The present paper was prepared originally as the special lecture to commemorate the establishment of Japan Society of Family Sociology on July 21, 1991. It attempts to present a hypothetical overview of the trend of change in Japanese families during the past nearly half a century since the end of World War II.
Ideally speaking, families in contemporary Japan have changed from the prewar stem family system called “ie” to the postwar conjugal nuclear family system. I propose to discriminate between two stages in this general trend.
The first stage of change covers the first three decades of the postwar period. It is characterized by the decay of the stem family system and the concomitant growth of a Japanese variety of conjugal family, prompted by the breaking of the father-son succession line under the impact of the conjugal family ideology of the revised Civil Code, and facilitated by rapid economic develoment.
The second stage of change covers the period after the middle of 1970s, it is characterized by changing husband-wife relationship in contrast to the father-son in the first stage. The change does not suggest a trend toward an anomic family as reported in Western countries but represents wives' protests against male dominance in the nuclear family structure. It has occurred because of the increasing number of working wives, their growing capacity to earn a livelihood, to utilize relevant information, and under the impact of feminist movements.

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In this paper, I would like to show indirectly my expectation of family sociology by reviewing the history of family studies in the field of sociology of law. From the pre-war period, sociology of law in Japan has been stressing the importance of family (“ie” before the war) in the legal system.
Post-war reform of the civil code and reorganization of the family register system gave ground for creation of “a Japanese style modern family” which is characterized as a nuclear family based on fixed sex-role differentation and as a basic unit of the industrial socienty. After the oil crisis of the 1970s, however, this Japanese-style modern family which could successfully produce efficient workers with family support seems to have been threatened as the result of such drastic changes as increases in the labor-force participation of women, growing equality between sexes, “individualization”, and destruction of family farming. This trend is quite common all over the world.
For the purpose of finding a new paradigm suitable for this global change, we should accurately grasp the tangible aspects of social change while paying much attention to the structural relations of social phenomena.In order to attain this goal, we should at first clarify the discipline of each field and then promote cooperation between sociology of law and family sociology.

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From the viewpoint of a family therapist who is a frequent attendant of this seminar, I would like to suggest five points which family sociologists should keep in mind.
1. To whom the research is oriented: The theme which is significant to the researcher is not always beneficial to a client and his family.
The researcher should examine what the research means to them, and should try to protect their privacy and human rights.
2. Family pathology vs. family process: What appears to be family pathology is often a dynamic process of the family system moving toward a new family life-cycle stage. Family sociologists should pay more attention to the family process.
3. Life course of the three generation family: In Japan, causes of family problems are often rooted in the extended family relations.
Family sosiologists should not overlook the relationships in the three generation family.
4. Ideal vs. reality: Immature therapists tend to ignore the importance of the parents' authority in their eagerness to emphasize the independent of children. Family sociologists should not overlook reality in order to pursue an ideal.
5. Re-examination of the mother-child interdependence: Forced separation of a mother from her child is a painful experience, Japanese sociologists should seek a Japanese way to separate a mother from her child without being influenced the individual-oriented psychology of Western societies.

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There has always been interest in family change in post-war Japanese social studies.
In this paper I first examine Goode's conjugal family model as an effective model for analysing contempo-rary family change. Goode's model stresses the “uniqueness of the individual” and “egalitarianism, ” and regards the process of family change as a convergence-divergence process.
Secondly I propose(1) that, in order to analyse the diversity of family change, it is necessary to utilize both Parson's and Goode's models and also some new models which are to be constructed, and (2) that the convergence-divergence models are effective for analysing the process of change.

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Reviewing the author's clinical involvements as a family sociologist, one of our significant and most expected contributions to adjacent fields might be to provide a framework to analyze the current situations under which various family problems are emerging. A family sociologist himself has not to become a clinician, a caseworker either a family therapist, when he undertakes a family research project with problem-solving issue, although being cooperetive with them is much desirable.
Family sociology in Japan after the second world war, particularly in 1960s, had been sensitive to historical social change. This academic interest, however, has been soon taken over by new interest upon family problems such as the elderly, adolescents, less involvements of families in a community and so on. The shift from macro to micro viewpoints was decisively followed by the “sociology of everyday life” which places much emphasis upon patterns of and its meaning of interactions in our daily life. While this sociological viewpoint clarified a necessity to refer back to ourselves, it resulted in, on the other hand, a tendency of sticking too much to our own family lives. In the consequence, this tends to enclose our sociological imagination into private sectors of the family life, not rarely family life of researchers themselves. It is no doubt to be able to observe society on the macro level through a window of our own homes, but scenes observed through them is, no doubt as well, limited unevenly to partials and biased possiblly to those of upper-middle class. Even generally speaking, it is hard to see the family life of people who do not belong to the same social strata of researchers. We have to be sensitive much more to social stratification issue than ever before, and go beyond privatization of family research work.
In this line, some strategies, tactics, focal points to concentrate our effort and tasks for the moment are discussed. Supportive and critical comments on the discussions held in the 24th Seminor are both put forward as well.

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To investigate permissiveness within the family, and alternative life styles among married people who live with children, we measured permissiveness by agree-disagree scales on 12 family and alternative life styles. Analysis showed that permissiveness consisted of three elements-permissiveness related to non-legal married life styles, missing critical relation (s) and equal treatment. Permissiveness is not related to the place people grew up, their experience living with their parents, experiences of job-induced separation, occupation, or income, but related to age, education and gender. Younger and higher educated parents are more permissive. Wives are more permissive than husbands. Besides such social-economic factors high values of equalitarianism and individualism are consonant with permissiveness. The high permissiveness group generally will live separately from their children's families.

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This paper attempts to clarify the factors having an influence on the subjective well-being of the elderly in terms of the structural components of the family system.
As far as methodology is concernd, the concept of subjective well-being is measured by the Philadelphia Geriatric Center Morale Scale consisting of 17 items. Operationally, the concept of the structural components of the family system is measured by the types of household, the presence or absence of the specific family member in the family of the elderly, and the perception of role by the elderly.
Data for the analysis were obtained from 407 elderly who took part in the Seminar, on the Welfare of the Elderly, through the questionnaire method.
Significant findings are summarized as follows :
1. The subjects' standard of living and condition of their health were positively correlated with their subjective well-being.
2. The cases where subjects were living with grandsons showed positively effects on subjective well-being. Other types of residence patterns were not related to subjective well-being.
3. The perception of roles by the elderly in the family contributed little to subjective well-being. However, their perception of roles in the community outside the family contributed positively to subjective well-being.

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従来の家事分担という視点からとらえられたのは夫の家事参加の相対的な程度の違いであった。本稿では、仕事をもつ妻がどのような方略を用い家事に対処しているのかに注目し、夫の家事遂行を、方略の一つである代替としてとらえるという視点をとった。こうすることによって、共働き家族における家事遂行についてより幅の広い認識が得られた。

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This paper explores the effect of the fmily life cycle on social networks. Togather empirical evidence, a sample survey of women in four study areas of Canberra was conducted in 1986-1987. Three hundred and ninety-four women, under 56 years of age, who were married or in a de facto relationship were intervewed. In order to examine the effect, the following sequence of life-cycle stages was formed ; (1) childless stage, (2) child-rearing stage, (3) child-educating stage, and (4) dispersal stage. Analysis of the data has revealed the following ;
(1) While women with relatives in Canberra had more frequent contact with friends and workmates in the childless stage than in the child-rearing stage, they associated with relatives and neighbours more frequently in the latter than in the former. Women without local relatives had more frequent contact with workmates in the childless stage, and with neighbours in the child-rearing stage. Such women mixed with relatives infrequently, and their frequency of contact with friends in the childless stage was almost as high as that in the child-rearing stage.
(2) Whereas women tended to expect more support from workmates in the childless stage than in the child-rearing stage, they were likely to expect more support from neighbours in the latter than in the former. The amount of support expected from relatives and friends in the childless stage was almost as great as that in the child-rearing stage.
(3) In general, women tended to expect less support in the dispersal stage than in the child-educating stage, though their frequency of contact in the former was almost as high as that in the latter.

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