This study explains the conflicts between the norm of the modern mother (e.g., “a mother should personally take care of her child”) and her self-identity. The increased numbers in Japan of women with advanced academic backgrounds and engaged in employment has weakened the norm of the modern mother. But it is referenced in managing the mother’s self-identity. Data are based on fieldwork conducted at family support center programs in Osaka and Tokyo between September 2003 and September 2007.

  An analysis of 17 interviews with individuals who availed themselves of external childcare offers the following results: (1) There exists a gap between self-identity and the norm of the modern mother, but to justify the use of childcare services, mothers refer to the norm of the modern mother. (2) They maintain their self-identity using a family support center program. (3) They are criticized for availing themselves of childcare services despite being full-time mothers, and this causes an internal conflict in these mothers. (4) To cope with the conflict, they conceal the reason to use a childcare service, and they reorganize their self-identity to be compliant with the norm of the modern mother.

  The implications of these findings are that the norm of the modern mother is maintained in the interactions between mothers and caregivers, and creates a platform to discuss methods to support childcare in society.

  This paper uses narrative interviews with five foster parents to investigate how foster parents perceived the biological parents of their foster children and how they maintained relations between the children in their care and their biological parents. Family reunion has been a concern of child and family social work, but has received little empirical evaluation by other scholars of the family as a theme of foster parent experience perception.

  Our results indicate that foster parents try to adjust themselves to the foster child’s ideal foster parent image and respect the child’s image of the biological parents regardless of whether or not the child has interchange of letters or phone calls or visits with biological parents. However, it should be noted that foster parents are able to give some positive evaluation to biological parents in cases where children have interchange of letters or phone calls or visits with biological parents.

  If foster parents cannot give any positive evaluation to, or bring up children in cooperation with the biological parents, foster parents require to reevaluate themselves, for example to perceive themselves as being foster parents rather than see parenting as a business.

Finally, we discuss the implications of this study.

  The purpose of this study is to examine how paternal involvement in childcare and housework influences the well-being of fathers. Questionnaires were administered to fathers parenting pre-school children, and the responses from 703 fathers were analyzed. The results were as follows:

1) In the case of fathers with shorter working hours, paternal involvement in childcare was positively associated with the “self-acceptance of being fathers” and “well-being of the family.” In the case of fathers with longer working hours, the same results were derived, and a positive association with the “benefit to work” was also observed.

2) In the case of fathers with shorter working hours, paternal involvement in housework was positively associated with the “well-being of the family.” In contrast, in the case of fathers with longer working hours, paternal involvement in housework was negatively associated with the “well-being of the family” and “benefit to work.”

  These findings indicated that it is important to reduce the working hours of fathers, that it is important for fathers to be involved in childcare and the need to conduct further research on paternal involvement in childcare separately from paternal involvement in housework.

  In this article I focus on the South Korean national family planning project in the 1960s and 1970s and the role of the Mothers’ Association for Family Planning, which played an active role in promoting the project. By investigating the operation of the family planning project and changes in women’s attitudes towards reproduction, I show how these decades became the key period in creating the image of the modern family in South Korea.

  The structure of this article is as follows. In the first sections I explain the purpose of my research together with its background in the context of the social situation in South Korea during the 1960s and 1970s. In the second and third sections I review literature related to this research and examine the operation of the family planning project and the activities of the Mothers’ Association for Family Planning. In the fourth section I analyze some articles on family planning in the women’s educational magazine Family Friend with a view to examining how women’s activities and their political intentions were interlinked.

  In conclusion, Korean society in the 1960s and 1970s operated on the basis of a totalitarian national policy aimed at economic development and national prosperity. Hence, images of the family and women’s life planning suited to this policy were strongly promoted. In particular, the family planning project was driven mainly by nationalistic propaganda, but as a consequence it led to the formation of the modern family in South Korea.

  According to recent statistics, those giving care to the frail elderly are predominantly women, but in Japan, abuse of the frail elderly is more prevalent among male caregivers. Is the psychological wellbeing of male caregivers poorer compared to their female counterparts? Is the gender difference explained by factors associated with stress processes (e.g., stressors, mediators) and/or gender differences in the effect of those factors on psychological wellbeing? How do patterns of gender differences vary in terms of relationship between the caregiver and the frail elderly?

  Guided by the Care-giving Stress Process Model, this study examined the gender differences in hatred and their relationships to the stress processes among those involved in elderly care at home according to the relationship of caregiver to the frail elderly. Data came from men and women aged 24-90, respondents of the Survey of Caregivers of Frail Elderly in 2001 (N＝382). As a result of the analyses, gender differences in hatred were observed among those giving care to spouse or parent-in law, but not among those giving care to their own parent. The OLS results suggest the possibility that the gender differences in hatred may be explained by the gender differences in the effect of stress process variables on hatred, and that such processes may vary by the relationship of caregiver to the frail elderly.