Date of Award
August 2016
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Child and Family Studies
Advisor(s)
D B. Carter
Keywords
Chinese attitudes toward divorce, Confucian family values, family harmony, filial piety, gender stereotypes
Subject Categories
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine relationships between Confucian family values and Chinese attitudes toward divorce. The low acceptability of divorce, negative attitudes toward divorce, as well as low national divorce rate are evident in China. Confucian family values, which have influenced Chinese education, moral and ethics for thousands of years, were hypothesized to have an impact on the phenomena based on the Theory of Reasoned Action. There were 289 Chinese college students recruited to participate in this study. The Filial Piety scale (Yeh, 2003), Collectivism scale (Chen & West, 2008), and Attitudes toward Divorce scale (Kinnaird & Gerrard, 1986) were used to measure Chinese filial piety values, family harmony values and attitudes toward divorce; Confucian Gender-Stereotyped Attitudes scale was designed in current study to examine Chinese gender-stereotyped attitudes. Although this study didn’t find that filial piety, family harmony and gender stereotypes comprise a single Confucian family values variable, these three constructs significantly independently predicted Chinese college students’ attitudes toward divorce. Other findings and limitations were discussed.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Zheng, Ruiwen, "The Relationships between Confucian Family Values and Attitudes toward Divorce in Mainland China: An Exploratory Study" (2016). Dissertations - ALL. 611.
https://surface.syr.edu/etd/611
