Family Ethics

The Dutch government has a double moral message for Dutch parents. On the one hand, they expect mothers to work more hours outside the home; on the other hand, they expect parents to perform better in their parental tasks. New research shows again that in spite of all stimulation measures, Dutch women with children prefer their part-time jobs, and parents prefer not to leave their children to the responsibility of day care all week. To what extent is the government allowed (...) to oblige mothers to work more hours a week if the consequence is that the responsibility for upbringing shifts from parents to day care centres? (shrink)

the arguments in their favour are weak. Arguments based on reciprocity fail to explain why only means-tested public benefits should be subject to work requirements, and why unpaid dependant care work should not count as satisfying citizens’ obligations to reciprocate. Argu- ments based on promoting the work ethic misattribute recipients’ nonwork to deviant values, when their core problem is finding steady employment consistent with supporting a family and meeting dependant care responsibilities. Rigid work requirements impose unreasonable costs on some of (...) the poor. A welfare system based on a rebuttable presumption that recipients will work for pay, conjoined with more generous work supports, would promote justice better than either unconditional welfare or strict requirements [1]. (shrink)

This paper discusses parents’ rights and duties regarding their offspring from a certain classical liberal perspective. Approaching this issue from this perspective is particularly interesting for two reasons. First, classical liberalism’s alleged inability to explain the rights of very young human beings is a serious objection against such theories. Second, if we are able to show that a version of classical liberalism not only avoids this objection but actually implies very strong parental obligations to support offspring, the case for extensive (...) parental obligations in general is indeed very strong. If we accept that parents produce offspring in the same sense that they can produce inanimate objects, but are able to show that such production does not create parental ownership in offspring, we should accept that parents have extensive duties to support their offspring in virtue of being their offspring’s producers. Moreover, these duties are negative duties, which parents must perform in order to avoid actively harming their offspring. (shrink)

Although researchers working from the cognitive-developmental and domain perspective have contributed significantly in presenting insights on children's moral knowledge, specific questions about how caregivers' language-based input facilitates their children's understanding of moral knowledge have not been examined. This article explores how language-based socialisation patterns play an important role in care-givers' and children's construction of socio-moral meanings. I argue that it is through participation in communicative and narrative practices that children begin to understand cultural meanings about morality. By drawing on theories (...) and research conducted in the field of language socialisation, I demonstrate the mutual interdependence between the construction of moral meanings and communicative practices. Examples that demonstrate the various ways in which communicative practices provide the foundation for the co-creation of moral meanings between Hindi-speaking Indian caregivers and their children are discussed. (shrink)

This study mothers. The results confirmed earlier reports that boys with older brothers weigh less at birth than boys with older sisters, but they did not confirm reports that girls with older brothers weigh less than girls with older sisters. The results did not show across-the-board differences in the mean birth weights of homosexual versus heterosexual women or homosexual versus heterosexual men. However, the homosexual males with older brothers weighed about 170 g less at birth than the heterosexual males with (...) older brothers. It is suggested that this pattern of results may reflect a maternal immune response to Y-linked minor histocompatibility antigens (H–Y antigens). According to this hypothesis, when the maternal immune response is mild, it produces only a slightly reduced birth weight, but when it is stronger, it produces a markedly reduced birth weight as well as an increased probability of homosexuality. (shrink)

_Growing up with Parents who have Learning Difficulties_ uses a life-story approach to present new evidence about how children from such families manage the transition to adulthood, and about the longer-term outcomes of such an upbringing. It offers a view of parental competence as a social attribute rather than an individual skill, assessing the implications for institutional policies and practices. The authors address the notion of children having to parent their disabled parents and argue for a shift in emphasis from (...) protecting children to supporting families. This innovative book provides a fresh approach to a subject rife with prejudice and challenges us to think again about many taken-for-granted ideas about the process of parenting and the needs of children. It also demonstrates the power of narrative research and its capacity for bringing alive people's experience in a way that enables us to better understand their lives. (shrink)

The Hague Conference on Private International Law currently has a Parentage/Surrogacy Project, which evaluates the legal status of children in cross-border situations, including situations involving international contract pregnancy. Should a convention focusing on international contract pregnancy emerge from this project, it will need to be consistent with the Hague convention on Intercountry Adoption. The latter convention prohibits adoptions unless, among other things, ‘the competent authorities of the receiving State have determined that the prospective adoptive parents are eligible and suited to (...) adopt’. Included in it, therefore, is a parental vetting or licensing requirement. In our view, a similar requirement must also appear in any Hague Convention on international contract pregnancy if the two conventions are to be ethically consistent with one another. In particular, there should be a licensing requirement in such a convention for at least some of the prospective parents in contract pregnancy arrangements. We consider several arguments against this conclusion, and argue that none of them is successful. (shrink)

This cross-cultural study of the moral judgements of Mainland Han-Chinese, Chinese-Canadian, and Euro-Canadian children aged seven to 11 examined the evaluations of narrative protagonists? modest lies and self-promoting truthful statements in situations where they had done a good deed. The story characters had thus either lied or told the truth about a prosocial act that they had committed. Chinese children judged modest lies more positively and boastful truths less positively than Euro-Canadian children. Chinese and Chinese-Canadian children rated immodest statements more (...) negatively than did Euro-Canadian children. The cultural differences were greatest with the oldest children. Chinese children rated modest lies significantly more positively than either Canadian group who did not differ from each other but an interaction between age and culture revealed the three groups to be significantly different at age 11 with Chinese children most positive, followed by Chinese-Canadian children, and with Euro-Canadian children evaluating modest lies least positively. Cultural strictures and acculturation factors respecting modesty and self-enhancement are reflected in these differences. (shrink)

Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development has brought wide attention to the role of adults in children’s learning and development. The author proposes that beyond understanding its mechanism, its use is influenced by various factors which the adult needs to be sensitive to. Through integrating related literature on the zpd and on adult-child interactions, this paper aims to shed light on the nature of adult sensitivity in actualizing the zpd. The concept is first analyzed theoretically. Two types of (...) sensitivity will then be discussed: adults’ self-awareness and their awareness of children as active players in the interaction process. Sigel’s concept of distancing is suggested as a means of enhancing one’s sensitivity. (shrink)

RPC.2 The individual’s measure of consequences is proportionate to the circle of his outlook. His horizons may lie so near that he can only measure at short range. But, whether they be near or far, he can only judge of consequences as proximately or remotely touching himself. His judgment may err; his motive remains always the same, whether he be conscious of it or not. RPC.3 That motive is necessarily egoistic, since no one deliberately chooses misery when..

This paper reports on a mixed methods study of adolescents' responses to case material about social exclusion. First, a qualitative coding method is presented that describes the way adolescents choose and justify strategies to negotiate such situations. The responses were then analysed quantitatively using chi square tests and multinomial logistic regression. Findings indicate that adolescents' interpretation of their social context was a significant factor in their choice of strategy. Those adolescents who invoked normative rules and conventions as the most salient (...) justifications were more likely to recommend bystanding rather than joining in the exclusion. However, adolescents who viewed the protagonist's own choice as an opportunity for making long?lasting positive changes in the social environment were more likely to recommend helping the victim. Gender and school context also were associated with adolescents' choice of strategy. Implications for research in moral development as well as practical implications for school?based programming are discussed. (shrink)

This study concerned the relationship between views of possession and theft. Four groups of children aged 7-8; 9-10; 12-13 and 16-17 completed a questionnaire based on the work of Furby and Irving and Siegal. Results demonstrated that possession concepts become more differentiated with age, focusing more on the importance of positive acquisition, single ownership and social influence. Attitudes towards theft crimes become more harsh even in the face of mitigating circumstances. This increased harshness may be understood in terms of possessions (...) becoming progressively more a part of the self-concept. Thus theft and consequent loss to self leads to empathy with the victim and feelings of retribution for the thief. The results are discussed in terms of the literature on social and moral development. (shrink)

Several philosophers argue that individuals have an interest-protecting right to parent; specifically, the interest is in rearing children whom one can parent adequately. If such a right exists it can provide a solution to scepticism about duties of justice concerning distant future generations and bypass the challenge provided by the non-identity problem. Current children - whose identity is independent from environment-affecting decisions of current adults - will have, in due course, a right to parent. Adequate parenting requires resources. We owe (...) duties of justice to current children, including the satisfaction of their interest-protecting rights; therefore we owe them the conditions for rearing children adequately in the future. But to engage in permissible parenting they, too, will need sufficient resources to ensure their own children's future ability to bring up children under adequate conditions. Because this reasoning goes on ad infinitum it entails that each generation of adults owes its contemporary generation of children at least those resources that are necessary for sustaining human life indefinitely at an adequate level of wellbeing. (shrink)

Through a focus on one child’s extended stay in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, I raise four general questions about pediatric medicine: How should physicians communicate with parents of very sick children? How should physicians involve parents of very sick children in treatment decisions? How should care be coordinated when a child is being treated by different medical teams with rotating personnel? Should the guidelines for making judgments of medical futility and discontinuation of treatment differ when the patient is a (...) child rather than an adult? (shrink)

Goering argues that children, at any age, have the potential to utilize logic and generate philosophical thinking through role-playing yet challenging games. This activity fosters a philosophical imagination for children.

This book addresses the endangerment of children’s bodies in affluent societies. Bodily integrity is an important part of a child’s physical and mental well-being, but it can also be violated through various threats during childhood; not only affecting physical health but also causing mental damage and leading to distortions in the development of the self. The authors give an account of three areas, which present different serious dangers: (1) body and eating, (2) body and sexuality, and (3) body and violence. (...) Through an in-depth examination of the available theoretical and empirical knowledge, as well as a thorough ethical analysis, the central injustices in the mentioned areas are identified and the agents with responsibilities towards children displayed. The authors conclude by providing invaluable insight into the necessity of an ethical basis for policies to safeguard children and their bodies. (shrink)

This article explores the socio-ethical concerns raised by the familial searching of forensic databases in criminal investigations, from the perspective of family and kinship studies. It discusses the broader implications of this expanded understanding for wider debates about identity, privacy and genetic databases.

Diversity is a feature of family life which those who speak of the importance of family values should not ignore. The diversity is seen not only in the structure of families, but also in the moral values which children actually pick up in the context of the family and the way in which the transmission of values occurs. Diversity becomes a matter of public importance when the values which children develop at home are perceived to be in serious conflict with (...) the values which underpin moral education in the common school. Any response to this diversity requires a delicate balance between the right of families to initiate their children into their own moral values, the right of schools to teach the shared values of the broader society, and the right of children to develop into autonomous moral agents. (shrink)