Mothers' Community

It is said in Japan that joining mothers' community at park is somehow very stressful and would cause some problems.

It is so called "park debut" in Japan, which means taking her child to a park of neighborhood for the first time.

There are other mothers with their kids in the park, who know each other and make a group.

For a new member it is sometimes difficult to join the group.  But does she have to join the group?

Well, it is important and preferable because she could get useful information for childcare, including one for  kindergarten,  pediatric doctor,  current prevailing diseases, recommended clothes, any notes in each stage of the kid's growing, etc., which sound like items of information a childcare mother used to get from her mother's generation.  However, the more families in Japan are becoming nuclear, the less mothers have opportunities to have these items of childcare information, and thus joining a mother's community becomes more important than used to be.

Park Debut

More importantly, failure in joining a mothers' community would possibly result in her child not being able to join a group of those mothers' kids.  Watching own kid playing alone without joining a group is so painful...

Even though a mother and kid successfully join the community at the park, they can't be safe.

There would possibly be hierarchy and a leader in the mothers' group, who tends to make unspoken rules in the group.  If a new comer can't build a good relationship with the leader...

Also, if a kid makes some trouble with her/his friend like a quarrel or fight, which should frequently happen the kids' society, the friend's mother might get upset and try to separate the kid and his mother from the group.

So, there are many things to watch out in the mothers' group, which would make mothers stressed out.

They say that there are some families to go out the town as a mother failed to get along with the mothers' group members.

I see the difficulties and problems seen in the mothers' group above are very similar to ones in some school classes as I introduced before (See School Caste in Japan), in terms of insidious behavior of Japanese people.

Unfortunately, it seems insidious bullying type of things exists not only in children's societies but in adult's as well.

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