Abstract
The popularization of the modern family in post-WW II japan was accompanied by disorganization of various kinds of child-care networks including adoptive parents, parents in folklore, relatives and others. Parent-child relationships narrowed to mean only the real ones, and child care became only that by children's real mothers. Today, people seem ambivalent towards assisted reproductive technology: a remedy against the malfunctioning of, and any menace to natural parent-child relationships. However, I assert that both approaches are on the same side as both operate on the premise that people will seek to have this relationship by nature, because it is filled with love and is a natural course of nature. I insist that we must now look beyond the apparent conflict between the modern family and assisted reproductive technology of recent years. Reviewing the process of popularization of the modern family in the light of population policy, eugenic policy, reproductive technology and birth control behavior, I point out that the Japanese modern family is of a social and historical construction. Besides, it had to be a 'healthy modern family' which demanded the development of artificial reproductive technology and its powerful control over reproduction. I mention some examples of family planning movements as population policy. As a result, presently we face a new variety of parent-child relationships. Curiously these resemble their pre-modern counterparts as regards the instability among many parents and children because it presents us as separate parents such as the sperm parent, the rearing parent and so on. I suggest that legislation and social welfare grounded in reproductive rights and children's rights are urgently needed.
