Analysis Of The Difficulties Of Chinese Contemporary Elderly Support Under The Traditional Filial Piety Perspective

Aging of population is one of the most important global population trends since the 20th century, which is an inevitable features of modernization process developed into a certain stage. The "Wave of silver" had been irreversibly sweeping through our nation since the late 1990s, and this demographic revolution will bring an unprecedented challenge to extraordinarily changed contemporary Chinese society affected by globalization, economic transition and migration of population. As being the developing country and experiences the important stage of economic transition, compared with developed country, our nation is to be confronted with more specific difficulty in dealing with the aging population problem. We must meet the sever challenge at much lower development level in less time. Nowadays, aging of population in our nation shows features of "high-speed, senile, large population basis, wide difference, low level of Social Aging-support, low level of Pension Consciousness both of oneself and social", these features bring pressure on the development of Provides system and Social Security. So, how to deal with the problem of supporting old people in current aging society is crucial for nation, family, and personal.Family pension was always a traditional outlook on aged support. The significance of "family" is extraordinary in traditional Chinese family ethic. Family is the main activity places in old people’s life, parenthood is the core of all family ties, so good relations between parents and children will guarantee the happy life for old. With the development of urbanization and market economy in contemporary China, affected by family planning policy implementation and diversified modern values etc, original family structure and pattern of family life have changed. In modern family, quantity of children, has reduced, family structure tends to be miniaturization. Core family be made up of two generations, has become the mainstream in modern society, meanwhile, most of modern young people pursue an independent personal life, which lead to intergenerational separation. Therefore, the number of "empty-nest elderly","old solitary people" "left-behind elderly" becomes more and more. And objectively, it’s very limited to offer supporting resource for elderly on manpower, material resources, energy, and accompanying unbalance of family support system. The function of traditional family supporting is also weakened. The government has paid great attention to developing social pension security system, initiated and carried out various new pattern of supporting aged in the face of ever-increasing needs of providing for the aged so that relieve the pressure for individual household.However, contemporary Chinese elderly people so deeply affected by traditional filial duty that the notion that "bring up sons to support parents in their old age "has been sinking into the hearts of people. They repose their emotion and living needs on family and children, struggle not to step into strange nursing institution for the aged lacking of awareness on self-pension, add to the new concept that "house-for-pension scheme" "live-together-pension scheme" is divergence. Conflict arises between "filial duty" and "support" in modern family comparing with traditional family ethics, the old-supporting problem then is in a dilemma. Old culture of supporting aged is receding, but new culture basis has not formed. Therefore, when discussing how to deal with the problem of supporting aged in contemporary China, we have to explore the Confucian filial piety culture that profoundly influenced countryman’s conception of supporting aged. This paper makes a concrete analysis on the hardship of supporting the old in contemporary China based on the view of traditional filial piety, trying to transform traditional concept of cares for the aged and resolve the conflict between "filial duty" and "support" in modern family, at the same time to build up a new filial piety which accommodates to modern society as well as reflects the activities in modern society.