We began this research in June of 2000 by interviewing 116 women – half from the large city of Osaka on the central island of Honshu, and half from Sapporo, the provincial capital of Hokkaido, a large island to the north of Honshu. All but one of the women were married. The women varied widely in their socioeconomic status. Their educational attainment, and that of their husband, can be found in Figure B.1. The modal household income was in the range of 5 to 7 million yen (approximately $47,170 to $66,038 in U.S. dollars at the 2000 exchange rate of 106 yen per dollar). The mothers' average age when we began the study was 35.6 years. Each had at least one child in preschool when the study began, and the average family size was 2.16 children. In the focal group of children, there were 59 girls and 57 boys, and their average age was 67.9 months.

We recruited families by asking nine preschool directors to invite mothers with a child in the final year of preschool to participate. We worked with several preschools serving working-class families and several located in middle-class neighborhoods. Virtually all the women who were invited to participate agreed to do so.

Our initial goal was to elicit each woman's perspective on what she saw as the role of mother, what her challenges were in raising her child, and what her goals were for the child and for herself.