The Decay And Restructure Of The Confucian Filial Piety In Modern Chinese Family

As the gems of Chinese culture, filial piety guards and regulates people’s minds and behaviors. Meanwhile, filial piety is the basic moral principle in a family, which plays the important significance role in enhancing the personal qualities of family members, building the harmony atmosphere in families and steadying the society. In old China, "filial piety" makes sure a single man, household and then the whole world to move on.Confucian Filial Piety is a comprehensive expression of traditional Chinese concept of filial piety. China’s unique social economic, cultural and political background makes Confucian filial concept continuously change with the times and enrich itself. On the basis of its original ideas, criticizing and reconstructing the concept of filial piety ultimately reconfirms its fundamental statues in Chinese Family Ethics, while leading the mass to build the family filial mode of loving, respecting supporting and recollecting parents.During the processing of the filial piety, it goes into political, formalism, extremism and stupid which disagree with the development of modern society. After the Opium War, all kinds of thoughts invade and the culture criticizes, and the concept of Confucian filial piety declines rapidly. Especially in twenty-first Century, with the development of Chinese economy, people’s material production is abundant day by day, but the filial morality is decaying. The non harmonic tones in household strike the eye and rouse the mind:family cohesions are weak, intergenerational conflictions are upgrading, the divorce rates are going faster. At the same time, with the 200million old people, the olds’life conditions are horrible: the old men’s support is not properly resolved, elder abuse, killing the elder constantly challen ges the people’s moral bottom lines. Senior Citizen Rights and Interests Protection Law comes into effect at Julyl,2013, and the elderly spiritual support is paid more legal attentions. Filial education didn’t make the timely remedy for people’s filial absence from the modern China, which results to the increasing weakening the concept of Confucian filial piety and the public good of respecting parents. At last, the changes in family structures embarrass the traditional Confucian filial behaviors.Although the decay of filial piety, the significance of the Confucian filial piety on family building can’t be denied in contemporary China. China is in the period of social transition. The disharmony of family ethics and the family filial piety decay calls for the return of the traditional filial piety. The author thinks that the reconstruction of Confucian filial piety should be based on the principle of "equality, mutual obligations and simplicity", with the method of discarding the dross and selecting the essential yet connecting with the time request. At the same time, through the legal supervision, education propaganda as well as the support and encouragement of national policy, the new ideas of filial piety shall be raised in contemporary Chinese family.