January 1977
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Japanese Sociological Review
The present paper, focusing on the change of the family role structure, describes how contraction of a chronical disease can be influential to one's family functions. The sick person inevitably declines or loses ability in role performances. Therefore, when the family has the sick, the role structure of family might change. That is, the family members except the sick, if they want to keep their family functions in the same way, must partly or totally undertake the duties of the sick person.Whether or not this subrogation goes smoothly and the family functions are maintained as usual seems to be determined by the following factors : the degree of the sickness and status (husband, wife or child) of the sick ; family size and stage of family life cycle ; class ; relationship with relatives, neighbors and occupational groups ; and existing state of the national welfare system.The authors examined twenty four conjugal families and categorized them into following three groups : the change of role structure no dysfunction…(A) dysfunction → reversion to former functions…(B) dysfunction → permanent dysfunction…(C) In this study, 11 (A) cases, 2 (B) cases, 11 (C) cases were found. Regarding the (C) group, the physical condition of the sick was not only extremely bad but also the family was small and on an early stage of the family life cycle. Moreover, the family was of the lower class and did not associate frequently with the outer groups such as mentioned above. Therefore these (C) group families could not have good success in the role re-distributions to keep the family functions, and they could only make a bare living with livelihood assistance under the Livelihood Protection Law. The authors recommend that the process of the change of the family role structure should be considered in order to make clear the health problems faced by the contemporary families.