confucianism+response+Daniel+Kim

In Confucianism society, "filial piety" dominated a lot of practices or daily living in the lives of people. Simply put, filial piety is having complete obedience towards ones parents, making sure the family line continues, and doing the family good. Filial piety is directly related to the Confucianist idea of respecting the elder and ancestors. When one's parents died, it was the oldest son's duty to have constant rituals over and over every period of some time. Filial piety also emphasized the role of males. The oldest son's job was the biggest in the family, as everything was given and put into the oldest one. They were to have at least one male child in order to continue the family line. If the marriage remained barren, the oldest son was to find another wife in order to bore a male child. Some examples of filial piety comes from the article "Examples of Filial Piety." There was this mother, her son, and her grandchild. As they could barely afford enough food, the mother always sacrificed a portion of her food to the grandchild. As the son could not bare this, his thought was that he would rather sacrifice his own kid by burying him in order to save food for his mother. In these ways, the respect and obedience towards one's parents were heavily emphasized in filial piety.