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In which countries do kids respect their parents the most?
Here was my earlier post on the topic, now Ban Chuan Cheah is kind enough to send me questionnaire data from the World Values Survey. The question is:
With which of these two statements do you tend to agree? (CODE ONE ANSWER ONLY)
A. Regardless of what the qualities and faults of one's parents are, one must always love and respect them.
B. One does not have the duty to respect and love parents who have not earned it by their behaviour and attitudes.
1. Always
2. Earned
3. Neither
Some rates of answering "Always" are:
Netherlands: 31.9 percent, Denmark: 35.9, Germany: 59.2, Belarus: 70.9, Japan: 71.6, France: 74.7, United States: 77.2, Canada: 77.6, India: 88.8, China: 94.5, Puerto Rico: 97.5, Vietnam: 99.3.
Based on these and other numbers, I tentatively conclude that wealth breeds parental disrespect, being Asian brings greater respect for parents, and having a strong welfare state is correlated with disrespect for parents. Being a former East Bloc totalitarian state doesn't have nearly the oomph I would have expected; many East European countries fall into the 70-80 percent range.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 5, 2007 at 06:32 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
I'll Translate this and send it to my parents. Just to let them get the point it's not just me. Thanks MR
Sam (Dutch)
Posted by: sam at Dec 5, 2007 7:26:35 AM
Does this mean you have revised the premise of your previous post?
The idea that American children have "far less" respect for their parents doesn't seem confirmed by this data, unless your only reference group is Asia.
Of course, if that is your only reference group, I would imagine half of the reasons you listed no longer make sense. Unless you want to argue that kids in Denmark watch incredible amounts of American television and live in society without hierarchy (forgetting it is a constitutional monarchy).
Posted by: Student at Dec 5, 2007 7:43:11 AM
Could someone match these results up with Gini Coefficients?
Posted by: at Dec 5, 2007 8:25:51 AM
Being Danish I translate the numbers more as a way to explain wealth.
A healty scepticism is always preferred, not fundamentalism!
Posted by: Peden at Dec 5, 2007 8:57:18 AM
How do you know that it's not the other way around: parental disrespect breeds wealth?
Posted by: oreg at Dec 5, 2007 9:17:54 AM
the US is in the same ranger as France, Canada and Belarus.. Doesn't that nullify the wealth and the welfare state causality ?
Posted by: nu at Dec 5, 2007 9:34:29 AM
Or maybe countries with more closely related cultural heritage are more likely to a) have similar levels of wealth, b) have similar distribution of answers to this question.
Posted by: josh at Dec 5, 2007 9:37:13 AM
"having a strong welfare state is correlated with disrespect for parents"
How does this logically flow from the answers? It sounds more like a strong welfare state is correlated with an environment in which people feel parents should earn respect (i.e., be accountable for their actions) not that they are being actively disrespected.
Posted by: at Dec 5, 2007 9:42:35 AM
Correlation doesn't mean causation? I was surprised to see you make that hypothesis. Or maybe, the better your chances for social mobility the more the parents have to earn your respect?
Also the US more than any of the above countries is a hodgepodge of cultures - I would guess the breakdown percentages for the USA's answers would vary dramatically based on region of the country, how many generations American you are, etc.
Posted by: Kevin at Dec 5, 2007 10:20:10 AM
*Cough* absolutely ridiculous conclusion drawn *cough.*
Probably one of your least insightful posts ever.
I suspect that religiosity has more to do with it than any of your cited hypothetical factors.
Posted by: Caped Crusader at Dec 5, 2007 10:32:12 AM
Caped Crusader, China scored among the highest as far as mandatory parental respect goes, and it is a decidedly non-religious nation. Same might go for Vietnam, but I'm no expert.
Posted by: Katie at Dec 5, 2007 10:57:38 AM
While the People's Republic of China is officially atheist, it's hardly organic atheism, but rather state-coerced atheism. People are afraid to respond to truthfully for fear of reprisal, data is falsified, etc.
Nonetheless, according to most sources I've happened upon, China is less than 15% atheist (and it's likely quite a bit lower than that). Major religions in China include buddhism, taoism and ancestor veneration/folk religion.
Posted by: Jesper at Dec 5, 2007 11:36:02 AM
I suspect that this is primarily cultural -- West vs. East. This perhaps reflects the Western tradition of reason and rationality and the legacy of the Enlightenment.
To the extent that there is causality with wealth it's that countries that prize reason and rationality also tend to have the foundations of a more prosperous economy.
Posted by: Colin at Dec 5, 2007 12:17:26 PM
Boy, that proves it. Social democracy is bad for
"family values"!!!
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Dec 5, 2007 12:22:17 PM
I don't believe the answer to this question would be highly related to behavior. Are children in Denmark really running wild, or do they read this question as "my parents right or wrong"? A sentiment liberal, thinking people tend to disagree with.
(Alternatively, maybe the question is really an indicator of how much parents in each
country are worthy of respect!)
A more accurate picture would be to measure actual behavior, but what is a good measure of "respect"? This too differs by culture.
I suspect children in China feel greater moral obligations to their parents, but I suspect Americans are more likely to sincerely consider their parents as friends.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Dec 5, 2007 1:00:43 PM
Intuitively I think wealth only has marginal effect. Culture is more important. Eastern Asia is obviously following Confucius teaching. US, comparing to western Europe, is more a Christian nation.
Posted by: Joshua Shen at Dec 5, 2007 1:21:03 PM
The word "respect" is ambiguous in English. It can mean "defer to" or it can mean "admire, esteem". If a modern woman is happily married, should she "respect" her husband?
Very often an ambiguous word in one language has no corresponding equally ambiguous word in another language. Instead, you must choose between two unambiguous translations, with different meanings.
Pollsters know that even small, seemingly innocuous changes in the wording of a question can produce very large differences in the response. So what happens when you translate into a different language entirely?
Obviously some of the differences are real -- China's Confucian heritage, for instance -- but still, this sort of transnational polling in multiple languages must be taken with a very, very big grain of salt.
Posted by: at Dec 5, 2007 2:37:32 PM
Specifics would be more revealing. What if the question was something like, "Let's say you want to be a doctor. If your father insisted that you work under him at his auto repair shop instead of taking a scholarship to medical school that you have earned, would you obey him?"
Why is it that the character generation questions in Ultima 4 are deeper than surveys such as the one discussed?
Posted by: perianwyr at Dec 5, 2007 2:48:16 PM
Yet another lame survey. Any question with "always" in it is just stupid. To channel Godwin, if your dad were Hitler, would you still have to love and respect him? Or, slightly less dramatically, if he physically, emotionally, and sexually abused you from birth until you escaped the home, how 'bout then?
Posted by: JustAGuy at Dec 5, 2007 3:58:11 PM
I'm surprised to see MR include a survey on its site - surveys are generally worthless since there is no cost to lying - to truly measure parental "respect" (a vague and empty term), we should measure how much income or time (or some other costly proxy) children give their parents, since that would involve a true cost
Posted by: enrique at Dec 5, 2007 4:08:14 PM
I am from Denmark. I have worked as a teacher since 1970, so I know a little bit about childrens behaviour.
Most children want to love and respect their parents, but Denmark is a very egalitarian society, so you don't have love and respect because of who you are but rather because of how you act.
All children loves their parents, and sometimes also without any reason, but not all children respect their parents (or their teachers), if they don't act in a way so that they deserve it.
That is healthy, I think.
Too much respect for authorities often ends up in supporting dictatorship. A slogan like "Right or wrong - my country" is a good example of misguided respect.
A good citizen must dare to ask the inconvenient question. That doesn't mean that he loves less, often more actually, because he/she dares to take the necessary conflicts also if it causes pain.
Don't confuse respect with submission.
Mogens
Posted by: Mogens at Dec 5, 2007 4:30:44 PM
It's just a cultural thing, don't make it too complicated.
Posted by: howie at Dec 5, 2007 5:49:38 PM
A major flaw of international surveys like this one, besides those mentioned above, is that words such as "love" and (especially) "respect" often can't be translated across different languages with full accuracy. Of course, the dictionary will list one or more words that mean more or less the same, but the actual mental images evoked by such "literal" translations among speakers of different languages can be very different. This can be the case even for speakers of the same language coming from a different cultural background.
Posted by: Ivan at Dec 5, 2007 7:53:10 PM
They must have gotten around at least part of the translation problems. Otherwise the number for most European countries would be zero. "Loving" your parents sounds very strange to people there as loving is reserved for lovers.
Posted by: oreg at Dec 5, 2007 8:27:31 PM
I think your reference to strong welfare states lacks facts, because France is also a strong welfare state, but it has a high respect for parents. Canada also has a bigger welfare state than the US and is on par. I don't think this is necessarily related to welfare statism, but rather to cultural norms.
Posted by: Max at Dec 6, 2007 5:47:45 AM
