Japanese children's perceptions of their parents

Abstract

The perception of parental roles by 380 fifth- and sixth-grade boys and girls in Japan was examined. The median age of the children was 11 years 9 months. Analyses explored differences attributable to the sex of the child, whether the child lived in Tokyo or in a small city in northern Honshu, and whether the mother was employed outside the home. Data show that the perception of parental roles is not sensitive to mothers' working, that families are organized somewhat more traditionally in the small city that in Tokyo, and there is a small same-sex parent preference on a number of variables. Taken as a whole the data confirm the overwhelming importance of the Japanese mother in the day-to-day lives of the children, document the relative failure of the Japanese father to secure a central role in the life of his children, and demonstrate the significant degree to which Japanese industralization and Westernization have transformed what one writer (Wagatsuma, 1977) has called the Confucian Japanese family.