Filial belief and parent-child conflict

This study examines the relation between filial belief and the frequency, origins, and solutions to parent‐child conflict using an indigenous Chinese perspective. The Dual Filial Piety model is employed to categorize the four types of filial belief: nonfilial, authoritarian, reciprocal, and absolute. Questionnaires were completed by 773 junior and senior high school students from around Taiwan for the study. Results provided support for the indigenous Chinese notion that a child's filial beliefs relate to the level of parent‐child conflict. The results go beyond this common conception to highlight that filial beliefs may have a particular role in decreasing self‐centred but not inappropriate conflict between parents and children, and that reciprocal filial beliefs may have a more important role in decreasing conflict than authoritarian filial beliefs. Clear differences were identified in the reported origins of conflict (Demands Conflict with Desire. Unreasonable Behaviour, Demand Exceeds Ability, Role Conflict, Interparental Dispute. Immoral Demands) and solutions to conflict (self‐sacrifice, compromise, refraining, ego‐centred, escape) among the four filial types. Parent demands conflicting with the child's desire was the greatest source of conflict for each of the four filial types. Nonfilial types reported significantly more conflict than absolute types for four of the six origins of conflict examined. Low incidence of conflict may explain why the filial types did not differ for the remaining two origins. Overall, the four filial types reported self‐sacrifice as their least used solution to parent‐child conflict, and nonfilials reported significantly less use of this solution than the other three filial types. Absolutes and reciprocals reported significantly more use of refraining than the other two filial types. Results of this study provide the first empirical support for the Dual Filial Piety model and constitute a foundation for continued indigenous research on parent‐child relations in Chinese culture. It is expected that an indigenous theory of parent‐child relations incorporating the Dual Filial Piety model can eventually be integrated into a global psychology.