The early years of the 21st century are a period in which mobility and instability in employment have spread, especially among young people and women, late marriage has continued to expand, and social inequality has become more pronounced. During this period, a long-term care insurance system was also introduced and a number of people reconsidered how to care for aging parents, given the acceleration of aging society with lower numbers of children. How have these contextual changes affected the form and function of the Japanese family as well as individuals' attitudes? In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Japan Society of Family Sociology, the changes in and current picture of the Japanese family are illustrated and future directions are discussed, based on the following three series of national surveys conducted over the past decade: National Family Research of Japan in 1998, 2003, and 2008 by the Japan Society of Family Sociology; 8 Japanese General Social Surveys from 2000 to 2010 by the JGSS Research Center at Osaka University of Commerce; and quinquennial National Surveys on Household Changes since 1994 by The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

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The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research has been conducting National Surveys on Household Changes since the former Institute of Population Problems launched the first round in 1985 to obtain parameters for household projections. This paper examines the trend and sex difference of home-leaving behavior mainly based on the Fifth National Survey on Household Changes conducted in 2004. It is shown that the median age at the time of home-leaving has been delayed because of the delay in young people getting married. The median age at home-leaving for men is younger than that for women because more men leave before marriage than do women, a pattern that cannot be seen in Western developed countries. The paper also focuses on the predicted overturn of the long-lasting trend in forming family-nuclei. The latest household projection predicted that, despite the increase in one-person households, the proportion of family nuclei in households with two persons or more will start declining around 2015. It is shown that this overturn will happen due to compositional changes in age and marital status in the population of Japan.

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By illustrating changes in the Japanese family and capturing the current picture based on the results of cumulative Japanese General Social Survey data, this article provides materials that help us discuss future directions. The overall trends between 2000 and 2010 were described by focusing on 14 areas. While swayed by an unstable job climate, both individuals and families suppress dissatisfaction and come to grips with reality. The degree of unemployment and contingent employment among the young has expanded, the percentage of unmarried people has increased, and unmarried adult children are more and more often living with their parents. A growing number of women of all ages have entered the labor force and the bottom of the M-shaped employment rates among women has become shallow. Following favorability towards socialization of livelihood security and care of the elderly, increasing numbers of people favor socialization of childrearing and education. The changes in employment among the young and women should have a strong impact on the Japanese family in the future, and thus the whole picture of reform of the taxation system, employment policy, and social welfare should gain increasing attention.

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Trends in both the change and the continuity of the Japanese family were examined through analyses of the three National Family Research of Japan data sets NFRJ98, NFRJ03, and NFRJ08. We set our focus on the marital relationships of those who have children aged under six years old, and compared women's employment status and husband's participation in household work and child rearing. We also compared marital satisfaction across life stages. However, we were not able to find large difference among these data sets. This suggests that there is a steady internal structure for those families with both a couple and a child.
What, then, of the part where family change has occurred? That part occurs, we can assume, outside of the families with an intact marriage; that is to say, change is the result of an increase in families with a non-intact marriage. With regard to a number of indicators, it can be seen that the experience of the families with a non-intact marriage was more disadvantageous than that of those with an intact marriage. These gaps suggest that it is difficult to assume that the experience of non-intact marriage families is the result of voluntary choice.

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Previous research has found that men's attitudes toward gender roles are strongly associated with their wives' employment status. Men in dual-earner couples are likely to have more egalitarian views than men in male-breadwinner, single-earner couples. According to research in the United States, husbands in dual-earner couples, particularly husbands with lower socioeconomic status, tend to be resistant to the idea of gender equality for fear of losing power in the marital relationship. This paper examines the impact of wives' contributions to family income on husbands' gender role attitudes in Japan. The paper focuses on the differing effect of the socioeconomic status of husbands. Analysis based on data available from the National Family Research of Japan (2003, 2008) found that in dual-earner couples in which wives' income constitutes half or more than half of the family earnings, husbands with lower rather than higher socioeconomic status tend to support the gendered division of labor.

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This paper examines the child-rearing strategies and pedagogic discourse of the Japanese family, focusing on the parenting magazines that have been published since 2005. Fathers' participation in childcare has been one of the issues involved in family-related topics. However, there is little discourse analysis of this subject at present. Based on a theoretical consideration of discourse and subjection, we analyze the pedagogic discourse of a number of parenting magazines read by parents, such as “President Family.” This paper traces changes in child-rearing media, and examines the social factors behind the appearance of parenting magazines for child-rearing- conscious fathers, especially businessmen. Through critical considerations of the child-rearing discourse in the magazines, this paper explains the ‘subjection' of child-rearing fathers and the strengthened education-consciousness of Japanese families. It also considers the reproductive strategies of re-gendered families.

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This thesis examined the role played by a particular mother's hand notes for establishing a role model for the mothers of mentally handicapped children, focusing on the enlightenment movement for the parents of mentally handicapped children carried out by a parents association in the 1950's. Through a mother's hand notes that ran in a mass-circulation magazine, parent readers found a peer who could share their suffering and circulate knowledge, information, and techniques concerning child-rearing, all united through the association. But for each mother, those processes were processes of learning new “appropriate” behavioral patterns and referring to defined roles at the same time. The hand notes had the effect of making each mother internalize the role model of mothers, execute the role, and evaluate herself through comparison with other mothers. By examining this process, this thesis made clear the strengthening process of the normative characteristic of the motherly role. Furthermore, this mothers' role model that had a certain influence in the 1950's was modeled after the new middle-class housewives. Hence, there were problems due to the fact that they were created ignoring differences in the conditions of each household.

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