「母親失格」再考

ネグレクトの諸相と新しい育児実践の創造

抄録

　Since the 1990s in Japanese society, child neglect has become a serious social problem. It is often pointed out that child neglect is different from other types of child abuse, in the sense that it takes place within families of all social and economical stratifications and that women are more likely to commit it than men are. This kind of view of neglect is, however, not just incorrect but also highly disruptive to those who are trying to part from conventional patterns of child-rearing (i.e. young children being brought up by their own mothers until at least the age of three) and build up new ones.
　The aim of this paper is to challenge this widely-accepted view of neglect by investigating various aspects of this phenomenon. We shall give special attention to the two contradictory processes that took place within this phenomenon. One is the process that serves for social control. As we shall see in chapters 2 and 3, through various institutional practices including those of the child welfare centre as well as the health centre, the image of modern mothers as 'bad mother' has become dominant. This is an image that clearly serves to facilitate the government's intervention to each family. The other is the process that is rather different from the one above. As a result of being repeatedly forced to confess how bad they are as mothers, more and more women have now come to support the idea that they should ask help from other people (chapter 4). It is a moment in which so-called the 'maternal-love myth' might come to a deadlock.
　The final chapter takes up the practice of 'Bahba-Service Pinocchio', a corporative nursery school that provides nursing service mainly for the children who are raised at home. In the practices of this very unique nursery school, we can find the moment in which new child-rearing practices would emerge.