3 - (SYM 62) Filial Piety, Gender Roles, and Marital Functioning in Japan and China: A Cross-cultural Study

Filial piety, the Confucian value of reverence toward one’s parents, influences marital decision-making, gender roles, and relationship functioning in East Asian cultures (Yeh et al., 2013). Elderly parents may choose their children’s marital prospects and expect caregiving duties from sons and daughters-in-law, though norms vary across cultures (Chappell & Kusch, 2007). Filial piety values may relate to gendered expectations of spousal involvement in household duties, in turn impacting marital satisfaction (Gui, 2021). While high filial piety is linked with quality romantic relationships, its impact on marital satisfaction and spousal involvement is unknown (Wang, 2022). This study explores how filial piety and parental involvement in marital decisions relate to spousal involvement and marital satisfaction, and whether gender and nationality moderate this association. Chinese and Japanese participants in the 2016 East Asian Social Survey (N=4823) completed measures of parental involvement, filial piety, spousal involvement, and marital satisfaction. PROCESS moderation analyses tested whether gender and nationality moderated links between parental involvement and filial piety on two aspects of marital functioning: marital satisfaction and spousal involvement. Gender and nationality moderated the filial piety-spousal involvement and filial piety-marital satisfaction links. For women, greater endorsement of filial piety predicted higher marital satisfaction (b=.02, p< .001) and greater spousal involvement (b=.14, p< .001). For Japanese participants only, higher endorsement of filial piety predicted higher spousal involvement (b=.28, p< .001) and marital satisfaction (b=.02, p=.002). Consistent with prior research (Lee et al., 2023), for both Japanese and Chinese participants, higher parental involvement in marital decisions predicted lower marital satisfaction (b=-.06, p< .001) and spousal involvement (Japan:b=-1.25, p< .001; China:b=-.35, p=.004). Findings emphasize the importance of investigating predictors of marital functioning among diverse populations to develop culturally-sensitive interventions which accommodate values such as filial piety in couple therapy.