The Meiji period (1868 to 1912) saw a major shift in childrearing practices. The Meiji Restoration in 1868 caused a surge of industrialization and modernization, directing the Meiji government to construct a nation-state, which cultivated nationalism and brought on the deification of the emperor. These changes led to the formation of a family model--the ie system. Within this system, since men were expected to “carry out orders” and die for the nation-state, motherhood began to be emphasized and respected as having the primary role of childcare, overshadowing fathers in the sphere of childrearing. Part of Japan’s transition to a modern society was the enactment of its first School Law in 1872 which established state-sponsored compulsory education, thereby replacing the role of fathers in giving their children a preliminary …show more content…
occupation policy, Japan made a drastic reform to democratize the home, rejecting the prewar patriarchic ie system and stipulating respect for individuals. People began moving to the cities and, accordingly, the number of salaried workers came to exceed that of self-employed workers, causing an increase in public housing beginning in the late 1950s. Public housing is said to have promoted the domestication of women who had started working outside of the home in the immediate postwar years, but whose employment rate continuously dropped throughout the 1960s. In light of the Constitution and the civic code, which encouraged equality between husbands and wives and stipulated that marriage should be an individual’s choice, in the mid-1960s, urban nuclear families were established with “salaried workers and stay-at-home mothers with no more than two children.” Although marriage came to be established based on love and choice, the economic benefits of production and reproduction created within the housewife-salaryman model created a power hierarchy between husbands and wives, with women being subordinate to