Perfectly Japanese : Making Families in an Era of Upheaval

Are Japanese families in crisis? In this dynamic and substantive study, Merry Isaacs White looks back at two key moments of "family making" in the past hundred years -- the Meiji era and postwar period -- to see how models for the Japanese family have been constructed. The models had little to do with families of their eras and even less to do with families today, she finds. She vividly portrays the everyday reality of a range of families: young married couples who experience fleeting togetherness until the first child is born; a family separated by job shifts; a family with a grandmother as babysitter; a marriage without children Figures......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction: Are Japanese Families in Crisis?......Page 12 1. Why Families Are a National Security Issue......Page 30 2. Family under Construction: One Hundred Years at Home......Page 53 3. Families in Postwar Japan: Democracy and Reconstruction......Page 74 4. Elemental Families: Starting with Children......Page 110 5. Life Choices for Women and Men: The Bounded Realities of Reproduction......Page 133 6. Twenty-First-Century Blues: Aging in Families......Page 165 7. Marketing the Bite-Size Family: Consuming Images, Supporting Realities......Page 194 Conclusion: Exceptions Are the Rule: Families as Models of Diversity......Page 216 Notes......Page 224 Bibliography......Page 240 Index......Page 256 An official at the Ministry of Health and Welfare listened as I asked about apparently "pronatalist" social policies, seeming to many to be strategies for increasing the birthrate. Merry Isaacs White. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 229-243) And Index.