cognitive science with its range of experimental techniques employed to understand the cognition of animals. She smiles wryly. “In my graduation research, I tried to study cognition of numbers among cats, which I loved doing, but it was too much for an undergraduate to handle.”Consequently, Saito felt it was crucial that she improve her research skills, so in her postgraduate studies she set about learning mainly through research on primates. In particular, it was research on parenting among marmosets; small long-tailed, tree-dwelling South American monkeys, that involved not just parents but siblings too, which led Saito to her cur-rent specialization investigating parenting from a unique perspective. Explains the Associate Professor, “The burden on mothers is very heavy when it comes to raising children in Japan today, but if we look at it from the perspective of evolution, this is quite an unnatural situation.” Since about 50 years ago, many have thought that childcare was solely the job of the mother. It was thought that only the father should work and the mother alone should do the housework and childcare.Saito’s biggest challenge right now is in creating a system to find people in communities and groups who are good at par-enting, be they women or men, and then facilitate their sup-port of families with children. “The Graduate School of Human Sciences is a great environ-ment for me,” she enthuses, “because by bringing together related fields of research like education, social welfare, and midwifery, it enables close collaboration among our disci-plines. For foreign students too, it must be extremely ap-pealing, since you can study humans from a comprehensive perspective from every angle.” Meanwhile in her recently resumed study into cats, she is ex-perimenting with a new approach, collaborating with other researchers from various fields such as endocrinology.“I would be happy if I could get foreign students who share a love of cats to tell me about cats in their home country, to help me with my research,” she concludes with a smile.Saito’s new, co-authored book “Different animals, differ-ent solutions: Comparative views on animal parenting” (Seikai ha hitotsujanai Kosodate suru doubutsutachi), University of Tokyo Press, October 30, 201915Research
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