Blog Post about Filial Responsibility

One very important topic that Chenyang Li did not mention in his argument for filial responsibility in China is the effect it has had on the gender ratio. A large part of the filial culture is that it is usually the male in the family that takes care of his parents, this has huge implications for parents deciding if their only child should be a male or a female since they are only permitted to have one child. According to a Chinese Think Tank reporter cited in an article on NBC there are huge disparities in population between the two genders,  “…From a relatively normal ratio of 108.5 boys to 100 girls in the early 80s, the male surplus progressively rose to 111 in 1990, 116 in 2000, and is now is close to 120 boys for each 100 girls at the present time…” (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5953508/ns/world_news/t/china-grapples-legacy-its-missing-girls/#.VEhnDyLF-N0) . The filial responsibility is a huge part of Chinese culture, and it is only natural that parents want to be taken care of in old age, but it is creating overwhelming consequences for everyone. This disparity is already beginning to be felt in China as males search for wives with no avail. Some are so desperate to find a family that they use illegal sources to find a wife, “China's police have freed more than 42,000 kidnapped women and children from 2001 to 2003” (Baculinao). While I do not disagree with the act of filial responsibility, I think the emphasis that the care-taker must be male is putting China in a bad situation. There is too much pressure for parents to keep up with their culture in that respect, and it must be relaxed before the crisis can’t be reversed.