Women and Family in Contemporary Japan (review)

Mothering is a hot topic in Japan. This has been the case for some time, but the topic has taken on even greater significance in an era when Japanese fertility has sunk to a historic low. With a total fertility rate hovering around 1.3, Japan is one of a handful of postindustrial countries with rates so low as to be dubbed a "lowest-low" fertility society by demographers. The low fertility rate is closely linked to an ever-rising age at marriage and increasing rates of nonmarriage, leading the Japanese and international media to ponder what it is that seemingly makes marriage—and by implication, childbearing—so unattractive to young Japanese. Among the list of hypothesized reasons is the continuing normative pressure on Japanese women to fulfill the requirements of being "good wives, wise mothers" (ryōsai kenbo).

Susan Holloway's Women and Family in Contemporary Japan does not aim to broach this thesis head-on but instead strives to provide an intimate view of how Japanese mothers of young children experience their parental role. Holloway notes at the outset that comparative opinion surveys find Japanese women reporting less satisfaction with family life and childrearing than women in many other nations. Moreover, Japanese mothers also tend to report lower confidence in their childrearing abilities than mothers in a number of other countries. At face value, these tendencies are surprising, given the great importance placed on mothering by media, scholarship, and the government in Japan. Especially noteworthy is the consistent emphasis in the comparative cultural psychology literature on the particular strength of the mother-child bond in Japan, a bond for which Holloway finds precious little evidence in her study. Yet as Holloway's analysis skillfully reveals, the juxtaposition of a high cultural valuation of mothering with many mothers' deep feelings of inadequacy is not as ironic as may first appear. In fact, the deep-seated anxieties of many Japanese mothers may stem precisely from the combination of strong normative pressures to perform well and the notable dearth of social and emotional support from family members and others in a mother's immediate environment.

Holloway's approach is to intensively examine the narratives reported by a small number of mothers of young children across several in-depth interviews. Her research methods and approach will likely seem unfamiliar to many scholars of Japan studies. Trained as a developmental psychologist, Holloway focuses on the key concept of self-efficacy. In the framework of parenting, this concept refers to feelings of confidence in one's childrearing capabilities. Holloway and her research team first interviewed 116 women in Osaka and Sapporo, each of whom had a child in the final year of preschool. These women were subsequently interviewed twice, once when their children were in first grade and again when they were in second grade. From this initial sample of 116 women, a subsample of 16 women in the Osaka area was chosen, with half categorized as evincing high parenting self-efficacy and half evincing low efficacy. Holloway's research team was also careful to select these 16 women based on education: eight women completed two-year college or university and the other eight completed their educations upon high school graduation or before.

General findings on mothers' own childhood experiences, feelings toward childrearing, and beliefs about amae are reported throughout the book, but Holloway's main focus is on the narratives of the 16 focal women. This is complemented by an even higher degree of in-depth study of four of these women—two who feel highly efficacious in their parenting and two who feel quite inadequate as mothers.

Holloway's analysis operates on several levels. As she moves through the book, she is careful to sketch the evolution of cultural images that provide the context and standards of Japanese mothering across time. This includes, of course, the evolution of ryōsai kenbo ideology in the late nineteenth century and the eventual...