Department of Sociology

Personal Details Title: Career Development Fellow in the Sociology of Japanese Society College Affiliation: St Antonys College Contact Details Email: ekaterina.hertog@sociology.ox.ac.uk Telephone: 01865 284510 (Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies)

Research Interests

Sociology of the Family, Human Mate Selection, Contemporary Japanese Society, Reproductive choices, Never Married Mothers, Social Norms

Current Research

Human long-term mate selection

This project uses a large dataset of Japanese marriage agency clients (n=60,000) with detailed information on their personal characteristics (verified by the agencies), their expressed desired characteristics of a prospective marriage partner as well as information on their attitudes towards family life and their successes and failures in partner search. In total the dataset contains 280 variables summarizing each client's characteristics and expressed desires of a potential marriage partner, documents all their dating successes and failures for the past year and identifies couples who actually succeeded in getting married.

The level of detail of the data offers a rare opportunity to many of the hypotheses theoretically posited for human mate selection. The project will start with an investigation of the way singles try to strike the delicate balance between their ideal preferred traits and whom they realistically can hope to attract, as well as the steps they take to attract the best possible mate. It will then proceed to the applicability of two specific explanatory approaches to communication on the mating market, namely the full disclosure principle and signalling theory.

Recent / Selected Publications

Hertog, E. and Iwasawa, M. (Forthcoming) “Marriage, abortion or unwed motherhood? How women evaluate alternative solutions to premarital pregnancies in Japan and the United States,” Journal of Family Issues (accepted)

Hertog, E. (2009) Tough Choices: Bearing an Illegitimate Child in Japan, Stanford University Press.

Hertog, E. (2008) The Worst Abuse against a Child is Absence of a Parent: How Unwed Mothers Evaluate their Decision to Have a Child outside Wedlock, Japan Forum, Volume 20, Issue 2, pp. 193 - 217.