Question What obligations do we have to our parents and families? I guess this is really a range of questions: because they cared for us in the formative years of our lives, how obliged are we to continue to accept their advice and care and offer the same back later on? Can being borne to two people bind you to them forever? What right do we have to criticise the methods they used to bring us up: should we just be thankful that they raised us at all? If someone looks after you, do you always owe them something?

Accepted:
August 19, 2006

Comments

I am probably not the right person to answer this question, because I am not entirely comfortable with talk about moral obligations. But perhaps I can start a conversation (or dispute).

I don't think you strictly owe your parents anything at all, just on the basis of their giving birth to you or raising you. They made these decisions, in most cases, without consulting you at all (obviously, in the case of deciding to give birth to you, and often, too, in their decisions of how to raise you). So, it is not as if you agreed to some exchange: "give me these things and I will care for you in your old age." You never made any such agreement, so they can't really suppose you now owe them for decisions that they made (mostly without your consent or equal participation). I don't see how you can incur a debt without consenting to the transaction that creates the debt. But again, I am generally uncomfortable with deontological analyses of most moral issues.

As a virtue theorist, I would prefer to modify the question. What would the best sort of person do? Would a good person, understanding that he or she had no strict debt to parents, leave them to rot in their old age? Even if there is no strict obligation to return others' freely given beneficence, what kind of twerp would fail to count it as, if not creating an obligation, at least as a significant reason for reciprocating appropriately? Even if I don't actually owe you anything, I can be a pretty bad guy for not giving it to you. So, I would prefer to make the question into what a good person would do, as a good person, rather than understanding it in terms of debts, duties, or obligations.