Parent and child suicide

...In addition, households at that time not only had adopted children and servants as a labor force, but also many live-in servants and apprentices, and there were open "houses" that welcomed non-relatives as a basis for accepting abandoned children. In contrast to the decrease in abandoned children, there was a sharp increase in parent-child double suicides from the end of the Taisho period onwards. This is related to the fact that the suicide of a parent alone came to be seen as a cruel act of abandoning one's child, just like abandoned children, that is, a change in the view of child-rearing that sees all child-rearing as the responsibility of the biological parents, and the closure of households that came to consist only of blood relatives. Apart from these real cases of abandoned children, Japan has the custom of ritually abandoning a child temporarily. ...

*Some of the terminology used in reference to "parent-child suicide" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…また当時の家は労働力としてのもらい子や養子奉公人のみならず住込み奉公人や徒弟などを多数かかえており，捨子を受容する基盤として非親族員を取り込む開放的な〈家〉が存在した。捨子の減少と相反して大正末期以降親子心中が急増するが，これは親のみ自殺することが捨子と同じくわが子を見捨てる非情な行為とみなされるようになったこと，すなわち子育てをすべて生みの親の責任とみる育児観の変化と，血縁者のみで構成されるに至った家の閉鎖化にかかわっている。　こうした現実の捨子とは別に，日本には一時的に子供を捨てる儀礼的な捨子の習俗がある。…

※「親子心中」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典 第２版について | 情報