Summary of the project

As urbanization and the rise of nuclear families increase the burden of child-rearing on parents, Japan is also facing a rapidly declining birthrate. In response to these social challenges, the concept of socializing child-rearing—distributing the responsibility of raising children across society—has become increasingly important. The "Child Care Commons 2.0" project focuses on building social capital that includes children and aims to develop new systems that enable trusted third parties—those without blood ties to the child—to participate meaningfully in child-rearing. By integrating insights from sociology, psychology, neuroscience, education, information science, medicine, and robotics, the project designs and implements both environments and technologies that foster diverse social relationships for children. Through this work, the project seeks to create a sustainable child-rearing environment where all children can build rich and diverse social capital. Ultimately, it contributes to improving children's and society's well-being in an age of declining birthrates.

Milestone by the end of project (year 2024)

• Our goal is to determine the essential requirements of CCC for distributing the child care load in addition to the various existing child care supports.
• Our objective is to verify the essential ICT systems that ensure the safe and secure and reliable use of CCC.
• We will investigate the necessary components of fostering social acceptance for a parenting framework that involves unrelated individual.

R&D theme progress reports

• [1] Clarification of functional requirements and social acceptability of CCC
• [2] System Design of Child Care Commons
• [3] Fostering Social Acceptance of Child Care Commons
• Progress Report (634KB)

Leader's institution

Tohoku university

R&D institutions

NTT communication science laboratory, Sophia university, Tohoku university, Tokyo city university

PDF Download

• Summary of the project (146KB)