The family and family sociology in Japan

The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the history and current status of family sociology in Japan. A brief history of the Japanese family, which was institutionalized by the Meiji government in the latter half of the nineteenth century, will be offered. The institutional family is referred to as ie in Japanese. Before the end of the Second World War, Japanese scholars were unable to discuss the ie institution freely as a sociological issue. Objective analysis of the family as a social group began in earnest after the war, when the ie institution was abolished as part of the process of amending the civil law. In the postwar period, a time of great economic activity, the family developed from the traditional patrilineal stem-family system into the conjugal or nuclear family system. Today, however, influenced by the feminist movement and other changes in the goals and expectations of the younger generation, family sociology is beginning to concern itself with the family not simply as a group, but as a lifestyle in which the aspirations of the various family members can be effectively realized.     

Unlocking the family secret in family play therapy

Family play therapy combines play therapy with family systems therapy. When family secrets are revealed in a family setting, with play to cushion the family's anxiety, families have the opportunity to resolve long-standing intrapsychic and interpersonal difficulties that impede the psychological well-being of both children and parents. Family play therapy effectively reduces symptomatic behavior in children in an age-appropriate manner—an advantage over family therapy that may be geared to adult cognitive levels. It also gradually shifts the family to a systems perspective of its problems in a non-threatening way, thereby facilitating the child's connection to his or her primary caretakers.Ms. Eaker is a psychotherapist in private practice in Family Systems Theory, and therapist for the United Federation Teachers' Stress Management Program and various Employee Assistance Programs, and a PhD candidate.     

Internal family systems therapy for children in family therapy

This article presents a developmentally supported implementation of Internal Family Systems Therapy for school-age children and their families. Relevant developmental characteristics of children are described. Suggestions for working with parents, child-oriented interventions, and a case example are presented.     

What about the family in family therapy research?*

Family therapists are frequently criticised for not publishing any substantiation of the effectiveness of their therapeutic interventions. This paper discusses why clinicians do not evaluate their work through examining current recommendations for family therapy evaluation, and the effects of these recommendations on the family under study. We provide some criteria specific to the family which will assist clinicians in selecting measurement instruments to evaluate family therapy. These relate to ethics, parsimony and design features of the study. The complexity of family therapy evaluation must be addressed if more clinicians are to do evaluation.     

When is a family a family? Evidence from survey data and implications for family policy

This article examines the correspondence between common assumptions about the American family and actual patterns. The assessment is based on national data on individuals, households, and families. Findings indicate that the coresident nuclear model should be considereda model rather thanthe model of family. Past as well as current marital ties need to be considered in defining “family,” and divorce rather than death should be the expected cause of losing the main breadwinner in the family, except among elderly women. Parent-child ties to either young or adult children often span separate households. Coresidents can include individuals other than nuclear family members, and change rather than stability is the modal pattern in living arrangements. Rather than shaping concepts of the family from a single mold, policy makers and researchers are better advised to recognize the diversity and fluidity in family and household structures. Her major research interests include economics of the family, intergenerational transmission, intergenerational transfers, labor economics, and poverty and welfare. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1977.     

Social network and family business: Uncovering hybrid family firms

What does it mean for a private enterprise in China to be embedded in a family? Our purpose here is twofold: (1) use social network analysis to describe what it means for a firm to be embedded in a family, (2) reveal from the application a new kind of firm, not family, yet akin to family. Armed with data on a large probability sample of private enterprises — a third of which meet ownership and employment criteria of being family businesses — we uncover a category of “hybrid family firms” that look modern in the style of firms that exclude family, but operate socially in ways similar to family firms. Our conclusion from summary statistics on the sample is that there are no differences in average performance level or network advantage for the three categories of businesses: family firms, hybrid family firms, and family-excluded firms. The fact that CEOs of family firms and hybrid family firms more often turn to family as key business contacts is a fact about network composition that raises no question about network mechanisms. Whether the CEO turns to more or fewer family contacts, government help is more likely with stronger political connections, and business success and survival are more likely with a large, open network. That said, the look-modern, act-traditional hybrid family firms stand alone in prospering with a CEO embedded in a closed business network. Recognition of hybrid family firms adds to the literature’s illustrations of social network analysis used to distinguish types of businesses and business people, and extends the population of organizations within which governance and strategy are likely to be better understood when viewed through a family logic.     

Selfobject functions of the family: Implications for family therapy

The application of Self-Psychology theory to family functioning adds to our models of understanding and intervention in family therapy. This article develops a theory of the family as a supraordinate selfobject and explores diverse clinical applications of the theory. The family as a selfobject matrix enhances the self development of the child by the provision of continuity through the maintenance of proximity over time, and by an enhanced quality and quantity of selfobject responsiveness for the individual. This application of Self Psychology theory has wide implications for family therapy with children in foster care, family therapy with elderly couples coping with dementia in one spouse, and family therapy as a component of treatment with suicidal adolescents.     

The binuclear family

A new family form,the binuclear family, is emerging with the rise in divorce rates. To aid in its institutionalization and in lifting from it the stigma of social deviance, some new terminology was coined and a study of the dynamics of continuing postdivorce parenting relationships conducted. Reported here are findings on the reorganization of familial homes with court-awarded joint custody. It was found that most of the former spouses in the sample continued to relate after divorce, forming two separate households joined together by a coparental bond.     

Ethnic family structure

Using information from large-scale statistical collections and elaborations from ethnographic studies, this paper examines the underlying social processes and structures of migrant families in Australia. Migrants in Australia are often confronted by family values and behavior which run counter to their own. For some migrants, particularly those from the United Kingdom and Western European countries, there is little conflict as Australian family values and behavior approximate their own; the feminine conception of the family is not foreign to them. On the other hand, migrants from Mediterranean countries and from Asia are likely to face a clash between the masculine conception of the family and the dominant feminine conception they find in Australia. Economic structure also often forces an accommodation to the feminine conception of the family. For example, migrant women in Australia are heavily involved in the work force outside the family circle, and, in the main, have relatively low fertility. Age at marriage is increasing and many single women of migrant origin are being educated at the tertiary level and are working before marriage. These changes necessarily expose women and youths to the dominant social values and increase their economic independence, thus disrupting the conventional male family authority. There is evidence of a degree of accommodation to Australian patterns of behavior in migrant groups more inclined to a masculine conception of the family. In other areas, however, which are less directly related to economic pressure, migrant values have been far less accommodating. There is still a high level of endogamy, the 1st birth occurs soon after marriage, divorce rates are low, and the aged are very likely to live with their children. Large migrant groups have been able to maintain these patterns of behavior through the formation of ethnic substructures that form their principal social environment. In the longer term, however, their children are deeply exposed to the dominant Australian social environment.     

Class and family

This paper seeks to make a contribution to debates on ‘class analysis’, as well as exploring the role of the family in class reproduction. A broad distinction is drawn between primarily ‘economic’ and primarily ‘culturalist’ accounts of class reproduction. It is argued that despite their differences, these accounts also share many similarities. In particular, both approaches identify the role of the family as central to the reproduction of class. However, economic and cultural accounts cannot be integrated into a single ‘theory’, one reason being that the mechanisms whereby economic and cultural capital are transmitted are different. Nevertheless, economic and cultural approaches may be (and should be) used in combination with each other in order to develop a full account of the reproduction of class inequalities. In developing these arguments, a critique is offered of current theories of ‘individualisation’ in relation to class and the family. The argument is illustrated by two ‘worked examples’; teenage motherhood, and the patterning of mothers’ employment.