Filial Piety and Care for Elders: A Contested Confucian Virtue Reexamined

Abstract

Filial piety is a Confucian value common in East Asian societies and among Asian-Americans that sets an expectation for children to respect and care for aging parents. Within social work and gerontology literature, filial piety is contested as being a positive or negative influence on families and social welfare policy. However, there has not been a detailed examination of filial piety as presented in the Confucian philosophy that advocates it. Accordingly, this article examines the Confucian view of filial piety in order to assist with the process of transforming it in ways that fit contemporary social conditions.

Keywords:

• Confucianism
• filial piety
• elders
• gerontology
• philosophy
• social work

Notes

1. The main classics used in this article are the Book of Changes, The Book of Rites, The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects of Confucius, The Book of Mencius, and the Classic of Filial Piety.

2. Neo-Confucianism was a revival movement during the Song dynasty (960–1279) in China that spread widely in East Asia during that time and into the early1900s. Neo-Confucians adapted classical Confucian thought to then current social issues and to challenges and insights from Buddhism and Daoism. Neo-Confucianism elaborated metaphysics and cosmology and refined details about the process for self-cultivation of virtue and for social administration (Goldin, 2011; Yao, 2000).