Research on a Couple's Network System in Urban Society

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The aim of this research is to clarify how degrees of urbanism affect a couple's individual network system and how a wife's employment interrelates with the couple's network system and urbanism.1. With these aims of research, we conducted a survey at the end of academic year 1998 (March, 1999) in Fukuoka City, Okayama city and Tokushima City, mailing a questionnaire to 700 samples in each place. Whether a wife has a job or not, what a couple's individual network system is like and how the household duties are shared between the couple are asked in the questionnaire. The subject was all female ranging between 30 to 49 years old. 851 answers (40.5%) were collected, of which 835 (39.8%) were effective.2. In the academic year 1999, we analyzed the data. The major findings from the analysis, whose details are described in 'A Report on Research Results', are; (1)the lower the degree of urbanism is, the bigger the number of mothers with full-time employment is. The ratio was 10.4% for Fukuoka, 16.4% for Okayama and 23.4% for Tokushima and the difference was significant. (2)the factors enabling the mothers in Tokushima to work full-time are there is less social movement and they have their own kin living in less than 30 minutes' travel. (There was no significant difference in the corresponding number of husbands' kin living nearby.) The high rate of mothers who have a profession or who work for public offices should be also included. (3)more mothers turned out to be employed whose own mothers had work when they entered an elementary school. (4)women's desire to work or not, is not consistent, and their desire to work (or not) after marriage is subject be regulated by the modes of their husbands' work.