What do Japanese Experts say About how to Discipline Children?: Through the Analysis of Japanese Parenting Magazines

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Introduction

“Ikujifuan” (Childrearing anxiety), defined as an accumulated emotional condition of maternal tiredness, frustration, anxiety, and concerns, has been receiving national media attention in Japan since the 1980s. This childrearing stress and anxiety often results in negative spillover such as child abuse, especially in instances where the mother does not know how to appropriately discipline their child. According to a recent survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in Japan (2014), “disciplining children” was the number one concern for mothers of Japanese preschoolers. In particular, many Japanese mothers were looking for guidance regarding how and when to “shikaru” (firmly reprimand) their children without undermining the closeness in the mother-child relationship.

One possible reason for why Japanese mother’s struggle with discipline may be advice received from experts who are influenced by scientific knowledge of child development based in the West. Japanese experts have been advising parents to cultivate Western-influenced social values of autonomy and assertiveness, which can contradict Japanese cultural values of compliance and cooperation. In addition, advice from experts in Japanese childrearing books and magazines often reflect the traditional view of children as innocent, which may lead mothers to be permissive and child-oriented. The purpose of this study is to examine the specific advice related to discipline given to parents of young children in recent Japanese parenting magazines. The findings from our research may offer insight into how experts’ advice is formed through the influence of Western and non-Western cultural orientations.

Methods

Two parenting and long-standing history parenting magazines in Japan, Hiyoko-kurabu (Chic club) and Baby-mo (Baby and mother), published in the last three years (2017 - 2019), will be content-analyzed. Because Baby-mo is a quarterly magazine while Hiyoko-kurabu is a monthly magazine, we will select four issues per year for Hiyoko-kurabu so that we can have equal numbers of issues from each magazine. In the end, a total of 24 issues will be selected. Using a table of contents page for each magazine, we will identify articles that focus on giving advice related to disciplining children.

Ethnographic Content Analysis (Altheide, 1996) will be used to determine themes and subthemes related to discipline in experts’ advice. In this approach, categories based on prior research and existing theoretical frameworks initially guide the study, but it is expected that others will emerge throughout the analysis. Upon reviewing existing parenting literature, we will include categories based on Baumrind's parenting styles, "responsiveness" and "control.” We will also include categories of discipline based on a Japanese parenting study “child-centered, child-initiated, and parent-directed (Takasaki, 2016). We will use a qualitative analysis software, MAXQDA.

Here is the plan of our analysis
(1)Gathering parenting magazines (completed)
(2)Selecting articles for analysis (ongoing)
(3)Reading each article carefully and making a list of the advice that is presented in each article with a few descriptive examples (October, November 2020)
(4)Placing the advice in predetermined categories (e.g., “Responsiveness”); Identifying themes by open-coding within each of the categories data (December 2020, January 2021)

Authors

• Noriko Porter, Washington State University
  Presenting Author

• Keiko Tanabe, ??????
  Non-Presenting Author