In recent years, there has been a growingāand sometimes urgentādesire to understand contemporary Chinese society. This has been especially true in the West, where Chinaās rapid march towards superpower status is sometimes viewed as a threat to world order. However, in spite of the considerable body of research focused on understanding Chinese society as a whole, there is remarkably little about the Chinese people on an individual and family level, even though changes at this level will undoubtedly have an enormous impact on the countryās transition.
Since the foundation of the Peopleās Republic of China in 1949, there has been a continuing process of change that has affected Chinese life in various ways. The pragmatic social and economic reforms, including the Open Door Policy and the State-owned Enterprise Reform introduced by Chinese government since the 1970s, have resulted in huge economic success and transformed China. China is now the second-largest economy in the world and is the worldās manufacturing center. China now makes almost half the worldās goods. It produces about 80 % of the worldās air-conditioners, 70 % of its mobile phones, and 60 % of its shoes (The Economist, 2015).
These economic reforms have not only led to remarkable economic improvement and growing GDP, but also to changes in expectations and attitudes towards the roles of men and women in Chinese society. For example, since the implementation of economic reforms that began in 1978, both men and women have been encouraged to take part in the labor market. As a result, most mothers work full time and no longer stay at home as housewives. The expectation of women sharing financial responsibilities with men encourages men to play a more active role in the family, since domestic duties need to be shared when both adults are working outside the home.
Another important piece of government legislation that has tremendous impact in peopleās lives is the One Child Policy, which was introduced in 1970s to control the size of the population. Since 1980, most families have been permitted to have just one child. In traditional Chinese families, the relationship between fathers and sons is paramount since sons are expected to carry the family name and to continue the family line. Daughters, on the other hand, are regarded as eventually belonging to their husbandsā families after marriage. Thus, traditionally Chinese families have made little investment in daughters. However, with the introduction of the One Child Policy, parents may devote more care to their only child, regardless of its gender. In addition to receiving more care and attention from parents, many only children have also been able to enjoy the material wealth generated as a consequence of Chinaās socioeconomic transformation in the last few decades. They were also brought up with strong Western cultural influences. For example, these children are much more fashion conscious, and McDonaldās, chips, and pizza are as familiar as rice and noodles. In contrast, their parents have mostly experienced the Cultural Revolution and its subsequent mobilization to the countryside, called Shang Sha Xia Xiang. The fact that Chinaās economic growth since 1978 has been so rapid also increases the generational gap between young people and their parents. Young people may feel that the experiences of their parents are out of date and irrelevant, rather than worthy of respect.
The study of fatherādaughter relationships invites us to think about Chinese peopleās attitudes, family practice, emotions, and aspirations, which constitute a crucial complement to our understanding of the remaking of Chinese society and Chinese lives. This book focuses on how the widespread social and economic reforms interact with traditional attitudes rooted in Confucianism to provide new contexts for parentāchild relationships. We hope that this book will contribute to our understanding of Chinese society by shedding light on how parents and young people are negotiating their relationships.
1.1 Influences of Confucianism on FatherāChild Relationships
Confucianism, which can be traced back over two thousand years, plays a fundamental role in Chinese family life. Confucian values also define the normative beliefs and family practices for both males and females in the society and the family. According to Confucianism, there are clear hierarchies between elder and younger, male and female, and ruler and ruled. The classic Confucian Analects is mostly concerned about kings, ministers, fathers, and sons while women are hardly mentioned. The very few times women are mentioned, however, reflects Confucianismās negative view about women. For example, āWei junzi yu xiaoren wei nanyang ye, jin zhi ze bu xun, yuan zhi ze yuanā (Only women and flunkies are hard to live in peace with. They will be conceited if one gets close, or grumbling if one estranges them). In the family, the father is the undisputed head of the family, while the mother is seen as inferior to her husband. The old Chinese sayings such as āNan zhu wai, nv zhu neiā (men take care of things outside the family, whereas women take care of things inside the family), āyi jia zhi zhuā (the master of the family) and āchu jia cong fuā (a married woman should obey her husband) clearly delineate the relative status of men and women in the family (Shek, 2006). In Chinese patriarchal culture, women often had little say and had to obey their fathersā wishes. Moreover, women were the ones who took care of the family, but they did not have the opportunity to be educated or inherit any property.
According to Confucianism, there are also clear distinctions between each family member: fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, in terms of their responsibilities. A fatherās duty is to bring up his son until one day the son takes over his power and responsibility. As for mothers, their main duty is to ābe married to a good provider for herself, to bear children for his family and hope these children will be successfulā (Cheung, 1996, p. 46). Therefore, the social structure of the family mainly revolves around the fatherāson relationship (Lynn, 1974), since sons are expected to continue the family line. Daughters, who will get married and belong to other families eventually, are less important.
Inside the family, parents are superior to their children. Therefore, they have the power to guan (ē®”) their children, which means control or governance (Xu et al., 2005). For the children, it is crucial to fulfill their filial piety, which is often portrayed as most important value, or the root of all virtue. The Classic of Filial Piety (åē»), one of the classic books of Confucian ideology, implies that in order to deliver filial piety children should show affection and respect to their parents (Saari, 1990). Confucius said filial piety began with the fact that everything a child was came from its parents, therefore the child must show them the deepest respect. In this sense, children owe their very existence to their parents and therefore they are obligated to unconditionally fulfill duties to them. Another form of filial piety is to bring honor to the family name and glory to their parents. Today, success in academic life is one of the most important filial duties, as education is so heavily stressed in Chinese culture (Salili, Zhou, & Hoosain, 2003). These traditional values help enhance the role of education in the family and in society as a whole.
Parents are also regarded as the first teachers of the child. The fatherās role is primarily characterized as a stern disciplinarian and educator (Ho, 1987). The maxim āZi bu jiao, fu zhi guoā (it is the fatherās fault if the child is not taught properly) emphasizes the duty of fathers towards their children. Therefore, it is the fatherās responsibility to educate his children, especially his sons. Although the traditional fatherās role as educator may have been weakened by the introduction of compulsory schooling by the state, the cultural emphasis on education as the route to success means that fathers may still see themselves as being responsible for their childrenās education but maybe in a different way in modern society. A quantitative study of 660 students from two secondary schools in a middle-sized city in northern China showed that it was their fathers, rather than mothers, who were most involved in making decisions relating to education, such as whether to go to a university, which subjects to study, and curfew time (Xia et al., 2004).
Confucianism also has a strong influence on peopleās perceptions of themselves and their relationships to others in the society. The concept of the self is normally defined in relation to others, and it is defined in the hierarchy of relationships. Moreover, the individual self only exists in relationship to and on behalf of social groups, such as family, community, and nation (Fei, 1992). In this sense, the group or collective interests are more important than the individual interests. In general, this encourages people to sacrifice their own interests for the success of the group or collective interests so that harmony and order can be maintained (Weber, 2002). As a result, āone can end up with no self at allā (Lau & Yeung, 1996, p. 361). A powerful symbol of this concept of deferential order is embedded in the grammar of the Chinese language. For example, given names are placed after family names; the larger geographical areas come first in addresses (e.g., county, city, district, street, number); and dates are written year, month, day. The Confucian idea of the self has again been adopted by the famous scholar Liang Qichao. In the 1910s, he argued that the individual has a dual-self: the small self, centered on personal interests and the great self, based on the interests of group, community, and even the nation. This has been widely accepted by many Chinese, including the communists after 1949, and it is an important concept in daily life even now (Chang, 1971).
It was not until the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911 that the Confucian roots of Chinese society, which had been maintained by Chinaās rulers for more than two millennia, were broken (Whyte, 2003). In addition, the influx of foreign influences also challenged traditional values. Later on, the establishment of the Peopleās Republic of China emphasized its peopleās loyalty to Mao before their own families. Parental power was further undermined during the Cultural Revolution (1966ā1876) when young Red Guards were encouraged to rebel against authority figures including teachers and parents (Kleinman et al., 2011). During the movement called āShang Sha Xia Xiangā, millions of urban young people left their city homes in order to be reeducated in the countryside, and millions of intellectuals and bureaucrats were sent to the countryside to engage in agricultural labor, starting from 1968. The movement separated family members, disrupted family lives, and affected family values.
1.2 Social Changes and Political Movements in the Peopleās Republic of China (PRC) Era: A Brief History
The long traditions of Confucianism and family life have undergone dramatic changes since the establishment ...