Traditional Family Ethics And The Modern Transformation In China

The Chinese tradition society is a self-sufficient agricultural society, because the family is the main operation unit of production and consumption, therefore, the tradition social life's characteristic is"family-oriented"and"family first". The China traditional culture ,which develops on the basis, take ethics culture as its characteristic, and its central content is"the five human relationships", in which the parent-child relation plays a role as the main axle, while other family ethics develops based on it, they are extending and expands of the parent-child relation. Because the Chinese tradition family structure and social structure's main axle is the father-son axis, this had decided the Chinese tradition parentage ethics's core and the characteristic are"the proper family relationships"ethics. The tradition parentage ethics's essential requirements are"the proper family relationships". In other words, parentage must be restrained to take"the proper family relationships"as the moral rule. The traditional family family relates is take the fathers and sons relations as the main axle, principles governing other relationships between people such as husbands and wives, brothers, the friends, the rulers and the ministers and so on, must take the father-son relations ethics as a criterion.Parentage ethics , which are the core of the family ethics, has not only the family ethics general character, but also its own characteristic. Because the family is constructed in the blood relationship foundation, therefore, the parentage also take the blood relationship as the foundation and take it as the manifestation. Parentage ethics has the relative stability characteristic. The differences between the parentage ethics and the husband-wife ethics is that the parentage ethics have long nature of its characteristics."piety"and"kindness"are the basic requirement of the tradition parentage ethics.The"piety"contains bearing and fostering offspring ,teaching them skills and encouraging them to be a person of great worth ,setting an example for the kids to follow, acting fairly to all kids. The"kindness"contains supporting and assisting their parents , showing filial respect to parents ,cherishing life and elevating themselves , giving a burial ceremony when their parents were died, and carrying on the unfinished lifework of their parents. In the course of social development , the content and form of the"piety and kindness"have changed .In short, the traditional parent-child ethics can keep family harmony as a lubricant, it is the cornerstone of social stability, and carries China's traditional moral culture. However, there are a lot of negative factors in the traditional parent-child ethical, for example, after the Han dynasty, "the parent are the key link for the child " erase the child's personality,"filial piety is loyalty"make it infected with political overtones,"their parents are everything led to follow the beaten path. In modern society, with changing in the form of the modern family structure , and changes in the the socio-economic and the values of modern man , the parent-child ethical needs to rebuild based on the principle of criticism and inheritance. The overall objective of Modern Family Ethics is to build mutual care between parents and equality. We have to work hard on both theory and practice to achieve this goal.