Parental Well-being: Comparing Germany and Japan

父母在社会中的特殊角色和重要性使得具有特别普遍的和与政策相关的结果的研究成为必要，尽管他们在幸福和福祉研究中仍未得到充分的研究。社会中个人的福祉和生活满足感首先被视为取决于愿望和理想如何能够与现实相协调(Sen 2007)。被视为基础的是人的能力。然而，拥有机会和能力并不一定会增加主观幸福感。一个人实现的机会和可能性可以理解为幸福的自由。在汉斯·伯特伦的指导下，Sens幸福感概念在2009年被用于德国的一项关于父母幸福感的研究。由于Sens能力方法的优势之一是分析个人的幸福感与其所处环境的关系，并使其具有全球可比性，因此我们选择将德国的研究结果与日本进行比较。在人口发展以及结构和社会政策变化方面的平行趋势已经促使人们对日本和德国进行了几次比较。由于人口老龄化和类似的低生育率，两国都面临着严峻的挑战。日本和德国在退休制度、护理保险制度和劳动力就业方面的改革都很相似。由于日本和德国父母的情况在过去几十年里都发生了显著变化，我们在这个项目中特别分析了日本和德国至少有一个六岁以下孩子的父母的幸福。东京德国日本研究所复制了伯特伦和斯皮斯(2011年)对德国父母幸福感的研究，并在2012年春季进行了一项全国性调查。该项目的目标是基于这些数据集比较德国和日本的父母幸福感。该调查工具的复制使分析各国之间的相似和不同成为可能，因此，由于其方法的独特性，可以直接进行国别比较。比较的重点是父母幸福感的不同维度。我们提出了关于父母的就业和伴侣幸福感以及人格与心理和生理幸福感之间的联系的假设。此外，还需要分析对社会(家庭)政策的满意度。在第二步，我们的目标是检查德国研究中提出的父母幸福感的多维概念是否可以通过这种跨国比较来验证，或者幸福感的某些方面是否依赖于国家背景。

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.