Filial Piety

In Classic of Filial Piety, Confucius (551–479 BCE) prescribed proper behavior in family relationships, such as the behavior of filial sons toward their parents in daily life, during sickness, and in the afterlife through ancestor worship. The Chinese ideograph xiao is composed of two characters; lao (“old”) is positioned on top of the character zi (“son”), indicating that the older generation should be supported by the younger one. The fundamental instructions for practicing filial piety are found in the Chu Li (summary of the rules of filial piety) from the Li Chi (Book of Rites). Family elders and parents have a duty to instruct and correct their children to achieve proper values, behavior, and attitudes. Sons were encouraged to be obedient, reverent, and compliant in response to requests made by family elders, to support their parents' physical needs, and to honor and act in a respectful manner with family elders.

A closer examination of filial piety must be undertaken in psychology, because it has been identified as an important explanatory variable for Asian cultures, noted to influence socialization patterns and family and intergenerational relationships. Although filial piety is an important Asian concept, psychology has just begun to measure it and use it as an explanatory variable. An important barrier to making progress is inconsistency in how filial piety beliefs and behavior are defined and measured. Theoretical models of morality that have been used to study filial moral reasoning have been criticized for their limited ability to explain cross-cultural and cross-gender differences in their cultural norms for moral behavior. Another approach examined parent–child dyads, motivational factors, attributes of the social relationships, and goals of the filial actions. The wide differences in the measurement of filial piety may partly account for some conflicting empirical literature.

Traditional filial piety attitudes have been linked to lower socioeconomic status and, to a lesser extent, to females, elders, minorities, non-Westernized peoples, and those with non-Christian beliefs. Filial piety may have been idealized based on the assumption that it produced only positive outcomes. Filial piety has been associated with both beneficent outcomes (e.g., care of elderly family members; positive family relationships and family solidarity; positive societal and community outcomes) and negative outcomes (e.g., orientation to the past; fatalism and superstition; authoritarianism, dogmatism, and conformism; adoption of a passive, uncritical, and uncreative orientation toward learning).

Another caveat is that filial beliefs may not highly correspond to enactment of traditional filial behaviors. Enactment of absolute obedience, continuation of the family line, and living together with one's parents appear to be changing. Ancestor worship and repaying one's indebtedness to parents' beliefs appear to be retained; however, the manner in which one repays indebtedness to parents has changed through time, acculturation, and Westernization. Instead of living with their parents and providing for all the needs of their parents, adult children may provide financial support or provide coordination of care during the frail years. Elders with traditional beliefs about filial piety may experience dissatisfaction in the expressions of filial piety exhibited by their acculturated adult children. Future research must examine the relationship between filial attitudes and values, their corresponding behavioral expressions of filial behaviors, and the beneficial and harmful effects of holding filial piety beliefs.

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