ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how notions and practices of filial obligations have changed in China and Taiwan over the recent decades. With the fast-paced socio-economic changes that the Chinese and Taiwanese societies have experienced since the beginning of the twentieth century, many aspects of the parent-child relationship, in particular those pertaining to the Confucian notion of filial piety, have been significantly altered. In this chapter, I explore the contexts in which parents’ and childrens’ different values and notions of a “good life” have emerged in order to learn more about the issues at the root of intergenerational conflicts. Childhood accounts of mothers and their grown-up children will provide greater insight into the transformation of parental authority, emotional intimacy and filial obligations and their impact on decision-making and personal autonomy. Further, their memories draw a picture of the different structural environments of China and Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s and the values that were conveyedto this generation through formal schooling and state propaganda. Understanding the factors that informed the life goals of my interlocutors’ parents in their childhood and youth will add to the analysis of the intergenerational problems many families face in modern China and Taiwan.
