Cover -- Halftitle -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of figures -- Introduction -- 1 Young mothers in a dilemma -- The 'anguish' of ordinary women -- Total isolation and the malaise of new residential developments -- From 'baby-blues' to neurosis -- 'To think I could have killed him!' -- The misery of a broken career -- Bulimia and anorexia -- 2 Why have children? -- Later and later marriages -- The meaning of procreation -- Study and work -- Priorities never discussed -- 3 Fathers -- Do Japanese fathers love their children? -- Fathers were not always like this -- Do you love your father? -- Fathers: absentee or ostracized? -- 4 The ten commandments of the good mother -- Thou shalt bond with thy foetus (taikyô) -- Thou shalt lovingly develop thy foetus' IQ -- Thou shalt give birth in pain -- Thou shalt strive for oneness with thy baby, night and day -- Thou shalt breast-feed thy child day and night for a whole year -- Thou shalt prepare thy child's food lovingly -- Thou shalt wash thy baby's nappies thyself -- Thou shalt shower thy child with boundless selflessness -- Thou shalt tirelessly seek to rouse thy maternal instinct -- Thou shalt abandon all professional activity for (at least) five years -- 5 The nostalgia for yesterday's mothers -- The Oshin syndrome -- Neither saint nor martyr -- Not quite a god nor quite a man -- 6 Demographic malaise -- Available options -- The torment of water-babies -- Water-babies and the ritual of appeasement -- 7 The new order -- The Hanako syndrome -- The decline of marriage -- The 'impossible to marry off go shopping -- Importing foreign wives for farmers -- There is more to life than sex -- Schools for husbands -- 8 The achievement of working mothers -- Various accounts -- 'New fathers' and 'new husbands' -- What price success? -- A kind of happiness -- By way of a conclusion -- Notes.

Bibliography -- Index.