Filial Piety Revisited—Family Care and Filial Obligation in China at the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Contemporary Chinese society has undergone enormous socio-economic transformations over the past four decades. The Confucian principle of so-called filial piety (xiao) has shaped Chinese culture for centuries, laying the foundation for family and social life. However, the current Chinese reality, with widespread consumerism and economization of thinking, requires young Chinese people to redefine their role in relation to their aging parents. The process of individualization in a strongly group-oriented society undergoing intense transformation, coupled with the strong cultural pressure to implement the Confucian xiao principle, provides material for interesting research questions. This paper studies caregivers’ coping strategies in the context of the principle of filial piety and the form of its practice during the pandemic and lockdown. It aims to capture the impact of the unique experience of isolation, exacerbated by the fear and uncertainty about the fate and health of parents. At the methodological level, it uses quantitative and qualitative analysis, adapting well-known scales and customized queries to capture the social challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.