“Confucianism is an ethico-religious tradition that has shaped the culture of China for 2500 years” - G. A. De Vos, 1989

         
           The importance of family in ancient China was due to Confucianism.  Its values also ordered the family dynamic of males as authoritative and females as followers.  It additionally led to ancient Chinese society highly valuing learning, discipline, propriety, compliance, order, respect, deference, and submission.

            Confucianism, an ethico-religious tradition as described by De Vos above, was as influential in ancient China as religion was in western societies during the Middle Ages.   The Chinese society was one in which, as Walter H. Slote says in his article “Psychocultural Dynamics within the Confucian Family,” “propriety and ethical code was precisely defined and rigidly enforced.”  Therefore, Confucianism as a value system had an extremely large influence on society..  Its reach extended to the government and also down to the small unit of the family.  Its focus was on social stability and ethics.  One core Confucian belief was that self-cultivation began with the recognition that biological bonds were an important part of one’s identity.  This was in keeping with the collectivist, cultural idea that “one’s identity and sense of self is inextricably established only within the context of the whole” (Slote).  Since ancient Chinese people viewed themselves as parts of a whole, the family “assumes a crucial, life-determining significance” (Slote).   

Another Confucian value further brought the family into the forefront of social life.  Confucius believed that bonding between parents and siblings in a family was an obligation.  He felt it was a duty to maintain and nurture family ties, whether one naturally got on with other family members or not. 

While Confucianism promoted family as one of the most important, central aspects of one’s life, another set of core values of Confucianism was the “Three Bonds” (sangang).  The Three Bonds delineated the authority of the ruler over the minister, the father over the son, and the husband over the wife.  It is, as Wei-Ming Tu describes in his article “Probing the ‘Three Bonds’ and ‘Five Relationships’ in Confucian Humanism,” based on “dominance/subservience [which] underscore the hierarchical relationship as an inviolable principle for maintaining social order.”  Clearly, the Three Bonds was to promote social stability.  It also established and reinforced the idea that males were superior to women, making the Chinese society patriarchal.  With this Confucian support, the family dynamic developed into one in which the father was “seen as omniscient, omnipotent, and protective” and women and children had few rights (Slote).

The stability that Confucianism promoted also resulted in a certain pattern of child rearing that “was essentially the same for all” (Slote).  The culture developed so that the each new generation was ingrained with the exact same values as the older generations, including submission and respect for authority, and thus the “defining characteristics…of the culture permitted extremely limited variation in individual development” (Slote).  Since everyone had the same values and promoted the same values, it was hard for any children growing up to act, think, or feel any differently.

            The Confucian value system also included hard work and discipline and gave learning an elevated position.  Thus, the society developed in such a way that prized effort, dedication, submission for authority, and scholarly pursuits.