Familial affections vis-à-vis filial piety: the ethical challenges facing eldercare under neo-familism in contemporary China

Abstract

The present study demonstrates that the values and practices of neo-familism are altering the ethical foundation of eldercare in a similar way as they did in other areas of family life. The chief ethical challenges include the shift of the center of gravity from ancestors to children or grandchildren, the inversion of the hierarchical order within the oneness of parent–child identity, the saliency of eldercare qinqing discourse derived from the intimate and emotional turn in family life, the importance of family history as the keeper of the balance sheet of qinqing interactions, and the emerging pursuit of distributive justice in the sphere of private life. Working together, these challenges have effectively destabilized the principle of filial piety as the ethical foundation of eldercare and, at the same time, they have contributed to the formation of a dining ethics of eldercare. The article ends with a sketch of the main features of the emerging qinqing ethics and a call for more innovative thinking out of the gatekeeping box of filial piety paradigm in the sociology of Chinese family.