Abstract
This study aims to clarify how eating together with friends benefits as childcare support for mothers raising children; in other words, how it affects their mental state, specifically their childcare anxiety as well as their satisfaction with life and diet. Responses to a questionnaire for this study were received from 725 mothers rising infants in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Four hundred ten full-time housewives, who had had meals with their friends in the past twelve months, were singled out for a multiple regression analysis, the main findings of which are as follows: 1) The respondents were given stronger emotional and instrumental support in their childcare by increased frequency of eating together. The mothers also increasingly received instrumental support as the number of dining friends increased. Additionally, the negative support tended to decrease as the frequency of eating together and the number of dining friends increased. 2) The childcare anxiety proportionally decreased in accordance with higher rating given both to emotional and instrumental support, while both the satisfaction with life and that with diet proportionally increased in accordance with higher rating given to emotional support. On the other hand, the childcare anxiety tended to decrease and the satisfaction with diet tended to increase as they felt they were given less negative support. The above results suggest that eating together with friends serving as childcare support has a positive effect on mothers' mental state.
