Nucleation of the Family in Japan : Present and Future:-A Study in Relation to the Rate of Nuclear Family Households-

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According to the National Censuses, the proportion of nuclear family households to the entire family households in Japan was 55.3 per cent in 1920 and 63.4 per cent in 1970 respectively. Shortly, it increased about 8 per cent in a span of 50 years. This number of 8 per cent gives us an impression that nucleation of the family in Japan is not so serious as widely circulated. To be sure, as far as these figures are concerned, the progress of nucleation must be said to be slow in tempo. We must not, however, be deceived by statistical figures. First, it is partially because of the recent increase of one-person households that the percentage of nuclear family households has not shown marked increase. If one-person households are eliminated from the calculation, the proportion of nuclear family households rises remarkably. Second, a quite different picture emerges when numbers of nuclear family households and extended family households are compared directly with each other. The ratio of nuclear family households to extended family households was 1.4 : 1 in 1920 and 2.5 : 1 in 1970 respectively. Third, what is particularly noticeable is that the number of extended family households including both grandparents has been decreasing rapidly in the past 10 years, whereas the number of those including only a grandparent left almost remains on the same level. These facts seem to be enough to suggest that the nucleation of the family is now going on in Japan at a considerable pace and that it has been occurring in the way that young married couples prefer neolocal residence, rather than in the way that an existing three generational family splits into two nuclear families. There is, however, another evidence which seems to show that there still exists a hardly negligible tendency toward the preference for the three generational family. According to the governmental opinion researches on the old age which where carried out in 1969, 1971 and 1973, it was made clear that overwhelming majority of Japanese old people prefer living with their married children to living apart from them and that they prefer living with their married sons to their married sons to their married daughters. These opinions held by Japanese old people give us an impression that the traditional family system based on patrilineal descent and patrilocal residence still remains strongly in Japanese culture, which cannot be rooted out so easily as noised abroad, and, accordingly, will survive on equal intensity in the future. But can it be supported? Doubtful. First, we have to pay attention to the fact that such opinions as mentioned above are those held by people aged 50 and over who were born roughly before 1920. They are the prewar generation who, brought up and educated by traditionally oriented parents and teachers, have internalized enough the traditional family system orientations. Second, in connection with this, it must be noted that the forms of the family in a given period of time are the reflection of the past, in a sense that families existing in the present time are those formed by husbands-fathers and wives-mothers who were born years ago. Thus, the conditions of the family investigated in 1970 National Census are more or less reflecting value orientations of those people who were born in prewar time. In the traditional family system, one of the sons, ordinarily the eldest, is made an heir, who takes a wife and lives with his parents in the same household, whereas his brothers, when they grow up, leave their home to form their own families of orientation, this is to say, unclear families. Thus, the proportion of nuclear family households to the entire family households in a given time is affected by the number of children, especially male children, each family has.
日本社会学会の論文

Nucleation of the Family in Japan : Present and Future:-A Study in Relation to the Rate of Nuclear Family Households-

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日本社会学会 | 論文

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