The Masculinity of Unmarried Sons as Family Caregivers: Changing Family Dynamics and Gender Order in Japan

Abstract

Focusing on unmarried sons caring for their parents, this study deals with changing family relations and gender order in contemporary Japan. Marriage avoidance among Japanese men has become prevalent since the collapse of the bubble economy and the employment fluctuations in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the Long-Term Care Insurance system initiated in 2000 has served to buttress the normative social practice of children acting as caregivers for their parents. It is in this social context that unmarried male family caregivers have emerged. In order to elucidate this change, this study presents the results of ethnographic research conducted in Tokyo with respect to unmarried men engaged in caring for their parents. Then it goes on to analyze the circumstances by which unmarried sons become caregivers for their parents and illustrates the influence of this phenomenon on the gender order of Japan by employing R.W. Connells analytical concept of hegemonic masculinity. It first examines the manner in which engagement in parent caregiving diminishes unmarried mens masculinity. When viewed in terms of hegemonic masculinity, these men without female partners come to occupy a lower social status as they engage in care work, a domain traditionally considered to be feminine. Second, it looks at how the parental caregiving by unmarried male children operates as an alternative form of masculinity with the possibility to challenge hegemonic masculinity. It argues that the increasing participation of men in parent caregiving in Japan not only undermines the hegemony of salaryman masculinity, but also reveals the striking possibility for transformation in the gender order by hinting at the creation of an alternative form of masculinity.