College students’ perceptions of filial obligation can differ across individual, familial, and cultural contexts. However, comparative and empirical studies on this issue are scarce. To address the gap in literature, we examined how American and Korean cultural contexts differently affect the association between two types of parent-child relationship quality (mother-child dyad and father-child dyad) and two types of filial obligation (instrumental support and emotional support). In addition, we examined how children’s gender moderates the above associations. We collected a sample of 500 college students, ages 18 to 25 years, from private universities in the United States (n = 224) and South Korea (n = 276). Regarding American college students, results showed that mother-child relationship quality was positively associated with emotional support of filial obligation. In terms of Korean college students, however, mother-child relationship quality was positively associated with two types of filial obligation respectively. These results indicate that Korean college students consider both instrumental and emotional support as important values of filial obligation, whereas American college students consider emotional support as the more important value of filial obligation compared to instrumental support. Regarding the moderating effect, we found that children’s gender moderated the associations between father-child relationship quality and two types of filial obligation in Korean college students. We suggest that Korean cultural contexts based on the tradition of patriarchy and gender socialization affect the association between father-child relationship quality and filial obligation.

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