Progress Report
Child Care Commons：Building the System Requirements of Alternative Relatives for Our Parenting[1] Clarification of functional requirements and social acceptability of CCC
Progress until FY2023
1. Outline of the project
The aim of the R&D item is to clarify the functional requirements for CCC as a complement to the traditional childcare system. It will contribute to the overall goals of the project, which are the promotion of a flexible and responsible "Our Child Care" with the involvement of diverse people throughout society. In order to achieve these goals, we are addressing two specific issues to address the challenge of clarifying specific methods and policies for society-wide engagement in childcare.
Task 1: Constructing requirements based on real-life parenting and expert perspectives
By interviewing diverse individuals and reviewing social systems, we'll assess pros and cons of involving third parties in childcare.
Task 2: Investigating family relationships based on CCC
We'll simulate a quasi-CCC with research group members, formulating hypotheses through role-playing and testing to analyze CCC's challenges and benefits.
2. Outcome so far
Task 1a:
- A: Fact finding through interviewing
- Interviews with 98 people with/without involvement of child-rearing clarified the range of acceptance levels of third-parties involvement with child-rearing.
- B: Interviews with experts and establishment of an advisory board
- We interviewed with 23 various experts and shared CCC concept with advisors who specialize in developmental psychology and received feedback.
- C: Large-scale web survey and creation of a questionnaire to assess potential participants
- A survey with 1,806 parents with children aged 0 to 18, 1,044 children aged 0 to 18, and 977 third parties revealed their attitudes toward acceptability and the ways of being involved in child-rearing activities.
- D: Verification of the merits and demerits of the current child-rearing environment from a biological perspective
- Through comparisons with non-human mammals, we have clarified the benefits and problems/risks of non-parental third-party involvement in child-rearing.
Task 1b:
- A: Literature review and case studies
- Factors related to social evaluation of alternative education/childcare were extracted.
- B: Clarification of functional requirements for CCC
- Based on the extracted elements, we conducted a vignette survey of 3,900 people to examine the extent to which each element is related to "the degree to which parents are willing to leave their children" and "the degree to which third parties are willing to be involved," and revealed some factors associated with them.
Task 2: Testing family relationships based on CCC
A team-family consisting of parents, children, and a third party was formed to attempt to build a pseudo family relationship based on CCC. This helped to solidify a concrete image of CCC. In addition, we conducted interviews about the relationship between the family and third party throughout the study period. In addition, we began to develop workshop procedures.
(Figure: Team-families consisting of parents their children, and third parties. They worked together and build their relationships through outings and games.)
3. Future plans
Challenge 1: Clarification of CCC functional requirements and building potential participant determination system
By conducting a large-scale survey, organize and extract the functional requirements for CCC, and propose issues and solutions for the institutional design and operation of CCC.
Challenge 2: Testing family relationships based on CCC
Based on existing documents of record, we will revise the roles, guidelines, and problem list responses necessary to implement CCC, as well as create a collection of scenarios that include people and placemaking for CCC implementation.