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Introduction: Understanding the complexity of today's intergenerational relationships -- Changes in the social environment surrounding married children and their parents -- A new perspective on the intergenerational relationship : individualized marriage -- Patrilocality and matrilocality -- Paternal coresidence and maternal coresidence -- Support from married children to their parents : focus on individualized marriage -- Support from parents to their adult children : women as family kin-keepers -- Conclusion: Multidimensional intergenerational relationships.

There is a stereotypical view that East Asian cultures value familism and filial piety, regarding elderly dependence on children as morally desirable. The present study, examining postwar Japan as a case, shows that the social changes this country has undergone have transformed people's attitudes such that more and more people are seeing elderly dependence on children as less desirable. It is suggested that in order to understand attitudinal changes towards intergenerational relationships in postwar Japan, two research frameworks are necessary: one that takes public welfare systems into consideration as a context where such relationships are placed, and another that distinguishes financial dependence from dependence for personal care. Examining surveys conducted in the last four decades, it is argued that attitudes towards finance changed far earlier than those towards personal care did, and that these attitudinal changes are closely related to the extent to which public welfare systems have developed.