ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes the concepts of motherhoodism and the romanticisation of childhood to help unveil the origin of a narrative that places childbearing at the centre of the gendered and sexual self of a 'normal' woman. It offers a brief introduction to symbolic interactionism and highlights how cultural and structural scenarios entangle with the interpersonal and intrapsychic dimensions to produce a version of a gendered and sexual self of Japanese women revolving around motherhood. The phenomenon could be fitly characterised as an instance of what calls 'cultural lag', by which traditional viewpoints attempt to coexist with modern and post-modern perspectives and thus complicate the understanding of the social underpinning of intimacy and reproduction in contemporary Japan. The significance of reproduction in contemporary Japan is clearly related to a discourse that could be identified as 'alarmist demography demographic reports in the media and social policy and professional literature'.
