Abstract for: Why Expanding Childcare Support Fails to Reduce Parental Burden: A Parent-Centered Analysis of Urban Japan

Japan has dramatically expanded public childcare investment over the past decade, yet dual-income parents with preschool-age children in Tokyo report stable or increasing work–care coordination difficulties. This paradox, expanding formal support failing to reduce experienced burden, suggests feedback structures that linear policy evaluation frameworks cannot capture. We develop a system dynamics model to identify the structural mechanisms producing this counterintuitive outcome. Using government survey data, preliminary parent interviews, and a literature review spanning childcare policy, administrative burden, and work–family conflict, we constructed behavior-over-time graphs and a causal loop diagram as a dynamic hypothesis. The target population is dual-income households with preschool-age children in Tokyo, where extreme nuclear family rates (~95%) and high female labor force participation make coordination cost mechanisms particularly salient. The dynamic hypothesis identifies three key mechanisms: a self-reinforcing burden cycle where Support Utilization Burden, amplified by Frequency of Unplanned Care Events, raises Work–Care Coordination Strain and overall Parental Burden; a usability improvement delay where quantitative expansion outpaces user-experience reform; and informal support network erosion where public expansion reduces Accessibility to Personal Backup Care, deepening structural dependence on burden-generating formal systems. The next stage involves a quantitative survey and stakeholder interviews to test the dynamic hypothesis and build a simulation model. Key challenges include operationalizing subjective variables such as parental burden intensity, incorporating supply-side actors (providers, employers, municipal administrators) whose regulatory constraints shape coordination costs, and managing multiple temporal scales from daily care disruptions to decade-long demographic shifts. We welcome feedback on these challenges and on promising leverage points in service design and community support preservation. translation, proofreading