Diversity Of Family Values And Intergenerational Relations From A Comparative Perspective: Implications For A Sustainable Society

Abstract

Family is the pillar of a sustainable society. Despite the debate on the decline of the family in western societies, family still matters in achieving sustainable society in East and West. Especially, family values and intergenerational relations are key of the family for development and sustainability of a society. This research aims at investigating the current state of family values and intergenerational relations and their interplay in a few Asian societies including Qatar from a comparative perspective. East Asian sociologists in Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan launched an East Asian Social Survey (EASS) in 2006. The first EASS adopted a family module consisting of questions on family values, intergenerational relations, marital history and a couple's relation. The first author of this research paper was a convenor of the family module in EASS 2006. Later, another group of researchers from Korea, Japan, Qatar, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and India also launched a new family survey research project called Comparative Asian Family Survey (CAFS) in 2010. With generous grants from Doha International Family Institute and Kyoto University in Japan, we could replicate the overall questions of family module of EASS 2006 to surveys of Thailand, Qatar, Vietnam, Malaysia and India. As a part of CAFS project, Dr. Badria Al-Amari of Qatar University conducted a Qatari Family Survey in Doha and surrounding areas in 2010, which resulted in a sort of the first Qatari Family Survey data which makes it possible to investigate current Qatari family, family values and intergenerational relations in Qatar. In other Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and India, the same surveys had been conducted between 2010 and 2012. Thus, we come to have a good quality of comparable family survey data across Northeast Asian countries (Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China), Southeast Asian countries (Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia), a South Asian country (India) and a Middle East country (Qatar) from EASS 2006 and CAFS project. Although we can utilize nine survey data in Asian context, this research employs only five country survey data from Korea, Qatar, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. Qatar and Malaysia represent Islam culture, Korea and Vietnam(Hanoi area) some Confucian culture, and Thailand(Bangkok area) Southeast Asian and Buddhist culture in this research. Five countries selected for this research, therefore, can represent diverse cultural effects on family values and intergenerational relations in Asia, and validate our comparative family research in Asian context. In this research, we investigate current state of family values and intergenerational relations by gender, age and education in culturally diverse Asian societies in a descriptive way. This will show how differentially family values and intergenerational relations exist in culturally diverse Asian societies. This will also reveal the impact of culture or religion on family values and intergenerational relations in Asian societies from a comparative perspective. We also investigate the interplay of family values and intergenerational relations in five Asian countries in an analytic way. This will show how family values affect intergenerational relations, and thus imply the sustainability of each society.