Parental Well-being: Comparing Germany and Japan

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Hans Bertram; Dr. Barbara Holthus, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 256588233

The special role and importance of parents in society makes studies with particularly generalizable and policy-relevant results a necessity, even though they are still understudied in happiness- and well-being research. The well-being and life satisfaction of individuals within a society is first and foremost seen as dependent upon how wishes and ideals can be attuned to reality (Sen 2007). It is the capabilities of people that are seen as the basis. To have opportunities and capabilities however does not necessarily lead to an increase in subjective well-being. Chances for actualization and possibilities of a person can be understood as the freedom to well-being. Under the direction of Hans Bertram, Sens well-being concept was used for a German study in parental well-being in 2009. As it is one of the strong points of Sens capability approach to analyze the well-being of an individual in relation to its environment and to make it globally comparable, we chose to compare the results of the German study with Japan. Parallel trends in the demographic development as well as in regards to structural and social policy changes have already prompted several comparisons of Japan and Germany. Both countries face severe challenges due to population aging and similar low fertility rates. Japan and Germany resemble each other in regards to the reforms of their retirement systems, their care insurance system, and in the precarity of labor employment. As the circumstances for parents both in Japan as well as Germany have significantly changed in the last few decades, we in particular analyze in this project the well-being of mothers and fathers, who have at least one child under the age of six years, in Japan and Germany. The German Institute for Japanese Studies Tokyo has replicated the German research on parental well-being by Bertram and Spiess (2011) and conducted a nationwide survey in Spring 2012. Goal of this project is to compare the parental well-being in Germany and Japan on the basis of these datasets. The replication of the survey instrument makes the analysis of similarities and differences between the countries possible and thus allows, due to its methodological uniqueness, a direct country comparison. The comparison focuses on different dimensions of the well-being of mothers and fathers. We generated hypotheses for the employment and partnership well-being as well as for the connection between personality and psychological and physiological well-being of the parents. Also the satisfaction with social (family) policies is to be analyzed. In a second step, we aim to examine if the multidimensional concept of parental well-being, as developed in the German study, can be verified with this cross-country comparison or if certain aspects of well-being are dependent upon the national context.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria