The most important way that families today differ from families in the past is in the relation of grown-up children to their parents. In the past, children were old age insurance for their parents, before there was insurance and pensions and old folk's homes.
In Old Korea in its medieval times, honour for your parents could involve practices rather like the extreme ascetic practices that were venerated in the medieval Church in the West - and the religious needs could be similar. In Korean history such as The Historical Miscellancy of Kyengju covering 57 BC to 1669 AD, the Korean 'saints' whose glorious memory was honoured included patriots who died in battle, and assiduous scholars, but also children who carried honouring their parents to the greatest extreme it could go.
Che Eun was a heroine who did not marry and even sold her body to be able to care for her mother. This made her mother weep and then her daughter wept, and when the nobleman Chong Rangi found out, he sent them a hundred bags of rice and clothes, and thousands of his followers vied in carrying the sacks. When the king heard of this, he presented five hundred bags and a house, and ordered his soldiers to guard the grain safely. The heroine's village was given special recognition by being renamed 'Filial Care' and the king wrote to the Tang Emperor to tell him about the daughter's filial heroism.
A brave wife, Lee See, shielded her father-in-law from robbers with her body, saying, 'Kill me instead', and the robbers because of her filial piety released them both and went out saying, 'This is the home of a filial daughter, beware and do not injure it'. The king hearing of this had a red gate erected for her, South of An Kan Hyen in Kap San village.
Many of the stories were about very poor people who cared with great sacrifice for their mothers or fathers and were helped by the sympathetic and admiring neighbours. A widow hired herself out as a day labourer to care for her father and mother-in-law, and the neighbouring villages all commended her and provincial officers several times gave her gifts in appreciation.
Such behaviour, whether you were male or female, aroused the admiration of all the village and the heroes' and heroines' fame would extend, and rich lords might send them bags of rice, and the King of Silla (the Korean kingdom whose capital was Kyengju) might let them off taxes or erect a red gate in their honour.
I suggest a new event for the Olympics. Instead of spending your youth swimming laps seven hours a day, care for your aged parents and win a gold medal - or a red gate.
Valerie Yule, 57 Waimarie Drive, Mount Waverley, Victoria, Australia (tel 9807 4315).
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