That Which We Call Duty

I personally feel that Chenyang Li’s is much stronger because he considers the “friendship” between parents and their children to be less of a reason as to why children should take care of their parents when they get older. Jane English’s argument for when it is necessary or where there is a moral obligation for children to take care of their parents is almost contingent on this friendship, or relationship with their parents. I think that children wanting to take care of their parents, as Chenyang Li says, should be out of duty (or categorical imperative even).

One of the reasons why I think that using the strength of friendship between parents and their children is not a good enough argument is because this kind of friendship is not very easily attainable. In fact, I think that having a good relationship with your children is extremely tricky because everyone is different. Even though parents have a large influence over their children’s morals and their upbringing, there is no sure way for parents to ever raise kids in such a way that they will definitely be friends in the future, let alone best friends. Already as it is, all of us in a lot of ways cannot be friends with everyone, I think that this applies as well for parents and their children (what if your kid’s an ass?). Because of the all the external environmental factors (how well the government provides for its citizens), difference in generation, change in culture (immigrant parents and their first generation American children), it is difficult for parents to have this kind of relationship with their children. Balance between spending time with their children while ensuring that their family is financially stable is difficult to strike. Perhaps having a really good relationship with your children is not quite worth compromising their future. I think that a good relationship with your children should be considered more of a luxury than a requirement.

I feel like Jane English uses this idea of friendship as a gauge to see how good a parent a person is, but I think that good parenting shouldn’t always be shown through the strength of their relationship, but perhaps how well their kid flourishes. For example, a good parent might be one who spends very little time with his children, but all of his time earning money to support his children, sending them to the best schools, getting the best food, and providing them with all the means to succeed in life, thus sacrificing the possibility that he could have the best relationship with his children. This parent is essentially sacrificing all of his time and effort, for his children, with whom he is not really close to. While this example may be a little extreme, I think it shows that friendship between parents and their children do not necessarily show good parenting. Because of this, using this as a means to gauge whether or not you should take care of your parents doesn’t work.

At the same time, this friendship between parents and children also suggest that for children to feel obligated to take care of their parents in the future, parents need to have been good parents. This is yet another problem because it is also not very easy to be a good parent. As children are born, they don’t come with manuals, and parents will never really ever know which decisions are the right ones. Parents may have all of the best intentions, but the decisions coming from these intentions may not necessarily reap the best benefits for their children. A lot of the time “bad parents” are the ones who just don’t know any better, or didn’t have the means to learn to be better. Good parenting is so subjective, that to decide whether or not your kid owes it to you to take care of you based on your parenting skills is unfair.  In addition to that, should how much you give back to your parents be measured based on how much they've given you, and if so, how do you quantify that? Because what they may have thought was best for you, may not necessarily be what you think is best for yourself, and there is no way either party will ever know that early enough.