[Childrearing environment and fertility in contemporary Japan (author's transl)].
This study focused on the decrease in the marital fertility rate and attempted to clarify some traits in childrearing behavior which are responsible for the low fertility.  Regarding the increase in difficulties in childrearing, the author pointed out the necessity and possibility of fertility study from the viewpoint of childrearing.  The author proposed to regard childbearing behavior as a part of childrearing behavior and to explain childbearing behavior by childrearing environment which surrounds the couple's childrearing behavior and childrearing consciousness.  Childrearing environment is composed of family formation in the household, labor force status of the mother, housing conditions, nursery facilities, and physical environment in the community; these components are all closely allied.  Data obtained from 2375 mothers with preschool children were studied.  There were great differences in the degree of mother's participation in the labor foce but there was a large ratio of mothers who did not live with their parents and who wanted to work outside the home if nursery facilities could be affored.  Clearly the desire of women of reproductive age to work is very strong and the differences in the labor force participation rate are the result of insufficient socialized child care.  The authors found a stratum of women who were strongly orientated towards working but who had chosen to live with the parents as a solution to their child care problem.  We could only find small differences in fertility by family formation in the household and by work history of mother when observed.  However, when the 2 were combined, there were relatively large differences (1.94-2.65 after 10 years of marriage) which has rarely been observed in social analyses of fertility thus far.  The lowest fertility by work history was observed among women who had worked since before their marriages, and the largest differences in fertility between 2 family formation types was found among these women (1.94:2.24).  This difference in fertility can be supposed to reflect the difference in child care conditions by family formation in household.  As to the reasons for limiting births, differences were not found between these 2 family formation types.  Working mothers who relied upon their parents for child care expressed relatively greater anxiety about their child's development status than those mothers in nuclear families where child care was supplied by the nursery schools.  It is likely that the trend of working mothers will not diminish, and we must thus anticipate the limit of the mechanism of maintaining the fertility by child care supplied by cohabiting parents.  Physical environment in the community was found to be a factor in limiting childbirth and the effect was most conspicuous among women who had continued to work in the nuclear family.
Horosima
K
K
D001208:Asia; D001519:Behavior; D001723:Birth Rate; D002668:Child Rearing; D003710:Demography; D019049:Developed Countries; D004467:Economics; D004651:Employment; D005202:Asia, Eastern; D005298:Fertility; D006280:Health Workforce; D007564:Japan; D017533:Marital Status; D011153:Population; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors
Asia; Behavior; Birth Rate; Child Rearing; Demographic Factors; Developed Countries; Eastern Asia; Economic Factors; Fertility; Fertility Measurements; Fertility Rate; Human Resources; Japan; Labor Force--women; Marital Status; Population; Population Dynamics; Socioeconomic Factors