Filial Piety and Autonomous Development of Adolescents in the Taiwanese Family

Abstract

The theory of filial piety describes important rules dictating how children should treat and take care of their parents. Filial piety has played a crucial role in Chinese society primarily through the influence of Confucianism. Initiated in China in the early 1900s by Chen (1915), the famous New-Culture movement claimed that the authoritarian characteristics of filial piety were the core sources of the damage to the independence of one’s personality; they obstructed one’s freedom of thought, deprived people of equality under the law, and damaged productivity by fostering an excessive dependence. Wu (1917), a famous opponent of Confucianism supported the above points and concluded that filial piety had to be destroyed in China in order for the society to overcome autocratic thinking and to establish a true democracy. In recent decades, several researchers (e.g. Boey 1976; Ho 1994, 1996) have reinforced these arguments by noting that an emphasis on filial piety results in Chinese people having an uncreative character, poor cognitive development, and a negative personality orientation.