Family Intergenerational Relationship Essay

As an important social institution, family is one of the specialized research interests of sociologists. The structure of family and the interaction between different generations always capture the attention of researchers. In East Asia, especially in China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan, in which filial norms are the shared moral value of family, profound demographic transformations have been observed during the past years. Meanwhile, the conventional mode of family structure and interactions is also changing accordingly, as indicated by the research of Yasuda et al (2011). To further investigate the pattern of intergeneration relationships of these four societies and the impact of filial piety as well as the conditions of both adult children

In line with the patriarchal culture and the filial norms, male offspring played a major role in living arrangement and mutual exchange, and the fundamental direction of functional exchanges was from offspring to parents, with the exception of Japan. Simultaneously the filial piety presented a positive influence on the intergenerational relationships in the results. Furthermore, the demands of parents and the resources owned by offspring were found to have an impact on the relationship in the perspective of mutual exchange, which presented as a positive relationship between them and the support from offspring to parents. The number of siblings, according to the analysis, would influence the share of filial norms among adult

With the employment of multivariate analysis, the researchers managed to deliver a detailed account of the relationships between different variables. However, explanations on the interplay of variables remain ambiguous in this study. This disadvantage is originated from two aspects. First, it derived from the framework of cross-national comparative design utilized by researchers. Bryman (2015) highlighted that this type of design lacked strong internal validity and was hard to clarify the causality of variables. Another was generated from the solidarity model. Bengtson and Roberts (1991) admitted that without long-term longitudinal appraisal, the intergenerational solidarity model heavily relied on the instant imagery. The combination of these two factors consequently led to the absence of accurate explanation.

Despite the limitations mentioned above, Lin and Yi briefly presented the background information, delineated the differences existing in these four regions accurately and answered the research questions with sufficient and strong data interpretation. Their work contributes to the understanding of contemporary patterns of intergenerational relationships in East Asia. Some remaining questions, such as the role of filial piety in future and the social factors