Beyond invisible motherhood : how women make decisions not to have children within the prevailing understandings of childlessness in Japan.
| dc.contributor.author | Nakamura, Yuko | en |
| dc.contributor.school | School of Social Sciences | en |
| dc.date.issued | 2007 | en |
| dc.description.abstract | Although motherhood is believed to be an essential role for Japanese women, a growing minority of women are choosing to be childfree. This thesis explores why Japanese women choose not to have children, given the strong pronatalist discourse on motherhood. Childfree women’s voices are rarely heard in society and the subject is also absent from Japanese feminism. A qualitative-interpretive study of existing narratives was undertaken to record the reasons, experiences and meaning of being childfree in Japanese society from women’s perspectives. Women in narratives identified the difficulty of combining work and family as the main reason they were childfree. Other major reasons women choose not to have children are: they reject gender inequality, once a woman has a child, gender/sex role assignment comes into her relationship with her husband/partner, husband/father becomes a breadwinner and the wife/mother is responsible for domestic work including childrearing; women choosing to be childfree value their individual fulfilment about the social role of wife/mother, they would like to be human beings or they stressed their identity in terms of their careers. | en |
| dc.description.dissertation | Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2007 | en |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/2440/69733 | |
| dc.provenance | This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exception. If you are the author of this thesis and do not wish it to be made publicly available or If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals | |
| dc.subject | childlessness social aspects Japan; women Japan; work and family Japan; sex role Japan | en |
| dc.title | Beyond invisible motherhood : how women make decisions not to have children within the prevailing understandings of childlessness in Japan. | en |
| dc.type | Thesis | en |