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337 6 Confucianism YIQUN ZHOU For most of its long history in China, Confucianism was a moral system that rested on the religious underpinnings of ancestor worship and operated with the strong support of the state’s political and legal apparatus. A good way to approach our topic, as a chapter in Children and Childhood in World Religions, is to begin with ancestor worship, what it is, and how it provides a key to understanding the perception and treatment of children in Confucianism. Known as the “essential form of Chinese religion,” ancestor worship had been practiced in China long before the time of Confucius (551–479 BCE). Taking place in the household and consisting of regular offerings and rituals that commemorated patrilineal ancestors and celebrated the continuity and prosperity of the patriline, ancestor worship was a quintessential domestic religion with an explicitly male-centered and patriarchal character. The contribution Confucianism made to the hoary practice of ancestor worship was of great and far-reaching significance . Confucian thinkers, whose central concern was the regulation of human relationships and the establishment of a hierarchy-based, harmonious familial and social order, theorized the values embodied in ancestor worship so that filial piety—obedience and devotion to one’s parents and commitment to the well-being of the patriline—became the ethical corollary of the religious duty of ancestral piety. The homology between the ethical and the religious was such in Confucianism that it is difficult to separate the two in discussing the enduring domination enjoyed by Confucianism in premodern China. Such inseparability resulted in the following points about the position of the child in Confucianism. CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD IN WORLD RELIGIONS 338 First, because ancestor worship was about the continuity and prosperity of the patrilineal family through the joint efforts of an endless chain of ancestors and descendants, the parents-children (in particular, father-son) relationship was at the very heart of Confucian ethics. To begin with, it was essential to acquire male heirs. This task was as much for the safeguard of one’s own old age and the satisfaction of one’s own emotional needs as for the fulfillment of a religious responsibility to the long line of ancestors and offspring before and after oneself. The corporate concept of the family as composed of mutually dependent ancestors and descendants meant that both parties shouldered weighty and irresolvable responsibilities not only to each other but ultimately to the collective to which they both belonged. It should be noted that this “collective” did not just exist at a conceptual level; various forms and sizes of patrilineal kinship networks in Chinese society, from the extended family to the lineage and the clan, helped to endow that concept with a concrete entity. This means that besides the parents there were many other adults who had serious interests and stakes in the life of a child and that Chinese children learned their roles and responsibilities by moving within an adult world that was typically larger and more complex than that of their Western counterparts. The notion of one’s membership in and obligations to the patriline was instilled in young children by, among other things, having them participate in the numerous ancestral rites that included varying ranges of members of a descent group. The tie that was most emphasized and most assiduously cultivated in both quotidian and ritual situations, however, was of course that between parents and children, which formed the axis of the entire family hierarchy. Second, the mutual responsibility between parents and children was nevertheless perceived as asymmetrical, with the parents being seen as making sacrifices for their children that could never be repaid. Chinese parents were (and still are) noted for their dedication, in time, material means, and emotional energies, to the upbringing and education of their children. It is also perhaps hard to find in other traditions a match for the seriousness and enthusiasm with which the Confucian educated elite composed and published children’s primers and didactic handbooks. The goal of such devotion and passion on the part of householders and moralists was that children might acquire the skills, ritualized manners, and virtues that would bring fame, status, material benefits, or at least respect for the family when they grew up. Besides these social successes, children owed to their parents love, obedience, and care, all of which were lifelong filial duties that had to be learned [18.191.216.163] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 23...

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