Suchergebnisse

This article attempts to analyse the power and role structure of the contemporary Japanese stem family in rural areas. Emphasis is placed on the patterns of succession to household directorship and the processes of the gradual role transformation in farm households across the family life cycle and historical changes. Longitudinal data collected in 1965 and 1975 in the rural community of Kanagawa prefecture adjacent to the Tokyo metropolis were the basis of this study. Three major findings emerge. First, the allocation and generational transfer of power and authority takes place throughout the developmental process of the family life cycle, and is shaped by a delicate balancing of traditional sex roles and generational roles. Second, by analysing trends in the transfer age of household directorship domains, are as especially in the tendency to greatly delay transfer, we can grasp that the stem family in Japan continues to reproduce itself even under the influence of rapid and complex historical changes ( demographic, institutional or ideological, and socioeconomic). Third, and most important is the finding that both life cycle and historical factors combine to contribute to the process of transfer.