An Analysis Of The Social Factors Which Influence The Filial Behavior

As part of traditional Chinese culture, the filial piety which emphasizes to respect the elderly is actually closely connected to the everyday lives of the people in the land, and at the same time, has a strong impact on the social policy and its practice. Basing on the seemingly excellent conventional Filial Piety, the government is advocating to building and improving the Elderly-care model, the so called Community-based Housing Support. However, in reality, it is common that most elderly need to beg their offspring for survival. What is more, those who don't care too much of filial piety even neglects their parents. So what is wrong? Is it really the case that the individuals' moral orientation is somehow problematic or it has something to do with the structure itself? Conventionally, we regard to be filial or not as the individual matter, not a structural one. In this research, the author tries to have a look at the filial behavior from a structural perspective, in stead of interpret it from a micro perspective which attributes the filial or not-filial behavior to personality or moral choice in particular. That is to say, filial or not could only be understood when social policy and the culture, or their impact on the practice of elderly care are introduced into the research. In the research, the author sets the economic factor as a constant, and takes it as not relevant to the filial behavior; and in stead, the author focuses on the social policy and culture, and especially the mutual connection between them, as the main variables to the practice of elderly care. In much of the literature, there are too many researches providing policy suggestions, but few can be categorized as evaluative studies. In this research, the author tries to evaluate the effect of the current elderly care program first, discuss the mutual connection between and among the elderly care policy, the filial piety concept and the Chinese traditional culture, and explore the causal relations between the variables. In stead of a quantitative methodology, the research employs a qualitative one, in which the Long Interview is taken as a technological tool for data collection and analysis. As a theoretical framework, narrative analysis is also employed to guide the data collection and analysis when the Long Interview was actually used. Thus, it is possible for the author to compare the two different filial concepts and behaviors in traditional society and modern time; and a conclusion is drawn in the research that the policy can and should display its power to influence the filial culture, and the backed-up filial culture can have a positive impact on the elderly care in turn. Put it concisely, when the state policy gears up with the filial concept, filial behavior will be positively impacted, and the elderly care program will be supported by civic society.