I enjoyed your essay's mix of academic-cultural-personal here, Brian. Writing about my own negative experience with 甘え here would take up too much space, but I can confidently say that my Tokyo-born mother took the complete opposite tack from 甘え with me LoL. She became an American citizen when she married my Anglo dad in the 1950s, converted to Catholicism with him, and raised seven children without a maternal bone in her body. I don't blame her--not only was she saddled with too many children, but expectations weighed heavily and opportunities outside the household were few for women of her era. See!--this comment gotten too long already,
Never too long! Thank you for sharing this. I suspect that Dr. Doi, like so many of his profession, focused more on men than women, and hearing more about 甘え from a woman’s perspective is great.
I enjoyed your essay's mix of academic-cultural-personal here, Brian. Writing about my own negative experience with 甘え here would take up too much space, but I can confidently say that my Tokyo-born mother took the complete opposite tack from 甘え with me LoL. She became an American citizen when she married my Anglo dad in the 1950s, converted to Catholicism with him, and raised seven children without a maternal bone in her body. I don't blame her--not only was she saddled with too many children, but expectations weighed heavily and opportunities outside the household were few for women of her era. See!--this comment gotten too long already,
Never too long! Thank you for sharing this. I suspect that Dr. Doi, like so many of his profession, focused more on men than women, and hearing more about 甘え from a woman’s perspective is great.