Filial piety as a protective factor against burden experienced by family caregivers of diabetic patients in Hong Kong

The quality of parent-child relationships would affect adult children’s attitudes and behaviors toward caring for their ill-parents. Perhaps, this is peculiarly true for Chinese societies where the traditional value of filial piety is emphasized. This study aimed to investigate how filial piety might bear on care burden experienced by Chinese family caregivers of people with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) in Hong Kong. Altogether 150 Chinese family caregivers participated in the survey by completing the Caregiver Burden Inventory, Caregiving Difficulty, and Contemporary Filial Piety Scale and answering some demographic questions. The results indicate that family caregivers of people with T2DM experience more difficulty in social caring than in daily caring and physical caring and their burden mainly centers around the time pressure of being preoccupied with the caregiving work. Caregiver burden is indicated positively by caring difficulty and caregiver’s age and negatively by filial piety. It appears, therefore, that nurturing, treasuring this traditional Chinese value may alleviate burden and stress relating to caring for Chinese family members with T2DM. Implications for counselling practice in supporting Chinese family caregivers of diabetic patients - including assessment, intervention, and cultural sensitivity - were put forward.