This paper focuses on Japanese modern family theories around 1990, which were pioneers in deconstructing affection between family members, as a clue to elucidate the gender asymmetric structure of marital affective relations behind today’s marital conflicts such as “fukihara.” Since the 2010s, studies have re-evaluated the theories, and some have pointed out that modern family studies in Japan have paid more attention to parent-child relationships. However, they have never sufficiently examined the meanings and limitations of the perspective on marital affective relations in the theories. Therefore, I will show that the theories systematically argued that marital affective relations were not only ideological, but also needed a burden at the actual level of “emotion work.” Based on this suggestion, I argue that the problematization of “fukihara” means an objection to the public-private dualistic social system that has imposed emotion work on women. It will be necessary to incorporate the perspective of men’s emotion work into modern family theories and to understand affective relationships between wives and husbands in their respective contexts from now on.

This paper clarifies what is “homely” in medium-sized children’s nursing homes and how “home” is referred to from participant observation data. It pays attention to the viewpoint of “natural life” that is achieved by realizing the miniaturization and individualization of facilities. As a result, the following two scenes were presented as scenes where “home” is referred to in children’s nursing homes. The first is “the size of things used in the facility.” For example, the size of bottles of dressings for salads, rice cookers, bathtubs, etc. was compared with the size of those items in “ordinary homes,” and there were occasions when staff members questioned their suitability. The second is the “criteria for judgment of guidance in facilities.” For example, what to do when a child is sick, and whether to warn children about, say, putting their hands in their pockets. From the above, the aspects in which “home” is referred to in the daily life of the children’s nursing homes became clear.

This symposium aims at provoking discussion regarding the influences of losing distinct spatial boundaries between public and private spheres on family and work-life balance. The development of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and the COVID-19 pandemic have popularized “working from home,” blurring distinct spatial boundaries between public and private spheres. Three papers were presented to explore the effects in Japan, including analyses on 1) “working from home” under the COVID-19 pandemic, 2) female work and family life in a small family business after WW2, and 3) a reconsideration on semantics of the public and private spheres. These papers imply the importance of taking into account the effects of losing distinct boundaries between work and family life in “time” coupled with losing those in “space.”

This paper shows the tendency that the implementation of working from home (WFH) in the COVID-19 pandemic has a strong relationship with socioeconomic status. The increases in housework/childcare hours in comparison with pre-pandemic levels is confirmed among those who are continuing to work from home in the pandemic. WFH has the advantage of contributing to work-life balance, but WFH has raised concerns regarding the risks of overwork and the tendency for boundaries between work and non-work to become blurred.

Women’s work and family lives in small family businesses have received little attention in sociological studies. This leads to the ungrounded assumption that they can easily find a balance between work and family life. This paper contributes to a nuanced understanding of this viewpoint based on the findings of previous studies, and several points were identified: 1) they worked flexibly and dispersedly not only during business hours, but also before and after to respond to business needs at low pay; 2) the business was prioritized over family life; 3) their work is quite informal in the sense that family workers are neither socially protected by labor law nor covered by public labor insurance, and it is also not counted as taxable income. This paper addresses the study of family workers to understand the family in itself and the social expectations of the family.

This study is an examination of how modern families act together with a focus on the unique modernity of the Japanese family. First, survey findings revealed changes in time allocation among parents of primary-school-age children changed from 2000 to 2016. Unchanged was the fact that husbands mostly engaged in paid work and wives engaged both in paid and unpaid work. However, husbands’ paid work increased during that period, wives’ paid work and childcare time increased, and wives’ housework decreased. Second, interviews were conducted with mothers of primary-school-age children in England and Japan that revealed differences in thinking about family time. For instance, despite spending comparatively little family time, Japanese mothers felt their family time was sufficient, whereas English women were reluctant to make that assertion. This finding suggests a significant distance in the semantics of the public and private spheres between two disparate societies.