Traditional collective values and imported individualistic concepts collide in Taiwan: how does the grandparent-grandchild relationship change?
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Date
27/11/2013Author
Lin, Tzu-Yuan
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Abstract
Care for old people is a particular concern in ageing societies. In Taiwan, traditional
collective cultures encourage collective practice, including informal family care of
elderly people. However, social change is modifying traditional values and
behaviours, leading some commentators identify a western style of individualism on
this change. This thesis explores how Taiwanese young adult grandchildren and their
grandparents interpret ’collectivism’ and ‘individualism’ and think about or draw on
these value systems in familial interactions. This was achieved through in-depth
individual interviews with 20 pairs of college-aged grandchildren and their
grandparents living in different locations and family households.
The research questions mainly focus on three areas. Firstly, how perceptions of the
role, and the attached expectations of being a grandchild construct contemporary
grandchildren’s understandings of their orientations to their families. Secondly, how
grandchildren interpret traditional and what they understand imported individualistic
value systems and how these operate on personal and family lives. Lastly, how the
two generations, grandparents and grandchildren, perceive transformation of
Taiwanese society and family, particularly their views of the effects of
domestic-demographics and wider structural changes on the grandparent-grandchild
relationship over time.
How grandchildren viewed collectivism and individualism and reported their
behaviours towards the grandparent generation was both as expected in terms of the
results of previous research and contained some unexpected outcomes. According to
the interviewees, being more individualistic is responsible for causing distance
between family members, whereas possessing more collective perspectives
encourages more communal considerations for common benefit. However,
grandchild informants acknowledged benefits of individualistic concepts and use
them to rationalise intergenerational flows that do not follow tradition, arguing that
personal considerations themselves are able to contribute more collective practices.
Interestingly, the expressed views of the grandchild generation reverse commonly
perceived negative impacts of individualistic concepts on collective interests.
Critically, the youth in Taiwan still regards themselves as being primarily guided by
collective-based doctrines, by indicating how traditional Chinese values are still
prioritised. Meanwhile, the concepts of individualism are placed as complementary
principles by the grandchildren, although they and their grandparents had identified
some negative effects of individualistic-led tendencies in their society and families.