Understanding the Meanings of Children’s Practice of Filial Piety from Outsourcing Parental Care Work: The Examples of Families Hiring Foreign Caregivers

• Main Authors: Chen, Yu Ling, 陳育伶
• Other Authors: Ma, Ai Hsuan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/329u69

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 社會學研究所 === 102 === The need for long-term care increases with Taiwan’s aging population. According to the Chinese tradition as well as current social norms and expectations, care work is considered women’s responsibility. However, with women’s increasing participation in the labor force, many financially-abled women started to outsource care work to relieve their responsibility. The rise in the rate of hiring foreign caregivers in Taiwan manifests this trend. Current literature on outsourcing maternal care work has pointed out the ways mothers maintain family intactness and justify their behavior of outsourcing maternal care. Does the same situation happen in outsourcing filial piety? How do sons, daughters and daughter-in-laws justify such behavior? How would they reinterpret the meaning of ‘filial piety’ after sourcing parental care? The study found that the choice of outsourcing parental care work was affected by factors such as children's financial conditions, roles in the family, and relationship with parents. Sons, daughters and daughters-in-law often played different roles of decision makers and managers in outsourcing parental care. For those who outsourced parental care work to foreign caregivers, their roles were changed from 'primary caregiver' to 'supervisor' or 'manager' to ensure that their parents would obtain high quality care. In this way, the meaning and practice of filial piety were redefined. 'Parents living at home till the end of life' and 'quality control of parental care' became the core considerations of filial piety. By emphasizing foreign caregivers' professionalism and their family-like relationship with foreign caregivers, those children who outsourced parent care work justified their choice of outsourcing and claimed that such arrangement was beneficial to parents who were cared for. In addition, the care work provided by foreign caregivers often generated 'spillover effects' for the whole household; not only parents but other family members could also obtain benefits from hiring foreign caregivers. For example, foreign caregivers helped cleaning house, cooking and so on. Consequently, the choice of outsourcing parental care work to foreign caregiver was considered most appropriate for the whole family.