Making Children’s Experiences of Abuse Visible:

Organizing Terminology on Parent–Child Issues Since the 1990s

Abstract

　The aim of this study is aims to identify key issues for family problem research and family sociology by examining the process through which parent-child relationships become problematized. Key terms that have circulated in Japan since the 1990s are analyzed to describe problematic parent–child relationships―such as adult children, toxic parents, educational abuse, and religious abuse―by organizing them in terms of their origins, focal points of problematization, and connections to institutional frameworks.

　Although these terms differ in their originating actors and degrees of institutionalization, they share a common feature: they reconsider parenting practices and family norms that have traditionally been viewed positively from the perspective of children, thereby making visible the asymmetries, and controlling structures embedded in parent–child relationships. Furthermore, through the diffusion of these terms in media spaces, individual experiences are reframed into shareable categories and contribute to the recognition of domestic issues as social problems.