NEWS

2022.09.14

【Report】The 47th AJI Frontier Seminar on “A Longitudinal Study on Mothers’ Parenting Stress, Children’s Social Ability, and the Quality of Mother-Infant Interaction” was held!

On Tuesday, September 13, the 47th AJI Frontier Seminar took place online. Shunto Kimura (Doctoral student, Graduate School of Human Science, Ritsumeikan University) made an impressive presentation titled “A Longitudinal Study on Mothers’ Parenting Stress, Children’s Social Ability, and the Quality of Mother-Infant Interaction: Examining the Effectiveness of Parenting Seminar Interventions”.

This research was conducted in collaboration with Kao Corporation to improve the environment for childbirth and childcare in Japan, where the birthrate is declining.
Specifically, mothers with first children were selected and observed by the researcher from when the children were aged 5 months until 14 months, to clarify factors of the mothers’ childcare stress and how they interacted with their children. After that, he held childcare seminars for mothers, and observed the effects on children’s emotional and social skill through changes in mothers’ stress and how they interacted with their children. As a result, he was able to confirm significant changes in terms of stress control for the mothers.
At the end of his presentation, he suggested developing the content, duration, and intervention methods of childcare seminars, and creating a childcare support program that can reduce mothers’ stress and can guide the social development of children.

In the Q&A session, the participants had a lively discussion on various issues beyond the scope of the presentation, such as the possibility of applying overseas childcare support programs to Japan, the correlation between gender differences in infants and mothers’ stress, and general issues of discipline (especially by fathers) in Japanese society.

木村さん47thセミナー写真
Mr. Kimura delivering his presentation