Women and Family in Contemporary Japan

Susan D. Holloway obtained a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology and Early Childhood Education from Stanford University in 1983. She has been conducting research on Japan since 1980 and was the recipient of a Fulbright Award in 1994 to study and write about family and schooling in Japan. She is the author of Through my Own Eyes: Single Mothers and the Cultures of Poverty (with Bruce Fuller) and Contested Childhood: Diversity and Change in Japanese Preschools. Additionally, she has authored more than fifty articles and book chapters on family and schooling in cultural contexts. Holloway has taught at the University of Maryland, College Park; Harvard University; and the University of California, Berkeley, where she has been a faculty member in the Graduate School of Education since 1996.

“Japanese mothers are powerful figures: they shape not only home life but also the workings of Japanese communities, schools, and workplaces. Susan Holloway uses Japan as a lens through which to explore the broad question of how culture shapes child-rearing. Her in-depth interviews with Japanese women shed light on universal questions: how mothers imagine what makes an effective parent, how one’s own upbringing affects one’s parenting, how to preserve tradition while accommodating modern demands, and how to balance work and family. This is a fascinating book grounded in the history and anthropology of Japan which speaks to the mounting pressures on the family in the industrialized world.” – Amy Borovoy, Princeton University, author of The Too-Good Wife: Alcohol, Codependency, and the Politics of Nurturance in Postwar Japan

• 1. 'Good wives, wise mothers': parenting and family life in cultural context; 2. Locating the research in space and time; 3. What is a wise mother?; 4. Hansei: the process of self-reflection; 5. Memories of childhood; 6. Husbands: crucial partners or peripheral strangers?; 7. Shitsuke: the art of childrearing; 8. Maternal involvement in children's schooling; 9. Balancing work and family life; 10. Women and family life: ideology, experience and agency.