Abstract
The aim of this paper is to firstly grasp the actual conditions of full-time housewives, who have been increasing in the urban middle class in China since the 1990s, and to clarify the characteristics of full-time housewife norms in China. Secondly, I will consider the mechanisms through which the differences in full-time housewife norms in China and Japan are formed. For this consideration I will draw on data from an interview survey conducted with nine full-time housewives in Dalian, Liaoning, China between October and November 2013.
The first finding of this paper is that the full-time housewives emerging in the urban middle class in China are becoming “full-time mothers”. The survey respondents devoted themselves to caring for their children during the childrearing years, but they wanted to return to work after bringing up their children. Secondly, although the survey respondents affirmed becoming a “full-time mother” during the child-rearing years, the mothers did not take charge of child-rearing alone but carried out their roles as mothers while making good use of childcare support from relatives and the housekeeping services market.
This norm of “full-time mother” differs substantially from Japan's “myth of the first three years”. The difference in the “full-time mother” norm in China and Japan results from the segmentation of who carries out which part of carework such as childcare and housework, and what meaning is assigned to those segmented actions. The choice between the two mechanisms of “emotionalization with marketization” and “emotionalization without marketization” is a huge point of divergence between China and Japan. Thus, even with the same phenomenon of emerging “full-time mothers”, emotional norms that determine which acts of childcare are seen as expressions of affection differ socially and culturally.
