The Japan Society of Family Sociology held a symposium on the theme of Contemporary Child and Family at its 1998 annual meetings. The purposes of the symposium were to examine how contemporary family relates to children's behavioral disorders, delinquencies and maladjustment at school and to examine the recent family change from the viewpoint of the children. Four presenters analyszed family and child from the viewpoint of clinical family sociology, structural disorders of contemporary families, gender problem and parent-child relations. The four papers did not examine how contemporary Japanese families influence child development. However, they made it clear that the modern nuclear family in itself has difficulties in child rearing. The gender role structure in the family imposes child rearing exclusively on the mother. A discussant pointed out the necessity of research to make clearhow the mother and/or father effect child development. Further the importance of modeling construction approach, using various theories was emphasized. The discussion focused on the family support system including family-friendly workplace. Since the nuclear family is no longer the typical family type, we need to examine what types of relations are needed in healthy child development and to advance theoretical understanding of child-family relations.

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The purposes of this paper are threefold : To clarify the clinical aspects of the family with children refusing to attend school and the family with juvenile delinquents who appeared in the civil service agencies, to identify how sociological theories attempted to explain and cope with pathological mechanism of these problem be-havior, and to suggest shortcomings in utilizing these theories to solve family problems. Additionally, attempts are made to construct the “healthy family” paradigm which is different from the so-called “normal family.” The date were collected from the therapeutic interviews and the observation of the members of therapeutic system which was composed for therapeutic intervention. Data were additionally obtained from 150 junior high school students through the questionnaire which asked about the image of “healthy family.” The results identified that the hypothetical healthy family concept which was constructed from the clinical data was congruent with statistical findings of the students' healthy family image. Healthy family can be defined as multidimensional concept with different aspects such as “mutual communication, ” “economic stability, ” “democratic decision making, ” “self expression, ” “self acceptance, ” “clear ego boundary, ”and“ cheerful disposition.”

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The purpose of this paper is to suggest some viewpoints and ideas in order to have a better understanding of the child-centered social supports. Today, in our affluent society, children cannot be adequately raised only by their parents because families no longer have their latent functions for educating children as they once had. First, we need to evaluate children's rights to grow up. Second, we must be aware of the parents' power over children, which may be the basis of education as well as a violent domination. Third, we can organize many family-like small groups around children, which support not only the children directly but also their parents as well. Considering these issues will enable the society to focus on the child rearing process.

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Being infuluenced by modern family theory and feminism, sociological research on Japanese families are said to have become adult-centered. Although postwar studies on parent-child relationships have focused on “discipline”, they have been approached from adults' point of view. Stated other way, the definition of “emotional full-time motherhood” has been misunderstood as focusing on child development. This misconception is obvious when we review the studies in the past ten years which suggest that full-time mothers' child care and exclusion of fathers bring undesirable outcomes for children, mothers and fathers. Further, in search of postmodern families, studies in parent-child relations make it clear that shared parenting and child care are benefical. At the same time, however, we need to pay attension to the ideology of our discourse. It is essential for family sociologists to maintain a relative viewpoint in studying families.

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Why must parents rear their children' has become the fundamental question that family sociologists have to deal with. G.W.F.Hegel discussed the prototype of modern child rearing. He stressed that parent-child relations disappear when offspring become adult. There are two traits of modern parents-child relationships. One is that parents have to find meaning in child rearing because parents connot expect financial compensation from children for their efforts. the major motivation of child rearing for parents in modern society is “love”. And, because parents' love is incomplete they could believe in the presence of love. In recent years longevity and 'schoolization' cause crisis in the meaning of child rearing for parents. In order to be convinced by the presence of loving relationship with children, parents feel the need to be evaluated by adult offspring and public such as school system. Additionally, parents often feel the pressure in child rearing. Therefor, parents begin to questioning why they must rear their children.

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Recent family studies called for “subjective approaches” which highlight the family being recognized and interpreted by people as actors. Few empirical studies have made use of subjecttive approaches to study the family mainly due to methodological problems. The aim of this paper is to suggest a life history and subjective approaches to describe the family with systemically disabled persons. From narrations of disabled persons concerning their families, this study shows that their subjective family is constantly affected by passing of time or by some opportunities to their life history. Additonally, the reality of the family is constructed by mutual permeance between “subjective” and “social” realities.The subjective approaches to study the family will be effective means to demonstrate the power around the family.

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The purpose of this study is to examine how husbands' housework and emotional support influence wives'marital satisfaction, including interaction effect. Housework has often been examined as a dependent variable. In this study, however, housework is considered to be an variable. In addition to husbands' housework, husbands' emotional support which have not been freequently examined in family studies, is included as an independent variable. I use data from the pretest of National Family Survey (NFR), “The survey of Marital Relationship and the Family”. The sample of 122 married women indicated that wives' marital satisfaction was determined by husbands' emotional support, but not husbands' housework. The association between husbands' emotional support and wives' marital satisfaction was stronger among wives who had traditional gender-role attitudes than wives who had egalitarian gender-role attitudes. Our result suggests that homemaker wives seek more spouses' emotional support and understanding about their house-keeping activities than do working wives.

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The purpose of this paper is to describe intergenerational relations of the elderly living in an inner area of the metropolis and explain them by the choice-constraint model. According to the moder, intergenerational relations are hypothesized as networks which individuals construct selectively under certain opportunities and constraints they face. We analyzed an survey data of the elderly living in an inner area of Nagoya City, and examined their relationships with their children. Respondents who had affluent housing resources were more likely to cohabit with their married children and contact with children living outside their households frequently. Those who had scarce housing resources were likely to be isolated from their children. And those who were engaged in family business and those aged 70 and over were more likely to cohabit with their married children. These findings were explained by the choice-constraint mode. Which was found to have certain level of validity in describing the diversity of intergenerational relations among the elderly.

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In the process of achieving generalizability in sociological theories, empirical surveys are often conducted cross-culturally or cross-sectionally with people from different nations, ages, class, social stratification positions, or gender. A cross-cultural comparison can play an important role in establishing the reliability and validity of the survey results obtained in sociological research. This paper explores the contribution a cross-cultural perspective can make to the investigation of the parental values, specifically the development of sociological theory and testing methods in order to understand the mechanism of value formation. A cross-cultural perspective has been applied to the myriad connotations inherent in the meaning of the words selected by both the researcher and the survey respondents in asking and answering the questions, and analyzing the data. Culturally more appropriate dimensions of Japanese parental values are presented in this paper, which reports on the interpretation of key value concepts identified by the parents randomly sampled out of all the 6th grade children in the city of Kawagoe, Japan in July 1997.

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