2018 Volume 15 Pages 115-138
In this article, I focus on temporary childcare service, which was recently expanded
by the Japanese government as a childcare support measure for all families
with children, and its target has been widened to include its use for “a respite”
by mothers at home. By gathering data using a questionnaire survey of
mothers with infants in an urban area, I analyzed the relations between the use
of temporary childcare services and the normative consciousness of mothers.
Mothers using these services are usually those who have greater difficulty in
relying on their relatives for childcare, lower satisfaction with their husbands’
childcare involvements, higher stress in childcare, higher income, more positive
reactions to the three-year-old child myth, and less resistance to leave their
children in someone’s care.
Moreover, mothers who have used temporary childcare services for “a respite,”
are usually less resistant to leave their children in someone’s care for
parents’ own convenience. On the other hand, most of mothers who never use
these services, have no need to use the service because of their husband or relatives’
childcare support or daycare use. However, there are mothers, though
less than 20％, who are not using temporary childcare because they are having
difficulties in its use or are hesitant to leave their children in someone else’s
care.
As the socialization of childcare has been advocated, and a justification for
childcare services’ use for mothers at home has been spreading, a way of normative
consciousness has been seen among mothers that mothers should be deabstract
voted to childcare, however leaving one’s child in childcare for their parents’
sake does not contradict this. This result suggests that the interpretation of the
mothers’ norms, which are related to childcare, are being modified and the normative
consciousness is becoming multilayered.
