An Examination of the Theoretical Perspectives on Gender Asymmetry in Affective Relationships between Wives and Husbands: Focusing on Modern Family Theories

Abstract

This paper focuses on Japanese modern family theories around 1990, which were pioneers in deconstructing affection between family members, as a clue to elucidate the gender asymmetric structure of marital affective relations behind today’s marital conflicts such as “fukihara.” Since the 2010s, studies have re-evaluated the theories, and some have pointed out that modern family studies in Japan have paid more attention to parent-child relationships. However, they have never sufficiently examined the meanings and limitations of the perspective on marital affective relations in the theories. Therefore, I will show that the theories systematically argued that marital affective relations were not only ideological, but also needed a burden at the actual level of “emotion work.” Based on this suggestion, I argue that the problematization of “fukihara” means an objection to the public-private dualistic social system that has imposed emotion work on women. It will be necessary to incorporate the perspective of men’s emotion work into modern family theories and to understand affective relationships between wives and husbands in their respective contexts from now on.