It was not until the early twenty first century that Japanese society became aware of the disintegration of the traditional process that young people followed as they became independent adult. The stagnation of the national economy at the time led to the disappearance of many jobs by which young people used to build their lives. This in turn deprived them, especially young men, of marriage and establishing their own families. Unmarried and economically unstable, these young people continued to live at their parental homes. Twenty years on they are still living with their parents, and are now entering middle age. Whilst there are advantages in parents and their adult children living together, this new relationship is likely to have created various unprecedented problems. In order to gain a better understanding of the relationship as well as the inequality known to exist within the cohort, this paper examines various aspects including employment status, gender, and the areas of habitation, in the lives of the current generation in this particular situation. The study also reviews the government's youth policies in the last twenty years and argues that the lack of accountability in the means of support for young people and in securing their social and financial status is one of the prime causes of the current phenomenon. Young people in the early 2000s were thus unable to become independent and have been forced to depend on their parents or to live alone under a precarious financial status ever since. The increasing inequality found amongst the current generation of people in their middle adulthood can be seen as the result of the insufficient social and youth policies in the past twenty years.

    This paper reviews the trends in mid-life parent-child relationships since the 1990s, with a focus on the parasite single theory, proposed by Masahiro Yamada in his 1999 book titled “The Age of Parasite Singles” (Chikuma Shinsho). This paper examines the logic behind the parasite single theory and summarizes the impact it has had on different areas of family studies such as the family change theory, the modern family theory, and the exchange theory. After summarizing the findings of the substantial empirical research that has been conducted over the past 20 years, the future objectives for research on mid-life parent-child relationships will be outlined as follows: (1) Re-arranging concepts and target settings, and examining basic presuppositions such as co-residence and the rate of co-residence; (2) Enhancing theoretical explanations that focus on mid-life parent-child relationships; and (3) Improving the approach to middle-aged and older people who are single, especially single men and only children with unstable employment. As the data expands, the future hypothesis on parasite singles is expected to be formulated based on detailed analyses that take into account not only marriage and the state of living with one's parents, but also factors such as the ranking between siblings and the hierarchy between a parent and child, which in turn will reveal the long-term causes and effects of the parasite single phenomenon.

    Many previous studies on the sharing of housework during marriage couples were based on the question, “How can husbands participate well in a shared-housework situation?” In this paper, I show the existence of difficulties in sharing housework and the concept of “sentient activity” between working couples in coping with these difficulties. This study focuses on the “invisible part” of housework, which is the management of tasks. The following findings were obtained as a result of an interview survey with dual-earner couples during the child-rearing period. First, there were differences in expectations between the couples regarding doing housework. For that reason, most wives do not feel confident in leaving the responsibility for housework to their husbands. Some wives experience differences in how the couple approaches and deals with the tasks. Further, wives need to do additional emotional labor to maintain the connection with their husbands. On the other hand, it was confirmed that only a few of the interviewed wives gave responsibility to their husbands. They recognized the burden of management and adjusted their own set of rules. They also realized that their husbands are their co-managers and respected their husbands' point of view in managing housework.

    This paper attempts to illustrate how consultations and responses regarding extramarital affairs are accomplished, based on the analysis of newspaper advice columns. To establish the “consult-ability” of their trouble, the consulters blame themselves, portray their emotions and behaviors as beyond their own control, and talk about “moral trouble” that they cannot put an end to their current marriage which is no longer “righteous”, and start a brand new marriage life which would be more “righteous”. It further depends on the evaluation of the “moral value” of their extramarital relationship and current marriage in terms of romantic love ideology, whether the consultants advise consulters to bring the affair to an end or to start a brand new marriage life. In other words, the response that acknowledges that the consulter can maintain their extramarital affair and continue with their current marriage at the same time is quite exceptional and is treated as such. In these ways, consultations and responses regarding extramarital affairs, which are deviant in terms of romantic love ideology, are made intelligible by the norm itself. Although there are some limitations, these results are meaningful in that they locate romantic love ideology which has been considered to be an important constituent of the “Modern Family” in concrete practices.