Early child rearing in Japan: Cross‐cultural and intra‐cultural perspectives

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Abstract
Within the field of cross‐cultural developmental psychology, examinations of parenting serve to focus attention on development in the proximal context of the family and the distal context of the culture. Even though Japan is economically in the mainstream of the industrialized Western world, there are many cultural differences between Japan and Western countries; these include differences in cultural values, beliefs about children, parental behaviours and differences in the children themselves. The focus of this special issue is observational studies of early child rearing in Japan; included are cross‐cultural comparisons with the United States, Germany and France, as well as studies within Japan. The contexts of the observations reported in this special issue include homes, laboratory playrooms, and day care centres. With intra‐cultural and cross‐cultural perspectives, an updated view of Japanese child rearing in the early years is presented.