Filial Obligation in Contemporary Society

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

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ng activities (85). To put it another way, a man may write the checks or even pick up the prescriptions for an aging parent or parent-in-law in residence; his wife (or daughter), employed or not, will be the one to administer the drugs to, cook the meals for, and clean up after the parent. As the baby boomer population ages, Post suggests, the obligations of and burdens on women are only likely to increase, if society remains structured as it is currently. The problem that Post suggests becomes aggravated by the fact that current social structure is inequitably balanced against women, imposing disproportionate obligations and expectations on them that derive from outmoded moral constructs. This is only aggravated by the view that women are more psychologically and emotional suited to the caregiving enterprise (85). Post indirectly notes that those who make claims for superior female virtue owing to their sense of emotional responsibility to others leave themselves open to being manipulated into adding caregiver responsibilities to other obligations. That is what he means when he says that while some women may "choose to live lives of significant self-abnegation," others may not "want to make a vocation for the very old" (85). Mea
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Approximate Word count = 1281
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)