The purpose of this research is to examine the issue of filial obligation as it emerges in contemporary society. The plan of the research will be to set forth salient points made by two commentators, and then to discuss the claim that friendship is an inappropriate basis on which to support the view that adult children have responsibilities toward their parents.
Daniels's purpose in a chapter on the connection between filial obligations and justice is to explore whether and how a coherent and reliable philosophical basis for discussing intergenerational morality. Initially, Daniels divides the discussion by differentiating between the claims of traditional morality and a whole range of moral sensibilities that in significant ways can be described as nontraditional. In order to see how he develops this differentiation, it is useful to see that he defines traditional morality in Judeo-Christian terms. The Old Testament command "Honor thy father and thy mother," as Daniels explains it, implies a set of familiar moral beliefs about family responsibilities, which from time to time in Western history have achieved the status of positive law and specific legal obligations, and which form the basis of some laws that "exist in various forms in half of the states in the United States today" (Daniels 23).
Daniels makes the point that advocates for enforcing filial obligations by law appeal to the traditions of filial piety. What is significant about Daniels's explanation of such appeals, however, is that they do not take sufficient account of the vast differences between traditional and contemporary social structure. As he puts it: "There is a mismatch between traditional and current needs for care of the elderly, and there is a mismatch between traditional and current possibilities for care" (Daniels 24). Life expectancies have dramatically increased, as have intergenerational independence, family diffusion, and the complexities of family ...