{"id":19371,"date":"2025-05-07T09:56:18","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T00:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/?p=19371"},"modified":"2025-05-07T15:45:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T06:45:56","slug":"%e6%97%a5%e5%b8%b8%e3%81%ae%e6%8c%a8%e6%8b%b6%e3%81%8b%e3%82%89%e5%a4%89%e3%81%88%e3%81%a6%e3%81%bf%e3%82%88%e3%81%86%e3%80%80%e4%ba%ba%e9%96%93%e7%a7%91%e5%ad%a6%e5%ad%a6%e8%a1%93%e9%99%a2-11-2-2-1-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/news\/2025\/05\/07\/19371\/","title":{"rendered":"Series : Tackling Work-Life Balance (31) Child-Rearing : When the “unexpected” is “Normal”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Child-Rearing : When the “Unexpected” is “Normal”<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

\u3000Mitsunori Ishida
\nProfessor Faculty of Letters,
\nArts and Sciences
\nWaseda University<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\"\"

\u25b2 Sending off my daughter for the last time to preschool<\/p><\/div>\n

My first child is nine years old and my second is seven, so their preschool \u201cchildcare years\u201d are over. I\u2019ve lived for 51 years, which means I\u2019ve experienced much more than just<\/span> child-rearing. Nonetheless, my memories of raising my children during their early years are still fresh. So many surprising and <\/span>transformative experiences occurred that I could write a book about them! In this short essay, I present some reflections on my research and consider my work from the perspective of raising children.<\/span><\/p>\n

My research on child-rearing has primarily involved questionnaire-based surveys of the general society. What has been most striking is the gap between<\/span> the images of child-rearing depicted in survey results and the real<\/span>–<\/span>life experiences shared by parents. For example, I conducted a questionnaire survey combined with interviews with mothers in Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture. The results were profoundly interesting, so I would like to<\/span> briefly introduce them here.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The questionnaire survey asked mothers about the happiness they felt and the frequency with which they thought about how good it was to have a child. The results showed that 50% of the mothers felt \u201cExtremely happy,\u201d 48.6% felt \u201cSomewhat happy,\u201d 1.4% felt \u201cNot so happy,\u201d and 0% selected \u201cNot at all happy.\u201d The frequency of felling glad to have had a child was 95.9% for <\/span>\u201c<\/span>often<\/span>\u201d<\/span>, 4.1% for <\/span>\u201c<\/span>sometimes,<\/span>\u201d<\/span> and 0% for <\/span>\u201c<\/span>very rarely<\/span>\u201d<\/span> and <\/span>\u201c<\/span>never<\/span>\u201d. <\/span>In other words, almost all mothers (98.6%) reported feeling happy, and 95.9% reported reflecting several times on the <\/span>positive experience of having<\/span> a child.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

\u25b2 Wrote and published book<\/p><\/div>\n

Throughout my research career, I have looked at various social surveys, but I have never seen results such as these, where so many mothers were happy and<\/span> shared <\/span>positive opinions. Furthermore, I obtained similar results in a survey conducted among all mothers who had experienced childbirth <\/span>in <\/span>2020 and lived in a district of Matsudo City with a high birth rate.<\/span><\/p>\n

This means that sample bias did not influence the survey results. Looking at these findings, I was newly impressed by the positive impact <\/span>that the joys of childbirth had on mothers<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, when I conducted interviews with the survey respondents, the image of happiness presented by the statistics changed completely. The mothers spoke not of the happiness they derived from raising their children but rather of their actual experiences, describing their day-to-day efforts as \u201cwalking a tightrope.\u201d They could not plan for a \u201ctypical day\u201d in any way, as they had to respond to real-time changes virtually every few minutes. Moreover, the realities they constantly experienced were ones they had never encountered before. They spend their days, weeks, months confused and practically \u201cout of their heads<\/span>.<\/span>\u201d They sighed as they recounted their real situations.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, I was the same. Every day<\/span>,<\/span> I felt like I was \u201con the edge,\u201d ready to scream! For example, it took two people to bathe the infant, one waiting in the bath while<\/span> the other placed<\/span> the baby<\/span> into their hands. When one begins to raise a child, one becomes aware of these and other simple truths. But if I had been asked the survey question, \u201cAre you happy right now?\u201d I would surely have answered, \u201cYes, I\u2019m happy!\u201d This is the core truth of childrearing that we sometimes lose sight of.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

\u25b2 Author<\/p><\/div>\n

So many people living in Japan have experienced childbirth and rearing. In that case, it is a \u201cnormal\u201d thing. We still have a lovely, bright image of the happiness that comes with childbirth, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. We want everyone who has and raises children to experience joy. However, this \u201cnormalcy\u201d is often filled with the \u201cunexpected\u201d time and again in the daily lives of families with small children. In other words, the early years with a child are an intermixture of the normal with the unexpected.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, if we focus on the \u201cnormal,\u201d then we end up criticizing ourselves for being unable to raise a child \u201cnormally,\u201d that is, according to what we imagine to be the \u201cnorm.\u201d This focus also forces us to suppress and hide our complaints and dissatisfactions, as, after all, this whole thing is just part of our experience of \u201cnormal\u201d life. People around us also seem to view our situations as parents from a strict perspective, assuming that raising a child is simply \u201cnormal.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, rather than getting caught up in all that, we need to turn our thoughts to the \u201cunexpected\u201d aspects of what we are encountering. We must realize that<\/span>,<\/span> as parents with young children, we will be faced with \u201cunexpected\u201d situations, and this perspective will help us reach out to others and rely more on others for a helping hand. If the people around us can share this view, the environment for raising children would certainly be much easier and better.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u25a0 Profile \u25a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
After serving as an Associate Professor at <\/span>the <\/span>Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, <\/span>at <\/span>Waseda<\/span> University<\/span><\/span>,<\/span> <\/span>Dr. Ishida became a full Professor <\/span>in <\/span>the same faculty in<\/span><\/span> April 2016. In 2010, he received The Seventh Japanese Association of Labor Sociology (ALS) Encouragement Award. He has <\/span>authored<\/span><\/span> and published <\/span>numerous<\/span> books, <\/span>including<\/span><\/span> It\u2019s<\/span> Tough to Raise a Child \u201cNormally<\/span><\/span>,<\/span><\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/span> How to Make Friendship Less Tough<\/span><\/span>,<\/span><\/span> and<\/span><\/span> How to Get Free of Your So-Called \u201cFriends<\/span><\/span>,<\/span><\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/span> among others (all in Japanese)<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Child-Rearing : When the “Unexpected” is “Normal” \u3000Mitsunori Ishida Professor Faculty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19536,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19371"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19575,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19371\/revisions\/19575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waseda.jp\/inst\/diversity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}