This article focuses on structural components that influence fathers in Austria in their decision to take paternal leave and stay at home when the child is below the age of three. First, it can be shown that the value structure in Austrian society does not motivate fathers to take leave. Second, we look at the employment and income structure as well as at the availability of childcare facilities. In particular, differences in earnings do not encourage fathers to stay at home. Family policies in Austria offer different models of parental leave where the earnings replacement rate is low and parental leave periods can be long. The outcome that, in view of the measures introduced, a rather low rate of fathers take the childcare benefit and stay at home is discussed. As a consequence, all the factors examined in this article likely perpetuate the inequality of men and women in the field of caring for children and maintain the existing structure.

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The goals of this symposium were to present interdisciplinary perspectives concerning family strategy in this era of economic recession, aging, and declining birthrates. Charles Yuji Horioka's paper, entitled “An International Comparison of Intra-Family Mutual Assistance during Recessions and Old Age,” and Masako Maeda's paper, entitled “How do we support isolated people?” discussed economic and social welfare aspects concerning family or family-like strategy. Rokuro Tabuchi's paper, entitled “Families and Intergenerational Relationships in an Era of Intergenerational Ambivalence: Approaches from a Family Strategy Perspective,” argued the effectiveness of a family-strategy approach in explaining generational ambivalence. The commentators, Kimiko Kimoto and Masahiro Yamada, discussed the limitations and possibilities of the family strategy approach, among others. Masako Ishii-Kuntz and Michiko Miyamoto chaired the symposium.

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In this paper, I introduce three theoretical models of household behavior and then present data on intrafamily mutual assistance, bequest motives, and bequest division in China, India, Japan, and the United States from an Osaka University household survey in order to shed light on which theoretical model of household behavior applies in each of these countries. I find that the Americans and Indians are more altruistic than the Chinese and Japanese, that the Chinese and Japanese are more selfish than the Americans and Indians, and that intercountry differences in the degree of altruism are due to differences in religiosity. The fact that the Japanese cannot rely on intrafamily mutual assistance to the same extent as those in other countries implies that they must rely more on themselves and on the government (social security). This, in turn, implies that the expansion of the social security program (social safety nets) is more important in Japan than in other countries.

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More and more people have neither family nor friends on whom they can rely, and when these people fall into difficulties, as their last resort, they come to the city office. However, the existing social security and welfare systems, such as pensions and public care, do not by themselves provide solutions to the complex problems faced by such people. In these cases, only the social provision of more family-like individualized care can guarantee a genuine sense of security.
In the field of child and parent support, government services, community members, and NPOs do, in fact, cooperate to provide individualized personal support, so that parents are not socially isolated. Such support helps parents to have better communications with and develop relationships in their communities, and therefore to feel happier about raising their children.
But there is debate as to whether or not family-like care ought or ought not to be provided socially. And even if we reach the conclusion that such social care ought to be provided, there are still questions as to whose responsibility it is to see that the provision is made, whose duty it is to supply the care, and how we can command the necessary resources. We also need to clarify what should be done as self-help, with cooperation from the community, or with public assistance.

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This paper argues that a ‘family strategy’ perspective is of theoretical import in order to better analyze contemporary intergenerational relationships. A family strategy perspective began to be used in studies of family history and is now widely applied in various areas of contemporary family studies. Due to social structural changes in the past few decades such as changing age structures and changing family norms, today's intergenerational relationships are more likely to be characterized by ‘intergenerational ambivalence’: the existence of contradictory expectations between generations. A family strategy perspective can describe and interpret how ‘intergenerational ambivalence’ is experienced by different actors and managed by them in everyday practice. The author argues that there are two different approaches to pursue studies on intergenerational ambivalence: the rational choice approach and the symbolic interactionist approach. This paper shows how intergenerational proximity can be examined effectively from a family strategy perspective.

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This study aims to investigate the effect of single parenthood on the children's educational attainment, and whether the effect changes over time. The dataset used in this study comprised data from the “Japanese General Social Survey Cumulative Data 2000–2003.” The main findings are as follows: (1) People from single-parent families show a lower level of educational attainment than those from two-parent families with regard to advancement to both high school and college. (2) In terms of advancement to college, the disparity was considerable. (3) Although single-father families are better off economically than single-mother families, there is little difference between them in the levels of children's educational attainment. (4) The effect of single parenthood cannot be fully attributed to “low levels of household income at age 15,” which suggests that noneconomic factors should be examined in future inquiries.

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Feminists have long denounced the patriarchal power structure in the modern family as a cause of domestic violence (DV). A Japanese DV Prevention Law was finally enacted in 2001, indicating recognition of DV as a significant “social problem.” While many women are becoming victims of violence, there are cases in which they become “offenders” by killing their battering partners. This paper focuses on one such case which occurred right after the enforcement of the DV Prevention Law, and explores family norms as interpretive resources in criminal justice by examining the process through which the defendant's personal experiences of violence failed to be constructed as DV.
The main issue of the trial was whether to recognize the defendant as a “victim” of DV. Through an analysis of litigation documents, this paper examines construction of the defendant's motives by the prosecutor, defense lawyer, and court referring to family norms as interpretive resources. Considering that the defendant's claim was denied on the grounds of her “adultery,” this paper suggests that the victim of the modern family was punished for deviations from family norms.

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The focus of most previous studies on the effects of family background on children's educational attainment was limited to the nuclear family. The purpose of this paper is to transcend this limit by clarifying the correlations of grandparents' education and grandchildren's education. Using the NFRJ08 (National Family Research of Japan 2008) survey, which collects information on the educational attainment of a respondent's extended family, we examine the above correlations focusing on interactions by paternal/maternal distinction and grandchildren's gender and birth order.
The main results show that grandparents' education has direct effects on grandchildren's education, net of their parents' education; the direct effects of grandparents' education are strong if parents' education is relatively high; the effects do not vary by paternal/maternal distinction; contrary to the “same gender sequence hypothesis,” both the effects of maternal grandmothers' education on granddaughters' education and the effects of paternal grandfathers' education on grandsons' education are not strong; and the effects of grandparents' education are weak for second grandchildren.

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