Strictness and kindness in the ‘Way of the Father’ : Reappraising Confucian fatherhood through family education guides and zhongyong/yinyang dialectics

Historical Confucian parenting, framed through the lens of an authoritarian father and a caring mother, gave rise to the popular trope of the ‘strict father and kind mother’ (yanfu-cimu 严父慈母) (Li, 2020). Yet, numerous Confucian texts held that the father should manifest kindness to his children (Li & Lamb, 2012, 42–44). While there has been a growth in contemporary scholarship on caring Chinese fathers (e.g. Huang, 2025; Li, 2020; Wang & Keizer, 2024; Xu et al., 2025; Xu & O’Brien, 2014), less attention has been paid to the caring expectations placed on fathers in the Confucian tradition. An examination of Confucian texts in premodern China, including ‘family instructions’ (jiaxun 家训), family education guides written by fathers themselves, shows a more nuanced picture than popular discourses allow. Kindness (ci) and strictness (yan) were expected to be in dynamic equilibrium, as per the principle of zhongyong 中庸 and its operating mechanism of yinyang 阴阳 dialectics, a relational process through which kindness and strictness work together to produce a harmony. Employing ci-yan as a heuristic through which to better understand Confucian fathers and Confucian masculinities rebalances the representation of historical Chinese fathers in public debate, grounds zhongyong as a key principle for understanding Confucian fathers and masculinities, and provides a starting point for reevaluation of historical Chinese fatherhood and family education.