be a good person, and, by extension, what kind of care a child needs in order to become such a person. One way to explore cultural discourses about childcare is to consider cases where parents have not fulfilled their basic obligation to protect and nurture their children. This is the approach taken by Sachiko Bamba and Wendy Haight in their compelling volume on child welfare and development in Japan. The authors provide a detailed account of socialization processes within residential institutions for maltreated children who have been removed from their families. They illuminate the commonly shared beliefs as well as the tensions and disagreements among staff members about how to best support children growing up in challenging circumstances. By documenting these interactions, Bamba and Haight provide key insights into the salient cultural models of childcare circulating within contemporary Japan. They also illustrate a model of foster care that is quite different from the prevalent approaches employed in the United States and other affluent countries.

Bamba and Haight begin by describing the problem of child maltreatment in Japan, which has become a major public policy concern in the last decade. The number of reported cases of child abuse has climbed steeply, and an increasingly large number of children are entering the child welfare system. Most children who have been removed from their family home are placed in small residential institutions (jidō yōgo shisetsu), rather than in private homes with foster parents, as is common in the United States. The focus of the program at the residential institution is to promote children’s ability to connect with peers and adults and, ultimately, to function as confident and autonomous members of society. Staff members in these settings also attempt to maintain contact with the child’s family and hope eventually to reunite the child and parents, a goal that is accomplished for approximately 40 per cent of children.

In the longitudinal study described in this volume, Bamba and Haight used ethnographic methods to explore the everyday experiences of staff and children in these institutions. Bamba, a Japanese native, conducted in-depth interviews as well as participant observation in two institutions over a five-year period. The data provide a fascinating insight into the dynamic and contested interactions that occurred as staff members wrestled with the best way to care for these children. This process was not always smooth, frequently involving negotiation and uneasy compromises when members disagreed with each other and when their goals and values collided with structural barriers and resource constraints.

A central goal for the staff was to help children create their own ibasho. The term ibasho literally means “a place to be” or “whereabouts,” but in daily use it refers not only to a geographical location but also a social and psychological space where one feels calm and secure. Staff members at the institutions studied by Bamba and Haight believed that the children in their care needed a great deal of time and support to find or create an ibasho. One challenge during this process is that what constitutes an ibasho can change depending on the individual’s momentary emotional state and social circumstances. Furthermore, an individual needs to feel accepted by others in his or her ibasho but also needs to feel free to “hide” and be alone. The fluidity and subtlety of the ibasho concept was conveyed by one staff member who noted that when he was irritated with his family, his own ibasho was the area near an exhaust fan in his home, where he could smoke and be by himself.

The authors also devote a great deal of attention to the...