A Social Survey on "Pater Absconditus" Phenomena and Changes of "Paternal Function"

自20世纪60年代初以来，一些心理学家、精神分析学家和社会学家指出了发达社会家庭中存在的一种称为“父亲缺席”的流行趋势。他们认为，这种趋势可能会对青少年的社会化产生一些负面影响，但是，不仅判断“父亲缺席”的标准，而且概念本身也是模糊的，现在需要研究的是父亲的功能在现实中是如何发挥的，以及什么样的条件会影响青少年对父亲角色的认知，作者在三所初中学校进行了一项社会调查，在岛根县的一个城市的高中。本研究以361名小学生及其父亲为研究对象，研究结果发现：（1）父亲对自己的角色（除了社会化者的“模范”角色外），大多数都有较好的评价，但子女对父亲的评价却偏低。（2）在影响儿童对父亲角色表现认知的因素中，有两个因素尤为重要：一是父亲角色的可见性以及儿童地位的可观察性，二是母亲对父亲角色表现的评价。（3）母亲对父亲存在的认同主要取决于母亲对父亲角色的评价，而不是父亲的角色表现。因此，提交人发现，儿童或青年的承认至少分两个步骤，首先是他/她自己的最初承认，其次是通过母亲的承认进行修改，最后是固定的承认。

Since the beginning of the 1960s, some psychologists, psychoanalysts and sociologists have pointed out a certain current trend called 'Pater Absconditus' in the families in advanced societies. They argued that this trend might have some negative influences on socialization of the youths.However, not only the criterion for judging of 'Pater Absconditus' but the concept itself have been ambiguous, and it is now needed to investigate how paternal functions are in reality, and what kind of conditions have influences on youths' visibility of their fathers' actual roles.The author made a social survey on this point at three junior high schools in a city in Shimane Prefecture. Respondents were 361 pupils and their fathers.The findings are as follows ;(1)While fathers estimated that they performed well most of their roles(except for the role as a "model" of socialized person), their children were apt to underevaluate them. (2)Among factors influencing on children's recognitions for their father's role-performances, two factors are especially important ; one is visibility of father's roles as well as observability from the statuses of children, the other is mothers' evaluations for fathers' role-performances. (3)Recognition of father's existence mostly depends, not on the role-performances by father, but rather on mother's evaluation of the father's performances. Therefore, the author found that child's or youth's recognition was settled by at least two-steps, firstly his/her own original one, and secondly modified via mother's one - and finally fixed one.