Paper short abstract:

Based on long-term fieldwork since 2015 among dozens of middle-class mothers in their 30s in Tokyo and Shanghai, this paper explores the similarities and differences in the ways that women in urban Japan and China understand, experience, and negotiate anxiety in motherhood.

Paper long abstract:

Intensive parenting is pervasive among urban families in Japan. This culture is imbued with anxiety, especially among middle-class mothers. While this phenomenon in Japan is frequently studied in light of conditions in western societies, it has seldom been explored by juxtaposing Japan with other East Asian societies where anxiety in motherhood also appears to be pervasive. Western conditions are useful reference points. However, certain features of a group or a society will only become prominent if we compare it with others that seem to be similar. Based on my long-term fieldwork among dozens of middle-class mothers in their thirties in Tokyo and Shanghai since 2015, this paper explores how women of these two societies understand, experience, and negotiate motherhood anxiety similarly and differently. Following psychological anthropologists such as Richard Shweder and Teresa Kuan who see emotion as “the whole story” (Shweder 2003; Kuan 2011, 2015), the paper argues that, on the one hand, mothers’ anxiety in both locales emerges at the intersections between the longstanding gendered expectation for women to be responsible and caring mothers, their own desire to secure a better future for their children by helping them gain a competitive edge, and their growing neoliberal consciousness that privileges individuality, self-fulfillment and independence. On the other hand, how they experience and negotiate such anxiety differs due to factors including the kind of support mechanisms available to them at various levels, how they feel about being “middle-class” in their respective societies, and how they anticipate the future in which their children will live. A comparative approach between two East Asian societies with apparently similar anxious mothering cultures will enable us to see through some taken-for-granted indigenous perceptions such as what constitutes a good woman/mother and inspire alternative ways to deal with this at once universal and socioculturally specific emotional experience.