SECURITY, equity, and self-sufficiency, important to the discussion of the public contract, are also central issues for understanding the private contract in both Japan and the United States. Helping arrangements in the private domain consist of the noninstitutional, informal support offered to the elderly by their family and social networks, which usually includes relatives, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. These networks of private life are complex, because they are based on the dynamics of life cycle transitions, cohabitation, affection, intimacy, and companionship that lie at the heart of these interdependent relationships. We will explore these dynamics of private helping arrangements here and in the following two chapters. In this chapter, we will explore the conditions of helping arrangements in the two communities by examining the junctures of giving and receiving help at the aggregate level. As we will see, the objective conditions of proximity and the subjective conditions of evaluating vulnerability both play an important role in the practices of social support.