Family Values In China

Tiger mother, little emperor in a family, double duties as a daughter and daughter-in-law, eldercare and ageing plans —— such are heatedly discussed topics emerging in today’s China. Behind these public concerns, are the main family values that urban Chinese carry the same as 37 years ago?

Apparently, the Chinese have been undergoing great value transformation in an era of the One Child Policy (OCP). However, traditional values seem to be so deeply rooted in people’s minds that they are used to unconsciously explain their motives as out of the tradition norms rather than external factors. Thus, it remains controversial among researchers of this field concerning to what extent traditional values still affect family life and what consideration

While obvious concerns such as demographic and economic shifts have received scholarly attention, little awareness has been raised concerning the transformation of underlying individual values. Typical individual family’s values could evolve into a more influential sociocultural norm which exerts impacts back on individual life and further on economy and society (Rich and Tsui 2002, 75-76). Thus, observations on the changes of mindsets could help disclose the changing family lifestyle and its tendency, which might serve as the basis of other practical OCP

In short, filial piety is defined as a Confucian virtue that children are inculcated with toward their parents, comprising obedience and the obligation to take care of their aged parents. The core of filial piety is to put parents’ personal needs before children’s (Deutsch 2006, 367). However, after the OCP came into effect in 1980s, what a family in fact puts first seems to be the reverse of the core principle. As is pointed out by Zhan and Montgomery (2003, 212), the OCP affects family members’ behaviour indirectly through the shift in family size. Since in urban China old kinship patterns have been gradually replaced by the new dominant 4-2-1 (four grandparents, two parents and one child) family structure (Zhang and Goza 2006, 154), the only children are thus cherished more, and their future on which the whole family might count is regarded as a central concern (Tsui and Rich 2002, 75). In other words, a family’s focus has diverged from parents’ own needs. For instance, according to Zhang and Goza’s interviews (2006, 155-59), it is generally expressed by parents from common and well-off households that they would try their best to support their kids, and in order not to be a burden they choose to secure the retirement life by