The purpose of this study was to discover issues regarding the current status of community childcare support center projects, which are not noticed by supporters in their daily activities, by taking a broad view of the activities over a long period of time. A quantitative analysis of qualitative data using a text mining tool was conducted on a portion of the descriptions in the 14-year daily logbooks of a community childcare support center run by a certain NPO. Specifically, the part of information-sharing among staff called “Awareness” in the logbooks for 3,298 days from July 2003 to March 2013 and from April 2017 to March 2021 was targeted for analysis. Emphasis was placed on seasons, day of the week, year, fathers, and mothers. A correspondence analysis and co-occurrence network analysis were performed using KH Coder. The results revealed that the situation at the center is not the same throughout the year, but changes depending on the season; the contents described are different for each day of the week; the participation of fathers on weekends and activities on each day of the week are particularly likely to catch the attention of supporters; fathers are often listed together with mothers. In addition, while the contents of the logbooks differed when the management body or staff changed, some contents remained the same, and the condition of the center became more active as the activities progressed. The issues include the possibility that staff cannot pay enough attention to visitors, and also value fathers’ childcare highly or don’t view fathers as independent caregivers.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the inspection of dangerous/safe areas on crime prevention awareness by conducting a community safety map-making activity using a crime prevention walking app for watch-over volunteers. In Study 1, 30 community watch-over volunteers participated in the activities. In Study 2, 44 volunteers from the community and 26 university student volunteers participated in the activities. Questionnaire surveys were conducted before and after the activities in both Study 1 and Study 2. The results of the analysis showed that the participants’ crime prevention awareness and skills improved after the activities. Based on these results, the future direction of volunteer watch-over activities is discussed

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The purpose of this study was to examine how friendships among mothers change over time. The interviewees were nine mothers who became close friends with other mothers when their children were young and maintained close friendships after their children grew up, i.e., after they reached the age of 18 or older. The recorded narratives were analyzed using KH Coder for quantitative text analysis. Two aspects were extracted: “changes” and “no changes (maintained).” Regarding the former, the results showed that as the children grew up, both the family’s daily schedule and the topics of conversation among mom-friends shifted from child-centered to self-centered, and that the mothers’ perceptions of their relationships shifted from those of childcare providers to independent individuals. Regarding the latter, “mutual trust,” “sense of security,” and “being equal and mutually beneficial” were consistent items with no change, indicating that mothers recognize that long-term friendships in which they enjoy their children’s growth and support each other in raising their children are valuable steps toward achieving personal growth that is difficult to obtain retrospectively. In conclusion, mom-friendships that have built trust over a long period of time provide mothers with different opinions and perspectives from their own, as they respect each other’s perspectives.

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In present day Japan, child-rearing is the subject of debate on various occasions, along with issues such as the shortage of nurseries, child abuse and child-rearing neuroses and so forth. The background of these problems has been attributed to generally the lack of social support for parents, and they tend to be isolated from the rest of society. This social isolation of parents is also known as “isolated parenting,” and has become a social problem. With the advent of rapid industrial and economic growth in the country, the burdens of care work and housework has been largely laid on women, with the added influence of cultural notions of‘motherhood’and gender roles. This gender disparity has led to alarming trends of parental neurosis, child abuse, and over-involved parenting, combined with a drastic and continuous decline in fertility rate. In response to this situation, recent studies suggest reexamining the parenting styles practiced in pre-modern societies, such as “alloparenting” or “multiple parenting,” characterized by the involvement of multiple people other than the child's biological parents. This paper reviews the cases of multiple parenting documented through ethnography in the Polynesia islands, adoption practices of the Kawchodinne indigenous populations in Canada, and pseudo parenting and “village children” concepts in Japan, among others. Furthermore, it compares these practices to modern parenting styles and discusses the benefits and the possibilities of incorporating multiple parenting strategies to combat parental isolation in modern Japanese society

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