Social Conditions for Japanese Immigrant Attitudes Toward Institutional Elder Care

Although elder care remains within the family sphere in Japan Japanese immigrants in the U.S. are bound to have distinctive pathways to determining whether to utilize formal care services from the native-born. Japanese immigrant women who are interracially married to American husbands experience complex adaptation processes throughout their lives as they encounter social conditions that differ from Japan. This research investigates of their attitudes concerning institutional elder care utilization as they relate to social conditions.

We conducted and analyzed in-depth interviews with 31 immigrant Japanese women between the ages of 40 and 84. We found that these women had acquired the norms of independent living through cultural acculturation, ultimately leading to their preference for non-family-based care. This paper focuses on the social structural conditions that facilitated this choice. We found four factors influenced the women’s attitudes toward the utilization of institutional elder care: 1) family living arrangement discouraging family care for elderly, 2) potential family conflicts between the caretaker and the elderly relative, 3) economic class, and 4) supportive cultural attitudes towards formal elder care and institutional availability. These factors tend to influence immigrant Japanese women’s preference for institutional elder care over familial care.