A growing number of young Chinese are openly describing conflicts with their parents in terms of manipulation, control and psychological harm, challenging expectations of obedience that have long been associated with the Confucian tradition of filial duty. The phenomenon is increasingly visible among China’s Generation Z, which is using concepts drawn from psychology and mental-health discussions to describe family relationships that previous generations often regarded as normal or unavoidable.
The issue was highlighted by German newspaper Die Zeit in an article by Franka Lu, a Chinese journalist and entrepreneur who works in China and Germany and writes under a pseudonym to protect her professional and private environment. Lu describes the experience of a young Chinese woman living in Berlin whose father repeatedly pressured her and her younger sister in China to take out a €25,000 bank loan on his behalf. He said his businesses were performing badly and that he needed the money to keep creditors at bay.
The sisters had no involvement in their father’s businesses and eventually rejected his request, despite what Lu described as an intense internal struggle and powerful feelings of guilt. “I hope I will get over it someday,” her friend told her. Lu presents the case as part of a wider pattern now being discussed on Chinese social media, where terms such as “children as parents of their parents”, “guardians of parents”, “narcissistic parents” and “giant-baby parents” have become trending topics among members of Generation Z.
Accounts shared online describe parental pressure ranging from manipulation to physical violence. Young people report being punished or mistreated because they refuse to marry, reject parental demands or make decisions that conflict with their parents’ wishes. In another case cited by Lu, a young woman told a prominent Chinese blogger during a live discussion that her father had accumulated major debts after a poor financial decision, forced her mother to act as guarantor and then demanded that his two daughters help make mortgage payments. The daughter had no assets of her own but was deeply concerned about her parents’ retirement.
The blogger told her that she needed to establish boundaries, describing what he regarded as a widespread pattern in which children were conditioned to believe they had been brought into the world to serve their parents or repay the costs of their upbringing. Lu links such expectations to xiaodao, or filial duty, a Confucian concept that remains influential both as a family value and, she argues, as a principle associated with social and political hierarchy.
According to the article, traditional teachings hold that children owe their parents obedience because their parents gave them life. The Xiaojing, or Book of Filial Piety, a classic traditionally associated with Confucius and probably dating from the fourth century BC, is presented as expressing the expectation that children should put their parents’ needs before their own and, if necessary, sacrifice themselves for them. The same hierarchical logic, Lu argues, has historically been extended to the relationship between ruler and subjects, with the state conceived as a larger family and the ruler as its father.
Modern revolutions in the 19th and 20th centuries weakened the extent of these obligations, but Lu argues that legal and social protections for children remain limited. China has no institution equivalent to Germany’s youth welfare office, according to the article. Children subjected to parental mistreatment have few legal avenues unless they have suffered physical impairment or serious injury. Parents can also send disobedient children to psychiatric institutions or so-called “internet addiction schools”, the article says.
At the same time, Chinese law protects parents’ right to receive financial support from their children in old age, including in circumstances where parents have not adequately cared for them during childhood. Several prominent court rulings have confirmed this principle, while children who fail to meet their support obligations can lose inheritance rights.
Lu cites further examples of family control, including parents discarding a daughter’s clothes because she refused to wear only white blouses and skirts, throwing another daughter out of the family home after she cut her hair, and pressuring young people to abandon plans to study abroad. In September, she reports, a young professional said her parents abducted her and placed her in a psychiatric institution after she refused to leave her job and return to her home town to marry. In August, an 18-year-old who had escaped a marriage arranged by her parents was allegedly abducted again after fleeing to another part of China. She was eventually rescued after a witness alerted police.
The response among younger Chinese is increasingly collective. Lu writes that Generation Z is the best-educated generation in Chinese history and the first to have widespread basic knowledge of psychology, therapy and mental health. Online and offline discussion groups have emerged where young people exchange information and support, seek therapy and legal advice, and attempt to renegotiate relationships with their parents.
The change is also reflected in academic research examining parental expectations, filial obligations and their influence on marriage decisions. Lu cites studies linking Chinese parents’ depression with the marital status of their children and research examining the pressure placed on women who resist parental demands to marry.
For Lu, the emergence of terms such as “children as parents of their parents” represents a new way for young Chinese to describe relationships that earlier generations often accepted without questioning them. She characterises this as “a collective effort at self-healing”, while noting that an unintended consequence is the erosion of the foundations of an authoritarian state whose hierarchical patriarchal order depends in part on those relationships.
