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The article explores the relationship with data from a nation with a substantially different social context, Japan. American research on suicide has been based largely on American samples. Little is known about whether the results of this work, such as the link between divorce and suicide, will be replicated for nations with substantially different institutional and cultural structures. The present paper tests the marital integration theory of suicide with data from Japan. Briefly, the marital integration theory holds that as bonds to marriage weaken, suicide risk increases. Further, the kinship system in Japan is apparently more integrated than it is in the United States. For example, in Japan 37.3% of the elderly lived in three-generation households compared to only 0.5% of the elderly in the United States. Durkheim's theory of social integration and suicide emphasizes the subordination of the individual to group life as a prophylactic against suicide. Individualism in family life was emerging as the pattern for the future at the time of Durkheim's study. It is anticipated that a rising divorce rate should affect suicide risk for several groups: divorced persons; separated persons who are contemplating divorce; married persons with severe marital problems; and the children in such families.

The objective of this paper is to examine, through relevant literature, the extent to which changes in values and relational orientations are taking place in the Japanese family system, particularly in the area of child-rearing practices. It is postulated that lineal orientation rather than an individualistic or collateral principle has been, and still is, predominant in the parent-child relationship and that the shift toward individuality and independence of the child will yet take some time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine two aspects of recent increases in marriage preceded by pregnancy (bridal pregnancy) in Japan. Using information on 28,973 respondents to the Japanese National Fertility Surveys, we first demonstrate that increases in bridal pregnancy between 1970 and 2002 were concentrated among women without postsecondary education. We then estimate multinomial logistic regression models to evaluate change over time in the association between bridal pregnancy and patterns of educational pairing. Results indicate that bridal pregnancy is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of nonnormative educational pairing and that this relationship has become more pronounced over time. We conclude by evaluating these results in comparative context and speculating about the implications for subsequent family change in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a very novel form of life in Japan, apartment life has become the subject of much research by Japanese sociologists in recent years. This paper attempts to examine critically the findings of such research, especially concerning privacy and social life. Two types of apartment dwellers are identified: the ‘sociability type,’ who loves positive human relations resulting from physical propinquity, and the ‘privacy type,’ who recoils from such relations and prefers to be let alone. In a middle-class apartment house complex in the suburbs of Tokyo, the privacy type who, though not necessarily unsociable, does not want mere physical propinquity to determine the choice of his friends and the pattern of his social life, is found more frequently than the sociability type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining data gathered in a survey of Japanese women's attitudes toward their various roles with the findings of a comparative study of childrearing and child behavior in Japan and the United States, the present paper examines how social structural and cultural variables affect Japanese women's maternal values and behavior. We find that the maternal role is considered the central one for women, who emphasize it at the expense of their conjugal role, fostering in the process a high degree of interdependence with their children. However, our findings provide evidence of a potential for change by indicating that, in Japan. just as in the United States, environmental complexity produces individualistic values, reducing adherence to traditional ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationships between single parenthood and student achievement in Japan. The study uses sixth-grade data from the 2013 National Assessment of Academic Ability and the Detailed Survey, which was the first nationally representative parental survey collected through schools in Japan. The results indicate that children of single-mother and single-father families perform academically lower than children of two-parent families. For children living in single-mother families, more than 50% of the educational disadvantage was explained by a lack of economic resources. For children living in single-father families, the educational disadvantage was explained more by a lack of parenting resources, measured by discussions at home, supervision at home, and involvement in school, than economic resources. These findings suggest that the gendered labor force and division of labor among spouses in Japanese society may deprive parents of the ability to buffer the negative relationship between single parenthood and children's educational achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employment has become increasingly precarious in developed countries, meaning that, for many young adults, jobs provide neither benefits nor security, more work is part time, and employers are increasingly hiring workers from temporary help agencies and contract companies rather than as employees of their own company. These changes in employment relations have profound effects on gender roles and on family transitions of young adults, especially young men and in particular in countries such as Japan, where there are rigid family norms and the male-breadwinner tradition still prevails. The authors examined the effects of the experience of non-regular work on the timing of marriage and whether this differs by sex. Using recent life history data from Japan, they found that men working in non-regular jobs are especially likely to postpone marriage. The implications of the growth of precarious work for changes in work and family institutions in Japan are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examined relationships between single parenthood and mothers' time with children in Japan. Using data from the 2011 National Survey of Households with Children (N = 1,926), they first demonstrate that time spent with children and the frequency of shared dinners are significantly lower for single mothers than for their married counterparts. For single mothers living alone, less time with children reflects long work hours and work-related stress. Single mothers coresiding with parents spend less time with children and eat dinner together less frequently than either married mothers or their unmarried counterparts not living with parents, net of (grand)parental support, work hours, income, and stress. The findings suggest that rising divorce rates and associated growth in single-mother families may have a detrimental impact on parents' time with children in Japan and that the relatively high prevalence of intergenerational coresidence among single mothers may do little to temper this impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors extend comparative research on educational differences in divorce by analyzing data from Korea. A primary motivation was to assess whether the theoretically unexpected negative educational gradient in divorce in Japan is also observed in Korea. Using vital statistics records for marriages and divorces registered between 1991 and 2006, the authors calculated cumulative probabilities of divorce, by marriage cohort (N = 5,734,577) and educational attainment. The results indicated that the relationship between education and divorce was negative even in the earliest cohort and that this negative gradient has become more pronounced in more recent cohorts. Contrary to expectations, however, little evidence was found that the concentration of divorce at lower levels of education was exacerbated by the Asian economic crisis in the late 1990s. The authors discuss these findings in light of conventional emphases on the costs of divorce and highlight the importance of better understanding this distinctive east Asia pattern of divorce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates change in gender beliefs in Japan during a period of economic hard times in the late 1990s. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme on the Japanese population from 1994 (n = 1,054) and 2002 (n = 872), we examined how cohort replacement and intracohort change contributed to changes in gender beliefs. We found important differences from the patterns of change reported for many Western countries, namely, a decoupling between societal trends in the female labor force participation rate and beliefs about gender. Such differences may be attributable to factors such as the high societal valuation of the housewife role compared to that in other postindustrial countries and sanctions against full-time employment for women in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates the relevance of a popular emphasis on the benefits of extended coresidence with parents as an explanation for the trend toward later marriage in Japan. Estimating hazard models for the transition to first marriage separately by gender, living arrangements, and birth cohort, I find that the trend toward later marriage is indeed more pronounced among young men and women living with parents. Conditional on coresidence, however, there is little evidence that access to parental provision of financial resources and domestic services is negatively associated with marriage. I suggest alternative scenarios in which parental resources may contribute to later marriage by facilitating children's independence rather than by keeping them at home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using pooled cross-sectional data from recent censuses and wage surveys, age-specific models of marriage prevalence are estimated in order to examine whether rapid changes in the marital behavior of Japanese women reflect delayed marriage or an increase in the proportion who will never marry. Results indicate that higher wages for females, higher educational attainment, and recency of cohort are associated with lower marital prevalence at ages 30-34, consistent with an interpretation of increasing nonmarriage. Given the rapid pace with which Japan's population is projected to age, the rarity of nonmarital childbearing, and the relative absence of family alternatives to marriage, an increase in the proportion of those who never marry would have potentially major social, economic, and demographic consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes changes in norms of filial care for elderly parents and expectations of old-age support from children in Japan. Although a number of studies have analyzed the weakening of multigeneritional coresidence patterns in Japan, focusing especially on households in which elderly parents reside with adult children. The data derive principally from two sets of questions about caring for one's elderly parents and receiving oldage care from one's children. These questions were asked of currently married women of reproductive age. Responses to the first set of questions are characterized as reflecting norms of filial care for parents, and responses to the second set of questions are characterized as reflecting expectations of oldage care from children. Japan's transformation into an advanced it industrial nation has been accompanied by challenges in intergenerational relations within the family that, while unique in certain respects, bear similarities to the historical experience of Western industrial, nations.

The article evaluates the selection and causal explanations for the mortality patterns of single Japanese. A comparison of mortality patterns by marital status in Japan revealed that levels of mortality experienced by single Japanese have been staggeringly high in comparison with those of married Japanese or of singles elsewhere. The author concludes that it is naive to believe that the excess mortality experienced, by Japanese singles over the past several decades has arisen solely from selection or solely from causal factors. Indeed, as has been concluded by many researchers in the past, it seems likely that both types of explanations have operated together to produce higher mortality among unmarried groups. The findings suggest that the relative importance of the two types of explanations has probably not remained constant over time or across location. An analysis of Japanese marriages--particularly arranged marriages in the middle of the 20th century indicates that the screening out of mentally and physically disabled persons was an important component of the marriage process.

The article presents a study that examined the extent to which contact with husband's and wife's parents affects opinions held by adults on such issues as gender roles, intergenerational relations and socialization goals in contemporary Japan. Virtually all family scholars agree that one of the principal roles assigned to families is socialization, that is the process whereby individuals learn and maintain the norms, values, and customs of a society. The traditional family system in Japan almost mandated parents/fathers to control their children's marriages because the ultimate goal was to secure continuation of the patrilineal family line. While the arranging of marriages has changed, it is still the case that marriage unites two families in a myriad of ways more traditional opinions. The context in this study is contemporary Japan, a society with substantial variations in the amount of contact adults have with their own and their spouse's parents. The data set is an April 1988 national survey on family issues. The study observed that the effect of living with parents is clear and expected.

Two hundred middle-aged, middle-class women in suburban cities in the United States and Japan art, compared with regard to their attitudes toward and behavior in extramarital sexual relations. The primary difference between American and Japanese women in this regard seems to lie in their attitudes rather than in their experiences. The relatively permissive sexual norms in American society have induced many women to approve of EMS (extramarital sexual relations) and to perceive opportunities for it, though they have not removed all the inhibition to engage in the act itself. In a restrictive culture, women tend to feel confined to a formal family system from which they are psychologically alienated. They do not approve of EMS, but once exposed to an opportunity, they are inclined to be emotionally involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differential socialization experiences resulting in a "transformation of identity" is seen to be an intervening variable between social mobility and kinship solidarity. The hypothesis that, when occupationally based pressure for transformation of identity is greatest (i. e., occupational mobility between working or farm class and middle class), there will be a weakening of kinship solidarity, was tested on a comparable sample of American and Japanese students. Findings supported the hypothesis for the American sample but not for the Japanese sample. The great social changes occurring in Japan during the twentieth century is seen to be a factor accounting for differential socialization experiences for the Japanese middle class and its consequent low kinship solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stem family in Japan is seemingly not consonant with the idea of life cycle which has produced important contributions to the study of the conjugal family, but the life cycle pattern of the Japanese family can be described as having three distinct stages which are manifest in the sequence of the role complex unique to it. A similar analysis is attempted with regard to the Chinese joint family. A new set of cycle stages is developed in order to cope with the changing status of the contemporary Japanese family. Thus, extensive applicability of the developmental framework is demonstrated for a cross-cultural study of the family in world revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]