父慈子孝
fù cí zǐ xiào
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
The father is loving and the children are dutiful: the Confucian picture of a harmonious family. Used to describe, or to hold up as an ideal, the way parents and children should treat each other.
Cha hiền từ, con hiếu thảo: hình mẫu gia đình hoà thuận theo quan niệm Nho giáo. Dùng để tả hoặc đề cao mối quan hệ tốt đẹp giữa cha mẹ và con cái.
Register: formal
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 062 (2026-11-13). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): Hán-Việt reading 父 = phụ, 子 = tử · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “phụ từ tử hiếu” (phu-tu-tu-hieu). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “父慈子孝” mean?
The father is loving and the children are dutiful: the Confucian picture of a harmonious family. Used to describe, or to hold up as an ideal, the way parents and children should treat each other. Literally: a loving father, a dutiful son
Is “父慈子孝” formal or informal?
父慈子孝 is generally formal.