Realities of “Being a Poor Family”:With a Focus on Descriptive Practice

Abstract

Over the past decade, a large number of studies in Japan have focused on child and youth poverty. ese reveal the extent to which children and youth who grow up in poor families are deprived of access to a basic standard of living. In contemporary society, families satisfy not only functional needs for people, but also identity needs. Nevertheless , previous studies have focused principally on dissatisfaction with functional needs within poor families. is paper seeks to shed light on realities of being a poor family from the viewpoint of identity needs, based on data obtained from participant observation and interviews with three youths from poor families. It analyzes their realities within the conceptual framework of family-as-descriptive-practice , developed by Gubrium and Holstein 1990, p. 28. is data indicated that realities of being a poor family is more uid, relative, and plu-ralistic than that represented in previous studies. ese ndings suggest that the dimension of identity needs derived from being a family must be adequately considered in order to ooer eeective policies to support children and youth from poor families.