Duties to Aging Parents

Abstract

This chapter rejects the once-traditional view that grown children owe their parents some kind of fitting repayment for past services rendered; it also rejects English’s view that grown children strictly “owe” their parents nothing except what flows naturally from whatever love and affection exist between them, and Sommers’s view that legitimate duties arise out of special relationships defined by social roles. Instead, I begin with English’s claim that the “duties” in question are merely “duties of friendship,” duties situated within and made sense of through an ongoing mutual relationship, but then offer an argument that allows us to establish genuine filial obligations in a way that she is unable to do. I argue that family relationships are importantly different both from friendship (English’s analogy) and from other social roles (Sommers’s analogy) in their uniquely unchosen and unconditional nature. I suggest that we can shed light on what grown children owe their parents by looking first at a category of family relationships less shadowed by traditional encrustations of debt and gratitude: the relationship of siblings. I claim that we have strong reasons to participate in unconditional, unchosen relationships and corresponding obligations not to deny others the good of participating in such relationships with us. I conclude by trying to say something about exactly what grown children owe their parents: Grown children owe their parents those things that flow from participating together in an unconditional, unchosen relationship, and not (generally) material goods that can be otherwise obtained.