family ethics assignment

Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy pp 1–6 Cite as

Family, Ethics of the

• Sabine Hohl 3  
• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 28 July 2023

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Introduction

Family ethics is a broad field of philosophical inquiry that covers many different topics. This entry will provide an overview of some of the main questions currently pursued in the field.

Like other areas of applied ethics, family ethics shares substantial scope with political philosophy. Questions that concern parental authority and its justification are addressed in more depth in the entries on “ Justice and the Family ” and “ Children and Justice ” in this encyclopedia.

Definitions and Methodology

The subject of family ethics is “the family.” But what exactly is the family? Most family ethics research of the past decades is mainly concerned with the relationship between parents and children and its legitimate regulation by the state. Accordingly, “family” is often defined in a way that picks out this particular relationship. For example, David Archard defines the family as a “(…) multigenerational group, normally stably co-habiting, whose adults take primary custodial...

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University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Sabine Hohl

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Regents Professor of the University System of Maryland and Director of the University of Baltimore Center for International and Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, USA

Mortimer Sellers

Professor for Legal and Social Philosophy, Department of Legal Theory, International and European Law, University of Salzburg, Austria, Churfurststrasse 1, 5020 Salzburg, Austria

Stephan Kirste

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University of Graz, Graz, Austria

Norbert Paulo

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Hohl, S. (2023). Family, Ethics of the. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_1058-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_1058-1

Received : 17 April 2023

Accepted : 13 May 2023

Published : 28 July 2023

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Online ISBN : 978-94-007-6730-0

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8.7: Ethical Responsibilities to Families

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• Page ID 86580

• Cindy Stephens, Gina Peterson, Sharon Eyrich, & Jennifer Paris
• College of the Canyons via College of the Canyons

According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Code of Ethical Conduct (May 2011) “families are of primary importance in children’s development. Because the family and the early childhood practitioner have a common interest in the child’s well-being, we acknowledge a primary responsibility to bring about communication, cooperation, and collaboration (the three C’s) between the home and early childhood program in ways that enhance the child’s development.”  [111]

The code consists of ideals and principles that we must adhere to as ethical professionals. The ideals (refer to the  Code of Ethical Conduct  ) provide us with how we need to support, welcome, listen to, develop relationships with, respect, share knowledge with and help families as we work together in partnership with them to support their role as parents. The principles provide us with specific responsibilities to families in our role as early childhood professionals. These principles include what individuals must do as well as the programs that serve those families.

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FROM THE EDITOR

Ethics and family medicine.

John Saultz, MD

Fam Med. 2018;50(8):577-578.

DOI: 10.22454/FamMed.2018.999578

T he Oxford English Dictionary defines ethics as “moral principles that govern a person’s behavior.” It is a branch of philosophy that has been studied since at least the time of ancient Greece. So it is no small task to define a unique approach to medical ethics for family medicine, but this is exactly what Tunzi and Ventres have tried to do in this issue of Family Medicine . 1 Traditionally, moral philosophers have conceptualized ethics using three broad approaches: virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontology. 2 Virtue ethics, first described by Aristotle, defines the morally correct course of action as that which would be chosen by a virtuous person in similar circumstances. To a virtue ethicist, we should live our lives in such a way as to incorporate virtue into our characters. Aristotle went on to define four cardinal virtues: temperance, prudence, courage, and justice. The second approach, consequentialism, argues that moral choices should be evaluated on the basis of their outcomes, which might include benefit to others, benefit to self, or benefit to society. The third approach, deontology, is based on fulfilling moral duties, with the best example being the work of Immanuel Kant. Modern medical ethicists have largely adapted Aristotle’s approach and have defined beneficence, nonmalevolence, autonomy, and justice as the four cardinal virtues of medical decision-making. This forms the foundation of how medical ethics is usually taught to health care professionals. Karches and Sulmasy took this one step further in a 2016 paper in this journal arguing that virtue-based education should form the foundation of training in medical professionalism. 3

Tunzi and Ventres take a substantially different approach. They argue that the comprehensive and relationship-based nature of family medicine requires a different theoretical framework, and assert that moral choices are inherently present in the day-to-day work of family physicians as we seek to explain the complex ities of modern medicine to our patients and their families. They envision an ethical approach that flows from our duties as patient and community advocates, an approach that is fundamentally deontological. Within the context of trusting relationships, family physicians assume a moral duty to balance the interests of our patients with societal interests such as the just allocation of resources to achieve population health goals. All too often, we find these interests to be in conflict. At our best, we help patients and communities to understand these tensions. At our worst, we move chaotically from one situation to the next without seriously considering the moral dimensions of our choices.

Most family physicians seek to do the right thing in our daily work, but modern medicine renders this task harder and harder as competing interests vie for our attention. So Tunzi and Ventres argue that an ethical model based on balancing these competing duties is a better model for ethics education in primary care. Of course these models do not need to be mutually exclusive; understanding the moral foundation of our duties as physicians does not mean that virtue-based decision making is not important. They simply argue that virtue ethics is insufficient to address the full scope of ethical problems in the primary care setting.

A central point of this paper is that being someone’s family physician necessarily includes certain moral duties. For example, a family physician has a duty to be honest in explaining things to patients. We have a moral duty to advocate for the best interests of our patients and to protect them from harm and misinformation. As health care has become increasingly more complicated, these duties become more challenging. Historically, family physicians do not define the boundaries of our practices in such a way as to limit which patients we will care for on the basis of age, gender, or medical problem. We have a duty to be available to patients and to ensure they can get care even when we are not personally available. Our care flows from trusting relationships, so we have a duty to not violate the trust of our patients. We also have a duty to help patients to get the care they need even when we are not trained to provide that care ourselves. So it matters which specialists we refer our patients to and which hospitals they use when seriously ill. We also have a societal duty to use resources wisely and to promote their just distribution. This lies at the heart of our duty to the community itself. The list of duties inherent in being a family physician is considerable. Furthermore, we no longer agree with one another about these duties as clearly as we once did.

Tunzi and Ventres propose four steps (listed in figure 1 of their paper) for us to take in our efforts to make morally justifiable decisions in our daily work. These steps are admittedly simplistic and they may or not be helpful. That these authors have at least made the attempt is a remarkable contribution with direct implications for how we might incorporate professionalism into our curricula. Professionalism has been adopted as one of the six core competencies of medical education, but we usually evaluate this competency by noting its absence. 4,5 We recognize when students violate confidentiality or when they are disrespectful to colleagues, but we have no generally accepted standard by which to judge professional excellence. This is a tragedy because it can easily give students the idea that a professional is simply someone who refrains from unprofessional behavior. A careful read of the paper by Tunzi and Ventres suggests a different approach. The first step would be to agree on a set of moral duties inherent to the role of a family physician, duties that might flow directly from core concepts such as accessibility, continuity, comprehensiveness, coordination of care, and care in the family and community context. Professionalism in family medicine is then practicing with fidelity to these duties. In essence, we make promises to people when we agree to be their family physicians and we should hold ourselves and our colleagues accountable for fulfilling these promises. Can we agree on a common list of moral duties? What would it look like if all of us lived up to them every day?

In many ways, this has been at the heart of the Family Medicine for America’s Health (FMAHealth) strategic planning process. We started with a core definition of family medicine 6 and then proceeded to explore how our fundamental duties might be evolving in the rapidly changing environments in which we work. 7 As FMAHealth nears the end of its 5-year mission, the trends of narrowing scope of practice and physician employment continue unabated. Do we still agree on this core definition? Do we still have a shared moral purpose?

Tunzi and Ventres have suggested a good place for us to start if we want to answer these questions in our own communities. Their paper might be added to the papers published in this journal at the start of the FMAHealth project as a foundation for discussion with faculty, residents, and students in all of our departments and residencies. 7 We can all agree that it should mean something when we take responsibility for being someone’s family physician, and that core principles should guide the process by which we try to help patients to make the “right” choices for their health care. We just have some work to do in the process of defining exactly what “right” means in today’s world.

• Tunzi M, Ventres W. Family medicine ethics: an integrative approach. Fam Med. 2018;50(8):583-588. https://doi.org/ 10.22454/FamMed.2018.821666
• Mastin L. The Basics of Philosophy. https://www.philosophybasics.com . Accessed July 20, 2018.
• Karches KE, Sulmasy DP. Justice, courage, and truthfulness: virtues that medical trainees can and must learn. Fam Med. 2016;48(7):511-516.
• Saultz J. Professional Virtue. Fam Med. 2016;48(7):509-510.
• Saultz JW. Are we serious about teaching professionalism in medicine? Acad Med. 2007;82(6):574-577. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0b013e3180555c5f
• Phillips RL Jr, Pugno PA, Saultz JW, et al. Health is primary: family medicine for America’s health. Ann Fam Med. 2014;12(suppl 1):S1-S12. https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.1699
• Puffer JC, Borkan J, DeVoe JE, et al. Envisioning a new healthcare system for America. Fam Med. 2015;47(8):598-603.

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Affiliations: Oregon Health and Science University, OHSU Family Medicine, 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Rd, Mail Code FM, Portland, OR 97239. 503-494-6602. Fax: 503-494-4496

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Saultz J. Ethics and Family Medicine. Fam Med. 2018;50(8):577-578. https://doi.org/10.22454/FamMed.2018.999578.

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Brenda Almond is Vice-President of the Society for Applied Philosophy and President of the Philosophical Society of England. She received an Honorary Doctorate for Philosophy from Utrecht University and is an elected Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her books include Exploring Ethics:A Traveler's Tale (1998), Moral Concerns (1987), and The Philosophical Quest(1990/1992). She has served on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and engaged in research on the family as Director of the Social Values Research Centre at the University of Hull.

• Published: 02 September 2009
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The family is a ubiquitous social institution, not only in human life, but also in that of other mammals and species. In strictly biological terms, ‘family’ is a concept that centres on the physical coming-together of male and female and on the cluster of offspring that results from that connection. In many species, a pair, once established, continues its relationship while fostering the young to independence. These are such trite and obvious facts that the necessity to set them out arises only because they are currently considered by many people irrelevant to the lives of humans, and also because there is a socio-legal conception of family that may, in some situations, be in conflict with the biological one.

1. The Family as a Social Institution

The traditional family is widely held to be in crisis in Western societies, but there has been little direct philosophical discussion of the matter. Parents’ and children's rights and responsibilities have indeed been debated, especially in relation to issues in education and medicine, but philosophical interest has tended to focus on aspects of adult personal life and relationships, including analysis of the concept of marriage, discussion of the ethics of adultery, and debate about alternative lifestyles, the role of gender, and the nature of sexuality, the latter often influenced by trends in postmodernist philosophy. The family as an institution, however, has provided a focus for other disciplines, including social anthropology, sociology, and demography, and philosophical comment, too, needs to be grounded in some knowledge and understanding of past and present cultural practices—our own and those of other people. Also relevant is awareness of the role played by law in specifying rights, duties, and obligations and of the way in which economic factors, too, help to shape family structure. Both of these depend to a considerable extent on political decisions, especially in relation to the way in which provision is to be made for the non-earning members of society: the young, the old, the ill or disabled. But before turning to the fast-moving contemporary scene, it would be useful to set out briefly the historical context in which today's changes in the concept and practice of family life are set.

The family is a ubiquitous social institution, not only in human life, but also in that of other mammals and species. In strictly biological terms, ‘family’ is a concept that centres on the physical coming-together of male and female and on the cluster of offspring that results from that connection. In many species, a pair, once established, continues its relationship while fostering the young to independence. These are such trite and obvious facts that the necessity to set them out arises only because they are currently considered by many people irrelevant to the lives of humans, and also because there is a socio-legal conception of family that may, in some situations, be in conflict with the biological one. In the human case, too, while most societies have sought to regulate arrangements and to impose a framework of law within which people's choices may be made, history and culture have provided many variations in basic arrangements. In ancient times, for example, the Egyptian family was matriarchal, not determined by surnames or patronymics; the Chinese family, in contrast, was patriarchal and based on deference, of young to old, of female to male; while in the family of the ancient Romans, the patria potestas of the father was unchallengeable, giving him the right of life and death over his children, even in adulthood. Some anthropologists have debated the hypothesis that very early primitive societies were communistic in the sense of holding women in common, although others have rejected the idea as unsupported by evidence. Certainly, however, in some cultures, partnering has not been one-one but one-many, so that polygamy (having more than one wife), or, in a very few cases, polyandry (having more than one husband), have been institutionalized. In some societies, too, children have been cared for by the wider family group, or by a woman and her relatives without the male progenitor, or (as in the case of Sparta) male children have been raised in all-male groups. But these are the exceptions rather than the rule, and the cultural foundation of most civilizations has been the existence of groupings centred on a couple and their offspring. Households have often consisted of these, together with an extended family: grandparents, aunts, uncles, and, in the past, depending on wealth, servants and retainers. Hence ‘family’ has often come to refer to all who share a common roof.

2. The Contemporary State of the Family

In turning to the contemporary state of the family, the picture is best sketched in terms of some of the statistical shifts from the traditional pattern of the family that took place in the last few decades of the twentieth century. In the Western world, the term ‘traditional family’ has until recently meant a grouping of two parents, married to each other and living with their dependent children—the so-called ‘nuclear family’. Less essentially, but commonly, the economic basis for the traditional unit has consisted of one main earner, the husband, and a wife who is not in full-time employment outside the home and who can take responsibility for domestic matters and childcare. Increasingly, however, a pattern of unmarried cohabiting has become both common and widely accepted, as well as a situation in which both partners are in the workforce outside the home. But first it must be said that the traditional pattern is more persistent than is often recognized. Figures from Britain provide an illustration of trends in most of the industrialized world. There, it is still the case that four out of five dependent children are in two-parent fami- lies, and that nine out of ten of those parents are married. Nevertheless, looking at the picture from the other side, it is also true that, in Britain at the end of the twentieth century, 38 per cent of babies were born outside marriage compared to only 7.2 per cent in 1974 and that the annual marriage rate was at its lowest since records began 160 years earlier. Amongst Britain's 1.6 million lone parents at the turn of the millennium, the fastest growing group consisted of single never-married mothers. As far as those who are currently married are concerned, statistics are no more encouraging for those who favour the traditional pattern: two marriages in five are predicted to end in divorce and 28 per cent of children may be expected to experience the divorce of their parents (Family Policy Studies Centre 2000). Prospects for children who find themselves part of a new step-parent family following the divorce of their parents are not easy either. In Britain, Downing Street's Social Exclusion Unit, set up to look into the problem of homelessness and rough sleeping, published some surprising figures that showed that one child in five in step-families runs away from home—these runaways are in general aged between 13 and 15 (The Times , 23 March 2001).

These are not matters of purely private and personal interest, nor is it only a matter of morals, public or private. The feelings and attitudes of individuals are, of course, involved, but these personal choices have wider social consequences— ripple effects that can distort the structural basis of community life. Politicians must either accept the need to cope directly with the results of family breakdown, which in most Western countries include an increase in crime, drug use, prostitution, and homelessness, or else seek to mitigate these effects by welfare provision of one sort or another. In Britain, where the choice has been to make provision for unsupported mothers and children, the cost of family breakdown to the public purse is estimated at £5 billion per year. But there are also demographic consequences that again have economic implications. In the USA, for example, children under 18 make up a quarter of the population, but in most of the countries of the European Union, the birth rate has fallen well below the replacement rate of 2.1 per couple that is needed to maintain the current population level, and this means that, in Europe, more and more elderly must be supported by fewer and fewer young people.

One reaction to these figures is to dismiss the importance of marriage as a formal institution at the nub of family formation and to favour ‘stable relationships’. But while, superficially, marriage may be seen as no more than a piece of paper, research from most sources is agreed in finding that formal marriage is more stable than cohabiting, and that unmarried couples are three or four times more likely than married ones to split up. In Europe, for example, figures indicate that less than 4 per cent of cohabiting unions last ten years or more, as compared with 71 per cent of legally constituted marriages, while, in the USA, the median duration of cohabiting has been estimated at around fifteen months. Nor is the potential to split up diminished by the presence of children. Indeed cohabitees with children are between four and five times more likely than married couples to split up. Of course, some cohabiting relationships are resolved by marriage rather than separation, but, in general, cohabiting represents a positive preference for lack of commitment, rather than, as is often supposed, a serious preliminary to it (Morgan 2000 ).

So much for facts and figures. It might be tempting to account for the trends they reveal in terms of shifts in the preferences of individuals. But other more general and public factors have pushed forward the changes in the way of life of the industrialized countries. Of these, the rise of the feminist movement, the drive for gay parity and recognition, the liberalization of divorce laws, the tax and benefits policies of the governments of the liberal democracies, and the impact on family formation and structure of reproductive medicine, from pill to IVF, have all played a part. While this is not the place to say a great deal about any of these topics, some of which are covered in detail elsewhere in this volume, any serious philosophical and ethical reflection on the family must take some account of them.

3. Feminism and the Family

There are diverse and distinctive strands in the theoretical grounding of feminism, in the Western world. One widely accepted taxonomy identifies four ideological positions: a conservative feminism, which is directed at protecting the interests of women who adopt a traditional home-based role; liberal feminism, which is aimed at opening up opportunities for equality in the world outside the home by removing any political or legal obstacles to employment and promotion; socialist feminism, which aims to do this through the transfer of domestic and family responsibilities to the state; and separatist feminism, often lesbian separatism, which seeks to develop a wholly independent mode of female existence (Jaggar 1978 , 1994 )- In practice, the first and to some extent the second position are viewed by some activist groups as anti-feminist, while sympathizers with the third and fourth positions have more recently turned to a form of postmodern feminism, some with psychoanalytic roots owing much to the writings of the French structuralist Jacques Lacan, some more strictly based in philosophy and epistemology, where the ideas of philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault in France and Richard Rorty in the USA have been influential. The American feminist philosopher Nancy Chadorow writes from a viewpoint that is sympathetic to the psychoanalytic tradition, while the radical French feminist Luce Irigaray combines a psychoanalytic approach that is critical of Lacan with a deconstructionist perspective (Irigaray 1977 ; Chadorow 1978 ; selections from both reprinted in Nicholson 1997 ). While not always directly addressing the question of the family, there is a strong patriarchal hypothesis embedded within many such new feminist approaches in both ethics and epistemology. Taking their inspiration from anti-Enlightenment or revisionist sources, many feminist philosophers have argued that both reason and the notion of universal morality are gender based. They see these concepts as created by men and imposed by them through oppressive power structures. Linda Nicholson sums up these developments: ‘They [feminists] have criticized modern foundationalist epistemologies and moral and political theories, exposing the contingent, partial and historically situated character of what has passed in the mainstream for necessary, universal and ahistorical truths’ (Fraser and Nicholson 1990 : 26).

However, the move from universality to particularity, while it was at first fruitful, began to reveal a widening gap between philosophical critique and feminist political goals, and to pose some unexpected practical problems for a universal women's movement. If the concept of ‘man’ as a universal term is dissolved or deconstructed, the concept of’woman', too, breaks down into a range of competing categories: black, white; old, young; rich, poor; fit, disabled; working class, middle class; Muslim, Jew, Christian, and so on. This means that the postmodernist approach, with its rejection of the defining features of Enlightenment—rationalism, essentialism, and universality—fits ill with the goals of a broad international women's movement. At a minimum, such a project must include an attempt to provide a universal analysis of women's needs that cuts across differences in culture, class, and ethnicity. In other words, the dismissal of essentialism seems to dissolve away the notion of ‘woman’ on which a global women's movement depends (Flax 1990 ; Young 1990 ).

Some have tried to avoid these consequences politically by adopting a strategy of alliances and coalitions, with the development of what has been called an ‘oppositional consciousness’. But in practice the programme for Western feminists has been based politically on a common goal: the drive for justice in terms of equality. Susan Moller Okin speaks of ‘the oppressive myth of an idealized natural “family”’, describing it as ‘often a school of day-to-day injustice’ (Okin 1989 : 186). The remedy she and other Western feminists have sought is to free women from economic dependence on individual men, and two strategies have been promoted as a means to this end: (1) ensuring legally enforceable anti-discrimination policies in the workplace and (2) minimizing the impact on individuals of dependency resulting from childcare. So equality has been interpreted as having freedom to work out- side the home on equal terms with men; having ready access to abortion and contraception as a means of family limitation; and having access to state-provided childcare facilities from the child's earliest months—this care extended to cover parents’ long working days. Paradoxically, perhaps, this was a framework for living that already existed in the communist countries, where, in contrast to the campaign in the West, women concerned about the conditions of their lives were more likely to aspire to freedom from the economic need for both parents to work, and in particular to consideration for their dual role as working mothers. For women in those East European countries, it may have seemed less obvious that transferring responsibility to the state does, in fact, make women independent, rather than merely making their dependency more diffuse. In the Western democracies, however, recourse to the taxpayer has tended to obscure some of these issues, producing the social trends already described, which in practice often conflict with female welfare, concern for which might well be taken as another way of defining feminism.

Even in the 1980s, however, some revisionist feminists had begun reappraising the feminist programmes of the 1960s and 1970s in relation to the family, and Betty Friedan, one of those who had inspired the original feminist impetus with her book The Feminine Mystique , was prepared to define the family, not as a reactionary relic, but as ‘that last area where one has any hope of individual control over one's des- tiny, of meeting one's basic human needs, of nourishing that core of personhood threatened by vast impersonal institutions and uncontrollable corporate and government bureaucracies’ (Friedan 1982 : 229). Later Germaine Greer, too, saw reason to revise the views she had famously advanced in The Female Eunuch (Greer 1970 , 1999 ).

4. The Gay Parity Issue

Running in parallel with pressure from women's groups has been a new openness and assertiveness for male and female homosexual rights. The concept of the ‘gay community’ arose in the USA in the early 1980s but gay pressure groups have campaigned for gay parity in law in many countries. This has led, in France, to the ‘Pacte Civile', which gives some of the rights and privileges of heterosexual marriage to same-sex relationships, in some parts of the USA, for example, the state of New Hampshire, to recognition of a formal marriage ceremony for same-sex couples, and to legislation in the Netherlands that validates alternative quasi-family structures. In the United Kingdom, opinion on these matters has crystallized around the issue of sex education in schools, one view being that heterosexual marriage should be promoted as the basis of the family, the other being that homosexual and other arrangements should be given equal standing with marriage as lifestyle alternatives, or as alternative ways of restructuring families. Within philosophical feminism, these policy objectives have as an underpinning a theory in which gender is seen as socially constructed. In the much-quoted words of Simone de Beauvoir, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman’ (1974: 301). This view, of course, would have implications for men as well, for the basic claim is that there is no essential biological basis to being a man or a woman in any way that determines lifestyles, rights, or responsibilities.

5. Legal and Governmental Interventions

Public policy initiatives, too, have had a visible and direct impact on personal attitudes and behaviour. Changes in divorce law, particularly no-fault divorce, have in effect made the guaranteed permanency of marriage a thing of the past, even for those who might wish to offer such permanency. Taxation policy has moved further and further away from favouring the wage-earner with dependent spouse and children to treating taxpayers as individuals, whatever their circumstances. At the same time, in the welfare and benefits area, the economic sanctions that previously operated as a deterrent to or restraint upon family foundation (whether of first or second and subsequent families) have been adjusted to protect the position of the parent who is single from whatever cause. An unintended and unanticipated result of this has been the evolution of a system of matriarchy—a pattern of life developing, not only amongst affluent intellectuals but also, with more socially damaging consequences, in areas where poverty, unemployment, and welfare dependency are the norm (Dennis and Erdos 1993 ). A not uncommon feature of this new pattern or lifestyle is for the children living with their mother to be the offspring of different fathers who have moved on and lost touch with them (Morgan 2000 ).

6. Impact of New Reproductive Medicine

Advances in reproductive medicine, in particular contraception and the availability of abortion, offer unprecedented control to individuals over their reproductive options, and have now made possible the separation of reproduction from sex and personal sexual relations. FVT and other means of transferring gametes (eggs and sperm) have also made it possible for children to be born to people to whom they are not genetically related, and these children are consequently cut off in an unprecedented way from the wider network of genetic relations—siblings, half- siblings, grandparents, aunts, cousins—who previously contributed to an individual's concept of identity, and who made up the wider notion of family (Strathern 1992 ). These new techniques also make it possible for same-sex couples to create families via gamete purchase or donation or by paid surrogacy arrangements. The issues raised by new reproductive technologies are too extensive to be discussed in detail in this chapter, and some are discussed elsewhere in this volume. As far as family implications are concerned, however, they raise some important questions. To begin with, where the legal relationship between parent and offspring is explicitly set aside and transferred to adoptive or commissioning parents, the biological (or genetic) relationship ceases to support the customary commitments and responsibilities. The consequences for people's lives have not been completely thought through, however, and children's interests may be lost in the limbo of the new legality. An extreme example is provided by the case of Jaycee Buzzanca ﹛In re Marriage of Buzzanca , 1998), a child born in the USA, who, through an extraordinary combi- nation of circumstances, found herself in the legal void of the filius nulli when the couple who commissioned her existence separated and she was deemed to be the responsibility of neither the individuals who donated their gametes, nor the surro- gate who bore her, nor the couple who no longer wanted her, and had no genetic or biological connection with her (Capron 1998 ).

But even where arrangements work out more satisfactorily, there are difficult questions of a different kind to consider. For example, do people born in this way (from donated gametes) have a right to know their genetic origins (Almond 1995 )? Some jurisdictions—for example, New Zealand and Sweden—regard this as a basic human right, while, for others, donation is still covered by the rules of medical confidentiality. Other ethical questions are raised by the commercial advertising and sale of gametes, given that the sale of children or babies is generally regarded as wholly ethically unacceptable—a vestige of the universally condemned practice of the slave trade in human beings (Warnock 1985 , 1987 ; Overall 1993 ). Underlying these debates, however, is the fundamental conceptual and philosophical question of which has priority: the biological or genetic basis of the family or the family as a social and legal construct—a question to which we will return when considering public policy on the family.

7. Philosophical and Religious Views: the Historical Background

If the family, and family relationships, provide a contentious forum today for ethical, political, religious, and philosophical debate, it is interesting to turn back the page and to find that the history of philosophical discussion has itself provided almost as much diversity and disagreement.

Plato (427–348 BC) was unusual for his day and age, the Athens of the fifth century BC, in recognizing the potential equality of women in capacities and abili- ties, and also in holding that the fulfilment of that potential would be difficult unless the family structure was radically changed. So he recommended communal creches, and the abolition of continuing male-female relationships either in their own right or for the purpose of raising offspring. Indeed, it was a unique aspect of his ideal arrangements as outlined in the Republic that neither men nor women would be able to identify their own offspring; women who had gained equality with men as rulers and had recently given birth would attend the public creche to feed without distinction or discrimination any child handed to them by a nurse.

Plato remains the most radical of any thinker on the family implications of sex equality, but, historically, Aristotelian teleology combined with natural law theory has been more influential in shaping Western attitudes to the family, particularly through the teachings of the Catholic Church as inspired by the writings of St Augustine (354–430) and St Thomas Aquinas (1224–74) (for a modern interpretation, see Finnis 1991 ). The Christian concept of marriage, however, looks back as well to the Hebraic tradition according to which marriage creates ‘two in one flesh’ (Gen. 2: 24) and, again, assumes as its object the creation of offspring. The Christian view, then, is that marriage is a sacred, monogamous, and permanent arrangement, the purpose of which is the raising of children. It is a view at the root, too, of most other mainstream religions.

Liberal political theory in the seventeenth century produced a more individualistic view of matters, based on the idea of a social contract. As far as family matters were concerned, it emphasized the contractual aspects of the institution of marriage. The English political philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) took a narrow and relatively limited view of this, seeing the roles of husband and wife as social roles that could in theory be abandoned when the purpose for which the marriage was entered into—having and raising children—had been completed. In Of Civil Governmenthe wrote: ‘conjugal society is made by voluntary compact between man and woman’ and ‘consists chiefly in such a communion and right in one another's bodies as is necessary to its chief end, procreation’ (1680/1960: paras. 52–69). The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), while also emphasizing contract, saw the judicial status of the partners as establishing lifelong rights, analogous to property rights, with respect to one another—especially to one another's sexual attributes. Kant's views on ethics and marriage can be found in his Metaphysics of Morals (1797/1887: Sect. 25).

In contrast, the German idealist philosopher G. W. R Hegel (1770–1831) found the emphasis on contract offensive, particularly as put forward by Kant. He held that the contract involved in marriage goes beyond the prosaic nature of ordinary legal contracts; it creates a spiritual unity between two people who come to constitute an organic system, and it creates in their two selves, and in their children, a common world. He wrote: ‘though marriage begins in contract, it is precisely a contract to transcend the standpoint of contract, the standpoint from which per- sons are regarded in their individuality as self-subsistent units’ (Hegel 1882 /1952: 112). This ‘organic’ view of marriage was shared by other idealist metaphysicians, including the English philosopher F. H. Bradley (1856–1924).

For a radically opposed conception of marriage and family, one may turn to the early English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97), author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792/1985). Both she, and also the anarchist political philosopher William Godwin (1756–1836), rejected in their writings the idea that one should have a companion for life. As things turned out, however, the two did in fact marry and have a child. It was a short-lived marriage since Mary Wollstonecraft died from complications following her daughter's birth, having maintained the principle of separate residence from her husband up to that point. By an ironic twist of fate, however, family connections have particular significance here, for the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), who married their daughter Mary, took Godwin's anarchist rejection of marriage seriously, but combined it with the romantic approach that links sexual union to feeling and attraction. His brief essay against legal marriage encapsulates the romantic conception that dominated nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and popular sentiment (Shelley 1815 /1980).

A succession of liberal thinkers continued the debate, including John Stuart Mill (1806–73) author of the classic defence of individual liberty and advocate of women's liberation (1859/1975 and 1861/1975). Harriet Taylor, Mill's companion and later his wife, took a yet more radical position than Mill, since, while he assumed that a married woman would not work, she argued that economic independence, through paid work outside the home, was essential if women were ever to stand equal to men. It is worth noting that, at about the same time that Mill and Harriet Taylor were writing on this subject in England, a movement for female advance and emancipation was gaining impetus in the USA, the basis of which was political and activist rather than reflective and philosophical.

Philosophical views wholly unsympathetic to the family were also current during this period. Karl Marx's (1818–83) friend and co-worker Friedrich Engels (1820–95) saw the family as a device for perpetuating and making possible capitalist patriarchy—a system that benefited men by enabling them to hand down their property to offspring who could be identified as their own, but that was ultimately exploitative of women. In his influential work The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State , Engels ( 1884 / 1985 ) described wives and children as a proletariat within the domestic economy of the family, with husbands and fathers playing the role of the bourgeoisie.

More recently, the French existentialist writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) and his lifelong associate the writer Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) developed, both in theory and in personal practice, a choice-based approach to relation- ships that was characterized by a rejection of commitment or possessiveness, and so distinguishable as a philosophical strand of thinking about relationships quite distinct from either the contractual promise-based model or the romantic conception. It has little to say about children or the family structure as such, although its implications for such structures are clearly iconoclastic.

8. Contemporary Perspectives and the Shaping of Public Policy

If the philosophical views of earlier times are quite surprisingly diverse, the contemporary scene offers a no less varied range of opinion. This includes neo-Marxist views, the feminist anti-patriarchical views discussed earlier, liberal (or libertarian) positions, and conservative (or traditionalist) positions. At one end of the spectrum are political and religious views disposed to shore up traditional family structures. At the other, the kind of radical feminism already mentioned that denies that there are significant or fundamental differences between the sexes and so seeks to extend the child-rearing role to society as a whole, with men holding as much responsibility for it as women. The goal is to free women from what is often called the ‘tyranny of reproduction’. For Shulamith Firestone, whose book The Dialectic of Sex was politically as well as philosophically influential, the heart of woman's oppression is her child-bearing and child-rearing role (1970/1979:193). She acknowledges her debt, in terms of political theory, to the work of Engels; in terms of psychological theory, to that of the psychotherapist and iconoclast of family relationships, R. D. Laing ( 1969 ). Firestone endorses Laing's account of the family's oppressive and arbitrary dynamics and his attempt to expose the ‘myth of the happy family’. Indeed, she goes further in describing the tie between women and their children as ‘no more than shared repression’ (Firestone 1970 /1979: 73). But, while the rejection of traditional family roles was seen as revolutionary in the 1970s, when Firestone was writing, many of its key ideas, especially the welcoming of alternative structures, have subsequently become matters of policy for mainstream political parties. This is no doubt because policies such as flexible working hours, parental leave, and measures to guarantee equality of treament in the workplace may be used to support the traditional family unit as well as to facilitate alternatives to it.

These policies are central, too, to the contemporary promotion of modernization as a political programme, especially as put forward by Anthony Giddens, in his influential book, The Third Way (1998), seen by many as a blueprint for UK Government policy under New Labour. In a short section promoting what he calls a ‘modernist’ view of the family—a picture that clearly owes much to the feminist writers discussed above—he draws a contrast with the ‘traditional’ mode, which he sees as a depressing and unfortunate legacy of the past. He asks ‘Is there a politics of the family beyond neoliberalism and old-style social democracy?’and replies ‘we should be clear … how implausible the idea of returning to the traditional family is …’ (Giddens 1998 : 93–4). In its place, he proposes a democratized family, that he defines as one that involves ‘decision-making through communication and freedom from violence’ and parental authority that is ‘negotiated’ rather than arbitrary. This he describes as a new politics of the family quite distinct from that of either old- fashioned liberalism or social democracy. However, it is worth noticing that this claim of ‘implausibility’ is both ambiguous and misleading. It sounds like a claim about what is the case now and what may be possible in the future, but in fact the only reasons advanced are retrospective claims about how bad the traditional family was. These factual claims would need to be much more precise and evidence based to provide a justifiable ground for radical change. The idealized picture may be wrong, but the bleak portrayal is equallyflawed.The only ‘plausible’ claim about the past, and therefore about what is inevitable in the future, must be that experiences of the traditional family were mixed, good for some people and in some respects, bad for others and in other respects. But if this is the case, then inferences to future policy should be equally cautious.

However, in place of caution, Giddens confidently advocates a major shift in public policy as far as childcare is concerned: the idea of co-parenting. He writes: ‘Marriage and parenthood have always been thought of as tied together, but in the detraditonalized family… the two are becoming disentangled Contractual commitment to a child could thus be separated from marriage, and made by each parent as a binding matter of law, with unmarried and married fathers having the same rights and obligations’ (1998: 95). There is, however, some confusion of ends implicit in this proposal: the reference is apparently to biological fathers, who would become all-important in law on the basis advocated here, but elsewhere, and in particular where same-sex couples are concerned, social parenting is regarded as more important than biological kinship. As was pointed out earlier, this is an unre- solved difficulty that becomes apparent in relation to such issues as adoption and fertility treatment involving donors. What is more—and this is a point of wider application— if the proposals to cancel the legal differences between marriage and cohabitation are intended to impose the stability of marriage on everyone, it is worth noticing that what they actually do instead is to impose the insecure conditions of cohabitation on everyone.

However, the rejection of the traditional view is supported by others, albeit from a rather different point of view. One of these is the feminist writer Iris Young, who focuses on the issue of single-mother families in contrast to families that include both mother and father (Young 1999 ). This raises the very broad question, basic to the issue of ‘reconstituted’ families, and in particular for same-sex relationships: do children need both a father and a mother? Of course, many children have, through fate or circumstance, been raised by just one parent, but the fact that this can be successful is not sufficient in itself to justify a shift in public policy. This is more usefully guided by factual information about the relative success in life of children from different family backgrounds, taking into account measures like school performance, or emotional stability, or the potential to be involved in crime, to run away from home, or to suffer abuse. Even so, the facts alone are not the whole story. From an ethical point of view, there will be those who would give a higher priority to thefreedomof adults to pursue without pressure or interference their chosen lifestyles. On the other side, however, and still remaining within the ethical domain, will be others who would claim on behalf of the child both a need for, and a right not to be deprived of, its two biological parents. English law, for example, included such recognition in the 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act when it laid down that providers of fertility treatment must take account of ‘the need of a child for a father’.

It is not difficult, however, to find in contemporary writings the view that ethics has no part to play in these matters. Rejecting an argument put forward by the British philosopher Onora O'Neill ( 1985 ) that the intimacy of sexual relations generates special obligations in treating others as persons, Igor Primoratz argues that there is no such thing as sexual morality, in the sense that there is no one morally acceptable aim or purpose of human sexual activity. Primoratz writes: ‘Sex has no special moral significance; it is morally neutral.’ Like other neutral actions, he acknowledges, it may have morally significant implications if, for instance, it involves hurt or betrayal (1999: 173). It is noticeable, however, that the index to his book, the theme of which is ethics and sex, does not list ‘family’ or ‘parenthood’ and that, in arguing in favour of marriage for same-sex couples, whose right to raise children he defends, he is at pains to repudiate any necessary link between marriage and procreation.

Against these views, which have a realistic claim to be considered the Zeitgeist , or Spirit of the Age, maybe ranged those of writers who emphasize instead the strength of family or relational bonds. The conservative philosopher Roger Scruton writes: 'The family bond is dispensable only in the way that pleasure, industry, love, grief, passion and allegiance are dispensable—that is, only in the case of the minority which can persuade itself (for whatever reason) to renounce these things’ (1986:31). The present writer, too, once described the family as ‘a convivial multi-person entity, bonded by nature's most effective bonding agent, the sexual relationship, which also simultaneously invisibly binds to its two central agents the presexual beings who are its natural consequences’ (Almond 1988 : 6).

In the same spirit, the Australian philosopher Brian Trainor, echoing Hegel's organic concept, writes that married couples establish a ‘shared universe’. ‘The good of this shared world is their common concern a single world is formed by a hus- band and wife as its common members’ (Trainor 1992 : 137). Unlike Giddens, who offers a conception of sexuality as a ‘project of self that favours the ‘advancement of self-autonomy in the context of pure relationships', Trainor says that ‘to assume a role is to express one's self; the role is a medium through which an aspect of the self is realised’. Criticizing recent trends in public policy, Trainor adds a further, more technical argument in relation to no-fault divorce. This, he says, is based on the principle: since the two parties are apart, they should be free to exit without penalty, and it therefore breaches the philosophically important principle that an ‘ ought’ cannot be derived from an ‘is’.

9. Conclusions

While the concept of the family is currently a matter of disagreement and contention, it is worth noticing that most contenders take for granted its implicit connection with children. The conflict of views that has emerged here, however, has been largely defined in terms of adult needs. The views or interests of children have hardly featured in the philosophical discussions reviewed above, while in public debate their interest is commonly identified with that of their parents or carers. And yet, for most children, the preservation of home, neighbourhood and school through their growing years most often ranks highest in terms of what ‘family’ can provide, and what might be lost in family breakdown. Except in the very worst cases, they would, no doubt—if they were allowed to—vote for the ‘traditional’ family. If so, this might have implications for children's rights. Discussion of children's rights has, however, often proceeded on the basis of different empirical assumptions, and so reached conclusions less favourable to family continuity or permanence, including suggestions that children should be able to choose their custodial parent or ‘divorce’ a current one (Blustein 1979 : 118; LaFollette 1999 ).

Talk of children's rights, however, inevitably suggests the topic of children's responsibilities, even those that may be set in the longterm future. Should children be obliged to care for their elderly parents (English 1979 )? Giddens mentions a 1983 US Medicaid attempt to compel children to support needy ageing parents, calling this ‘a notion whose time has come’ (1998: 97). This has not been overtly taken up as a political issue although the UK Government recently imposed a de facto charge on children in forcing in some cases the sale of homes to pay for health care in old age that would otherwise have constituted part of a person's estate—a policy it later reconsidered. In general, though, the breakdown of families is likely to make it harder for the state to assign responsibility directly to children for parents in circumstances where inheritance is not involved. Who would the state, for example, pursue for parental support: a person's social children or his or her biological off- spring? Would it take account of the length of time the parent-child relationship had lasted and seek out a series of multiple parents for proportionate support, picking its way through a trail of divorces, cohabitations, remarriages, and separations? Would it ignore factors like cruelty, neglect, or abuse by parents and still expect sup- port from children who had suffered any of these?

Whatever the answer to these questions, it is certainly clear that the era of shallow relationships puts more and more of the onus of care for those suffering from poverty, or disabilities, especially age-related ones, onto the state. And, as more and more aspects of family care and provision at both ends of life become matters of public provision, the tendency grows to locate responsibility with the state. But what is it that the family really requires of the state? One writer who would limit the state's intervention to a minimum, seeing it as a Trojan horse of totalitarianism, is Ferdinand Mount, who writes: ‘The family's demands are clear and consistent: subsistence, privacy, liberty’ (1982:176). From a more politically sensitive point of view, then, it is important to notice that the family has from time to time in the past proved the last bastion against dictatorships, and these have often deliberately sought to weaken family ties, recognizing the strength of loyalties they engender— loyaties and commitments that may be pitted against the state's own demands. Classic instances of this were provided in the twentieth century as family loyalties were put under strain in Nazi-controlled European countries, in Russia under Soviet Communism, in China for the period of the ascendancy of youthful and intolerant Red Guards, and in Cambodia under Pol Pot. Literature, too, inspired by reflection on these experiences, sometimes features the conflict between intimate bonds between persons and the impersonal claims of totalitarian rulers (for example, George Orwell's 1984). However, even in democratic states, such tensions can surface in more muted form in educational or health-care situations where professionals and parents may be in conflict over the treatment of minors. This conflict is particularly visible in the debate about private education, denounced by some as elitism, and defended by others as the only defence against the evils of a state monopoly of education, which John Stuart Mill once described in On Liberty as a device for moulding people to be exactly like each other.

A number of other issues have been touched upon here only tangentially, but they remain open for further reflection and discussion. For example, is it right to give preference to your own family or family members or is this to bestow unfair privilege on them? Does this conflict with the Kantian principle of impartiality, fairness, and equality of rights? Some would defend such partiality by saying that it is morally acceptable for people to give special weight to projects essential to their self-identity. Others claim that sympathy, intimacy, and trust are concepts central to the family and legitimize its special duties, rights, and responsibilities. This ‘personalist’ response is defended by Hugh LaFollette, who says that partiality is part and parcel of close personal relations (1996:199; see also Skolnick 1978 ; Schoeman 1980 ).

So this is the point the debate has reached, and it is being waged, on the whole, not in philosophy seminar rooms, but in the courts and parliaments of democratic countries. The shape of the debate is well described by Paul Gilbert, who presents it in terms of two pictures of the family. He writes:

One is a nostalgic picture, of relationships having once been more as they ought to be, when familial roles were accepted unquestioningly and close family bonds were forged by unreflective feeling The other is a Utopian picture, of relationships as they have never been but ought to be, in which familial roles are redefined and our attachments and sympathies to others are determined by a rational assessment of our respective needs. (Gilbert 1991 : 143)

He goes on to say that the difference between the two is that the first is the view of relationships as given , the second that of relationships as in some sense constructed. Whichever view one takes, whichever picture has the more appeal, it is impossible to overlook another aspect of ‘family'—that is the sense in which ‘family’ provides the archetypal image of personal continuity, and the best way for most ordinary human beings of making sense of the brevity of individual human existence. And so it is overwhelmingly only the biological understanding of the family—the family not as constructed by either custom or legislation but as given—that provides for most human beings a connecting link between their ancestors and their descend- ants, between personal history and personal future. As G. K. Chesterton puts this picture of the family both imaginatively and memorably: ‘this frail cord, flung from the forgotten hills of yesterday to the invisible mountains of tomorrow’ (1990: 224).

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Writing Ethical Papers: Top Tips to Ace Your Assignment

17 August, 2021

13 minutes read

Author:  Kate Smith

Writing a complex essay paper can be a tough task for any student, especially for those who do not have their skills developed well or do not have enough time for lengthy assignments. At the same time, the majority of college students need to keep their grades high to maintain their right to receive merit-based scholarships and continue their studies the next year. To help you with your ethical papers writing, we created this guide. Below, you will find out what an ethical paper is, how to structure it and write it efficiently. 

What is an Ethical Paper?

An ethics paper is a type of an argumentative assignment that deals with a certain ethical problem that a student has to describe and solve. Also, it can be an essay where a certain controversial event or concept is elaborated through an ethical lens (e.g. moral rules and principles), or a certain ethical dilemma is explained. Since ethics is connected to moral concepts and choices, a student needs to have a fair knowledge of philosophy and get ready to answer questions related to relationships, justice, professional and social duties, the origin of good and evil, etc., to write a quality paper. Also, writing an ethics paper implies that a student should process a great amount of information regarding their topic and analyze it according to paper terms.

General Aspects of Writing an Ethics Paper

Understanding the ethical papers’ features.

Every essay has differences and features that make it unique. Writing ethical papers implies that a student will use their knowledge of morality and philosophy to resolve a certain ethical dilemma or solve a situation. It can also be a paper in which a student needs to provide their reasoning on ethical or legal circumstances that follow a social issue. Finally, it can be an assignment in which an ethical concept and its application are described. On the contrary, a history essay deals with events that took place somewhen earlier, while a narrative essay is a paper where students demonstrate their storytelling skills, etc.

Defining What Type of Essay Should Be Written

Most of the time, ethical paper topics imply that a student will write an argumentative essay; however, ethics essays can also be descriptive and expository. Each of these essay types has different guidelines for writing, so be sure you know them before you start writing your papers on ethics. In case you missed this step in your ethical paper preparation stage, you would end up writing a paper that misses many important points.

Studying the Ethical Paper Guidelines

Once you get your ethical paper assignment, look through the guidelines that your instructor provided to you. If you receive them during the class, don’t hesitate to pose any questions immediately to remove any misunderstanding before writing an ethics paper outline, or ask for references that you need to use. When you are about to write your first draft, don’t rush: read the paper instructions once again to make sure you understand what is needed from you.

Paying Attention to the Paper Topic

The next thing you need to pay attention to is the ethical paper topic: once you are given one, make sure it falls into the scope of your educational course. After that, consider what additional knowledge may be needed to elaborate on your topic and think about what courses of your program could be helpful for it. Once you are done, read through your topic again to recheck whether you understand your assignment right.

Understanding the Notions of Ethical Arguments, Ethical and Legal Implications, and Ethical Dilemma

Last but not least, another important factor is that a student has to understand the basic terms of the assignment to write a high-quality paper. Ethical arguments are a set of moral rules that are used to defend your position on an ethical issue stated in your essay topic. We refer to ethical versus legal implications when we think about the compensation for certain ethical dilemma outcomes and whether it should be a moral punishment or legal judgment. An ethical dilemma itself refers to a problem or situation which makes an individual doubt what position to take: e.g, abortion, bribery, corruption, etc.

Writing Outline and Structure of an Ethics Paper

Every essay has a structure that makes it a solid piece of writing with straight reasoning and argumentation, and an ethics paper is not an exclusion. This paper has an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Below, we will describe how each part of ethical papers should be organized and what information they should contain.

First comes the introduction. It is the opening part of your paper which helps a reader to get familiar with your topic and understand what your paper will be about. Therefore, it should contain some information on your ethics paper topics and a thesis statement, which is a central statement of your paper.

The essay body is the most substantive part of your essay where all the reasoning and arguments should be presented. Each paragraph should contain an argument that supports or contradicts your thesis statement and pieces of evidence to support your position. Pick at least three arguments to make your position clear in your essay, and then your paper will be considered well-structured.

The third part of an ethics paper outline is a conclusion, which is a finishing essay part. Its goal is to wrap up the whole essay and make the author’s position clear for the last time. The thoughtful formulation in this essay part should be especially clear and concise to demonstrate the writer’s ability to make conclusions and persuade readers.

Also, don’t forget to include the works cited page after your writing. It should mention all the reference materials that you used in your paper in the order of appearance or in the alphabetical one. This page should be formatted according to the assigned formatting style. Most often, the most frequently used format for ethical papers is APA.

20 Examples of Ethical Paper Topics

• Are there any issues in the 21st century that we can consider immoral and why?
• What is corporate ethics?
• Why is being selfish no longer an issue in 2023?
• Euthanasia: pros and cons
• Marijuana legalization: should it be allowed all over the world?
• Is abortion an ethical issue nowadays?
• Can we invent a universal religion appropriate for all?
• Is the church necessary to pray to God?
• Can we forgive infidelity and should we do it?
• How to react if you are witnessing high school bullying?
• What are the ways to respond to a family abusing individual?
• How to demand your privacy protection in a digital world?
• The history of the American ethical thought
• Can war be ethical and what should the conflicting sides do to make it possible?
• Ethical issues of keeping a zoo in 2023
• Who is in charge of controlling the world’s population?
• How to achieve equality in the world’s rich and poor gap?
• Is science ethical?
• How ethical is genetic engineering?
• Why many countries refuse to go back to carrying out the death penalty?

Ethical Papers Examples

If you still have no idea about how to write an ethics paper, looking through other students’ successful examples is always a good idea. Below, you can find a relevant ethics paper example that you can skim through and see how to build your reasoning and argumentation in your own paper.

https://www.currentschoolnews.com/education-news/ethics-essay-examples/

https://sites.psu.edu/academy/2014/11/18/essay-2-personal-ethics-and-decision-making/

Ethical Papers Writing Tips

Choose a topic that falls into the ethics course program.

In case you were not given the ethics paper topic, consider choosing it yourself. To do that, brainstorm the ethical issues that fascinate you enough to do research. List all these issues on a paper sheet and then cross out those that are too broad or require expertise that you don’t have. The next step you need to take is to choose three or four ethical topics for papers from the list and try to do a quick search online to find out whether these topics are elaborated enough to find sources and reference materials on them. Last, choose one topic that you like the most and find the most relevant one in terms of available data for reference.

Do your research

Once the topic is chosen and organized, dive deeper into it to find the most credible, reliable, and trusted service. Use your university library, online scientific journals, documentaries, and other sources to get the information from. Remember to take notes while working with every new piece of reference material to not forget the ideas that you will base your argumentation on.

Follow the guidelines for a paper outline

During the preparation for your ethical paper and the process of writing it, remember to follow your professor’s instructions (e.g. font, size, spacing, citation style, etc.). If you neglect them, your grade for the paper will decrease significantly.

Write the essay body first

Do not rush to start writing your ethics papers from the very beginning; to write a good essay, you need to have your outline and thesis statement first. Then, go to writing body paragraphs to demonstrate your expertise on the issue you are writing about. Remember that one supporting idea should be covered in one paragraph and should be followed by the piece of evidence that confirms it.

Make sure your introduction and conclusion translate the same message

After your essay body is done, write a conclusion and an introduction for your paper. The main tip regarding these ethics paper parts is that you should make them interrelated: your conclusion has to restate your introduction but not repeat it. Also, a conclusion should wrap up your writing and make it credible for the audience.

Add citations

Every top-quality paper has the works cited page and citations to demonstrate that the research on the topic has been carried out. Therefore, do not omit this point when formatting your paper: add all the sources to the works cited page and pay attention to citing throughout the text. The latter should be done according to the formatting style indicated in your instructions.

Edit your paper

Last but not least is the editing and proofreading stage that you need to carry out before you submit your paper to your instructor. Consider keeping your first draft away from sight for a day or two to have a rest, and then go back to check it for errors and redundant phrases. Don’t rush to change anything immediately after finishing your writing since you are already tired and less focused, so some mistakes may be missed.

Writing Help by Handmadewriting

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Envisioning a Pro-Family Policy Agenda: A Statement of Principles

Strong families are the foundation of a healthy society. Especially at a time when cultural, political, and economic trends have pushed marriage and fertility rates to record lows, it is crucial for policymakers to have a clear vision of how public policy might better support family life. One of the primary aims of our politics should be empowering mothers and fathers to better live out their obligations to each other, to their children, and to their communities.

In its ideal form, the family is the social institution by which children are brought into existence, raised, and prepared to take on responsibilities as they grow into maturity. Though no family is perfect, they are small, cohesive communities that should be respected as having both a social and economic role and function. Parents bear the primary and ultimate responsibility to nurture, shape, and educate their children. As such, they should be afforded space, shielded from inappropriate state intrusion or undue market pressures, to fulfill their responsibilities and live out their irreplaceable function.

As scholars, writers, and legal experts, we offer the following eleven principles to advance an authentically pro-family approach to public policy. To safeguard and foster families’ essential work, policymakers should:

• Seek to strengthen the bond of marriage and the enduring relationship between mothers, fathers, and their children that forms the core of family life.
• Ensure that unborn children are protected in law, and that mothers and their infants receive the care and social support they deserve to ensure a healthy start to life.
• Acknowledge the out-of-pocket and opportunity costs associated with becoming a parent, and advance policies that would make having children more affordable and achievable
• Pursue approaches to paid leave that provide a baseline of protection for new parents from the demands of the workplace.
• Create an approach to early childhood that embraces parents’ different values and needs, eschewing credentialization and over-regulation for authentic pluralism, while ensuring that families with a parent working part-time or at home are treated equitably.  
• Develop labor policies that create flexibility for parents without jeopardizing their financial security, allowing more families to find the work-life balance that is right for them.
• Reinforce the dignity of work by expecting and empowering at least one parent to participate in the labor force, both to contribute to society and to model the virtues of consistency, conscientiousness, and self-sufficiency.
• Appreciate how increases in the cost of living burden parents, particularly those living on a single income, and seek to lower costs in sectors like housing, health care, and higher education by removing artificial barriers to entry and encouraging innovation.
• Remediate imbalances in tax and safety net policies, recognizing the family as an economic institution and ensuring married families are, at the very least, not at a disadvantage compared to single or cohabiting parents.
• Recognize the unique challenges facing men and boys, and pursue workforce and education policies that better empower them to achieve their full potential as committed husbands, fathers, and role models.
• Respect parental authority and the fundamental right of families to raise their children according to their faith, values, and beliefs, and give parents more tools and opportunities to find environments that buttress, not undermine, that authority from classrooms to the digital sphere.

Translating these principles into specific policies will require creativity, humility, and prudence. Our vision recognizes the limitations of relying too heavily on policy alone to transform family life for the better, and the potential unintended consequences of even the best-intentioned state action. But  the threats that leave too many families adrift and too many children at risk require an approach to politics that is proactive and responsive.

Families deserve protection from the growing economic and cultural forces that undermine their essential work. These principles would support the family as the basic unit of a healthy civilization, prioritize expanding choices for parents, and stress the importance of making it more achievable to have and raise children. We believe they can help guide policymakers towards a future in which more families are better able to fulfill their essential responsibilities, better insulated against potential governmental overreach and inordinate demands in a market economy.

Affiliations are for identification purposes only.

Helen Alvaré Robert A. Levy Chair in Law & Liberty Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Antonin Scalia Law School, GMU

Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D. President Ethics and Public Policy Center

Erika Bachiochi, J.D. Fellow Ethics and Public Policy Center

Patrick T. Brown Fellow Ethics and Public Policy Center

Allan C. Carlson, Ph.D. John A. Howard Distinguished Fellow for Family and Religious Studies International Organization for the Family

Robert P. George, J.D., D.Phil. McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence Princeton University

Wells King Research Director American Compass

Yuval Levin, Ph.D. Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies American Enterprise Institute

Abby McCloskey Founder McCloskey Policy LLC

Ramesh Ponnuru Editor National Review

Leah Libresco Sargeant Writer Other Feminisms

W. Brad Wilcox Future of Freedom Fellow Institute for Family Studies 

Also endorsed by: 

To join the list of endorsers, please contact Patrick T. Brown ( [email protected] )

Andre Archie Associate Professor of Philosophy Colorado State University

Tory K. Baucum Director of Center for Family Life Benedictine College

Charles C. Camosy, Ph.D. Professor of Medical Humanities Creighton University School of Medicine

J. Daryl Charles Affiliate Scholar John Jay Institute

Josh Craddock Affiliated Scholar James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding

Daniel Darling Director Land Center for Cultural Engagement, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Julia M. Dezelski Assistant Director, Marriage and Family Life United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Elaine Donnelly President Center for Military Readiness

Richard M. Doerflinger Fellow University of Notre Dame de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture

Brandon Dutcher Senior Vice President Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs

Family Research Council

Catherine Glenn Foster President & CEO Americans United for Life

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry Fellow Ethics and Public Policy Center

Samuel Hammond Director of Social Policy Niskanen Center

Mary Rice Hasson Kate O’Beirne Senior Fellow Ethics and Public Policy Center

Michael Hernon President The Messy Family Project 

Leah A. Jacobson CEO Guiding Star Project

Lois Kerschen Co-Founder and former President Democrats for Life of America

Daniel Lipinski Member US House of Representatives (2005–2021 )

Kathryn Jean Lopez Senior Fellow National Review Institute

Noelle Mering Fellow, Theology of Home Project Ethics and Public Policy Center

Rachel N. Morrison Fellow, HHS Accountability Project Ethics and Public Policy Center

Robert Orr Social Policy Analyst Niskanen Center

Patrick D. Purtill Director of Legislative Affairs Faith and Freedom Coalition

Karen Swallow Prior Research Professor of English and Christianity & Culture Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Avik Roy President Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity

Gustavo A. Santos Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics The Catholic University of America

Serena Sigillito Editor-at-Large Public Discourse

Katharine B. Stevens Founder & CEO Center on Child and Family Policy

Lyman Stone Research Fellow Institute for Family Studies

Michael Toscano Executive Director Institute for Family Studies

David R. Upham Associate Professor of Politics & Director of Legal Studies University of Dallas

Andrew T. Walker Fellow, Evangelicals in Civic Life Ethics and Public Policy Center

Richard N. Williams Professor of Counseling Psychology and Special Education Brigham Young University

“In its ideal form, the family is the social institution by which children are brought into existence, raised, and prepared to take on responsibilities as they grow into maturity.”

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Communication Currents

Family Ethics

 Jodi Picoult's book,  My Sister's Keeper ,  illustrates the juxtaposition of family ethics and family communication by retelling  Adam and Molly Nash's  true story about the multiple ethical decisions that confront a family after a child is diagnosed with a rare medical disease. The book highlights each family member's struggle as the family attempts to grasp why one daughter wants freedom to make her own medical choices. Each family member's viewpoint on medical, family, social, and personal ethics is developed as the narrative unfolds. In so doing, Picoult provides insight into family decision making as well as into behavioral expectations family members have of each other.

My Sister's Keeper   illustrates how family problems rarely have simple right or wrong solutions. Inquiries into what is right or wrong invoke questions of morality, and discussions of morality lead to grabbling with ethical quandaries. It zeros in on how families communicate about these problems and illustrates the differing dilemmas between spouses, between parents and children, and among families in general as they confront heart-wrenching medical decisions.

 Although   My Sister's Keeper   is an extreme medical situation, families also confront similar ethical issues when dealing with more common medical dilemmas. For example, many families must manage a child's  attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder  (ADHD). Imagine a family with an extremely hyperactive child. The parents complain constantly about the stress the child places upon the family. At home, constant bickering ensues over even the simplest of chores, such as cleaning the child's room. The family limits interactions with friends and more distance family members to forestall explanations and justifications for the child's behavior. After seeking professional help and trying several therapies, the family faces an ethical decision of whether or not to medicate the child. The mother favors medication as a means of reducing family stress. Less stress will translate into family members enjoying each other's company more. The father fears that medicating the child will result in others, particular teachers, perceiving the child as different in some way, not to mention his trepidation on how the medication may affect the child's brain or suppress the child's natural personality and spirit.

How does the family answer the question? Whose perspective should be most important? The mother's? The father's? Another family member's? A medical professional? Do family members exercise multiple perspectives or only their own? Do they consider the long-range effects on the family? How do families engage in the discussion without being judgmental? To whom or where can a family turn to resolve the dilemma?

Family  ethics  can be crucial in situations such as this one. When a crisis, such as making a major medical decision, arises within a family, an ethical lens emerges that provides a blueprint for behavior. How family members talk and react to another is guided by that lens. If that lens is cloudy the more uncertain and stressful those conversations will be. If the lens is clear, a better family dynamic will result. Investigations into family dynamics show that families who have positive interactions surrounding medical decisions usually have a solution prior to finding themselves in a predicament. These families talk about potential decisions that may have to be made, discuss the reasons why they should do this or that, and consider the implications of their actions. Slowly working through the intricacies of the issue allows each family member's voice to be heard. Everyone feels part of the solution. Waiting for a calamity to occur before expressing concerns results in unsupportive and difficult communication between family members at a time when cool heads and cooperation are essential. Scholars have shown that  supportive families  talk about issues and come to a decision together. These families also talk about the decision in such a way that it shows the affection and commitment they have for one another and the family unit.

However, sometimes that affection and commitment can be problematic if not handled properly. Because family members generally love each other, they sometimes turn to unhealthy coping strategies to maintain family stability during a crisis. One popular strategy is the partial truth. “Is it a lie if I don't tell all the truth?” is a common marital question. Some people hold that steadfast truthfulness is a universal marital law. After all, if one's partner feels otherwise, how can the relationship persist? Some spouses may expect a “no secrets,” totally transparent marriage. Research suggests that most people favor open and honest communication in their marriages, but does that require complete transparency? Marriage presents a classic catch-22: partners must disclose personal information to create intimacy, but too much disclosure can sabotage that intimacy. Much research touts self-disclosure as essential to marital relationships, but research also reveals a curvilinear relationship between satisfaction and self-disclosure. That is, a couple can reveal too much and hence decrease marital satisfaction. Spouses must make ethical choices when deciding what to disclose. The complexity of the interaction between disclosure and honesty grows when spouses disagree on something as basic as what is appropriate to disclose.

Self-disclosure between spouses is not the only type of disclosure within a family. Consider the communication dynamics between teenagers and parents. Teenagers sometimes lie about where they will be, who they are with, and what activities they are involved in. Parents judge children's behavior on perceived integrity or trustworthiness. Children, being a bit less sophisticated, may view parents as unfair and try to focus the conversation elsewhere, especially when there are other siblings. “How come he can do that and I can't?”This type of perceived inconsistency needs explanation; otherwise, children will feel less favored or will reinforce the perceived unfairness as fact. Explaining behavior increases mutual understanding and appreciation of another's perspective, so parents should seize any opportunity to explain why they behave as they do or why they expect children to behave a certain way. Explanations are ethical lessons. Routine communicative moments, such as putting away groceries, chatting over dinner, or watching TV, are excellent opportunities for parents to talk about their ethical values with their children. When parents talk about what happened at work that day, children learn to process information about work. These types of interactions help children create mental models for work, authority, and family communication. Family conversations—whether implicit or explicit--help shape children's views the world and how they behave in it.

All families have communication patterns, good or bad, and most families have standards of behavior. A focus on family ethics may make those standards manifest. The good news is that family members often think similarly, so different perspectives are not always so different. Nevertheless, having family conversations about what guides family members' behavior can be a positive exercise in getting family members to understand each other as well as themselves. Working out a family's ethics helps  family communication  become more effective and really helps when a crisis within the family arises and good communication becomes a necessity rather than a luxury. Good communication is always healthy and understanding what makes a family tick will always make for much better family experience.

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Nursing ethical considerations.

Lisa M. Haddad ; Robin A. Geiger .

Affiliations

Last Update: August 14, 2023 .

• Definition/Introduction

Ethical values are essential for any healthcare provider. Ethics comes from the Greek word “ethos,” meaning character. Ethical values are universal rules of conduct that provide a practical basis for identifying what kinds of actions, intentions, and motives are valued. [1]  Ethics are moral principles that govern how the person or a group will behave or conduct themselves. The focus pertains to the right and wrong of actions and encompasses the decision-making process of determining the ultimate consequences of those actions. [2]  Each person has their own set of personal ethics and morals. Ethics within healthcare are important because workers must recognize healthcare dilemmas, make good judgments and decisions based on their values while keeping within the laws that govern them. To practice competently with integrity, nurses, like all healthcare professionals, must have regulation and guidance within the profession. [3]  The American Nurses Association (ANA) has developed the Code of Ethics for this purpose.

• Issues of Concern

The onset of nursing ethics can be traced back to the late 19 century. At that time, it was thought that ethics involved virtues such as physician loyalty, high moral character, and obedience. [3]  Since that early time, the nursing profession has evolved, and nurses are now part of the healthcare team and are patient advocates. The first formal Code of Ethics to guide the nursing profession was developed in the 1950’s. Developed and published by the ANA, it guides nurses in their daily practice and sets primary goals and values for the profession. Its function is to provide a succinct statement of the ethical obligations and duties of every individual who enters the nursing profession. It provides a nonnegotiable ethical standard and is an expression of nursing’s own understanding of its commitment to society. The Code of Ethics has been revised over time. The current version represents advances in technology, societal changes, expansion of nursing practice into advanced practice roles, research, education, health policy, and administration, and builds and maintains healthy work environments. [3]

The Code of Ethics for Nurses is divided into nine provisions to guide the nurse. The following is a summary of the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics for Nurses: 

Provision 1. The nurse practices with compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and unique attributes of every person. 

The nurse must have a high level of respect for all individuals, and allow dignity in regards to dealings in care and communication. It's important that patient's families are also treated with respect for their relationship to the patient. Nurses must understand the professional guidelines in communications and work with colleagues and patient families. It's important to understand the proper professional relationship that should be maintained with families and patients. All individuals, whether patients or co-workers have the right to decide on their participation in care and work.

Provision 2. The nurse’s primary commitment is to the patient, whether an individual, family, group, community, or population.

The patient should always be a first and primary concern. The nurse must recognize the need for the patient to include their individual thought into care practices. Any conflict of interest, whether belonging to external organizations, or the nurse's habits or ideals that conflict with the act of being a nurse, should be shared and addressed to not impact patient care. Collaboration with internal and external teams to foster best patient care is a necessity. Understanding professional boundaries and how they relate to patient care outcomes is important.

Provision 3. The nurse promotes, advocates for, and protects the rights, health, and safety of the patient.

It is important for the nurse to understand all privacy guidelines with regards to patient care and patient identifiers. Nurses involved in research must understand all aspects of participation including informed consent and full disclosure to the patient of all aspects required to participate in the study. The nurse must understand any institutional standards set in place to review his/her performance; this includes measurements of progress and the need for further review or study to meet performance standards. To become a nurse, competence must be demonstrated in clinical and documentation prowess. Standards of competence will continue at institutions and academic organizations that employ the nurse. If there is witness or recognition of questionable healthcare practice, it is important that the patient is protected by reporting any misconduct or potential safety concern. And finally, the nurse will not provide patient care while under the influence of any substance that may impair thought or action, this includes prescription medication.

Provision 4 . The nurse has authority, accountability, and responsibility for nursing practice; makes decisions; and takes action consistent with the obligation to provide optimal patient care.

As a nurse, it's inherent that accountability for all aspects of care aligns with responsible decision making. Use of authority must be professional and about all aspects of individualism and patient, ethical concerns. Nursing decisions must be well thought, planned, and purposefully implemented responsibly. Any delegation of nursing activities or functions must be done with respect for the action and the ultimate results to occur. 

Provision 5 . The nurse owes the same duties to self as to others, including the responsibility to promote health and safety, preserve wholeness of character and integrity, maintain competence, and continue personal and professional growth.

A nurse must also demonstrate care for self as well as others. An ideal nurse, will have self-regard towards healthcare practices and uphold safe practice within the care setting and at home. It's important for a nurse to have a high regard for care as an overall inert ability once the profession is entered. A character becoming a nurse would include integrity. Nurses should be concerned for personal growth in regards to continued learning of the profession. The ability to grow as a nurse with improvements to care, changes or trends in care should be adapted to maintain competence and allow growth of the profession.

Provision 6. The nurse, through individual and collective effort, establishes, maintains, and improves the ethical environment of the work setting and conditions of employment that are conducive to safe, quality health care.

As a nursing profession, standards should be outlined within and external to institutions of work that dictate ethical obligations of care and need to report any deviations from appropriateness. It's important to understand safety, quality and environmental considerations that are conducive to best patient care outcomes.

Provision 7 . The nurse, in all roles and settings, advances the profession through research and scholarly inquiry, professional standards development, and the generation of both nursing and health policy.

Nurse education should include principles of research, and each nurse should understand how to apply scholarly work and inquiry into practice standards. Nurse committees and board memberships are encouraged to contribute to health policy and professional standards. The ability to maintain professional practice standards should continue, changing and enhancing as developments in practice may over time.

Provision 8. The nurse collaborates with other health professionals and the public to protect human rights, promote health diplomacy, and reduce health disparities. 

Through collaboration within the discipline, maintaining the concept that health is a right for all individuals will open the channels of best practice possibilities. The nurse understands the obligation to continue to advance care possibilities by committing to constant learning and preparation. The ability of the nurse to practice in various healthcare settings may include unusual situations that require continued acts of diplomacy and advocacy.

Provision 9. The profession of nursing, collectively through its professional organization, must articulate nursing values, maintain the integrity of the profession, and integrate principles of social justice into nursing and health policy.

Nurses must continue to gather for committees and organize groups where they may share and evaluate values for accuracy and continuation of the profession. It is within these organizations that nurses may join in strength to voice for social justice. There is a need for continued political awareness to maintain the integrity of the nursing profession. The ability of the nurse to contribute to health policy should be shared among the profession, joining nurses throughout the world for a unified voice.

American Nurses Association. (2015). Code of ethics with interpretative statements. Silver Spring, MD

• Clinical Significance

Ethical values are essential for all healthcare workers. Ethical practice is a foundation for nurses, who deal with ethical issues daily. Ethical dilemmas arise as nurses care for patients. These dilemmas may, at times, conflict with the Code of Ethics or with the nurse's ethical values. Nurses are advocates for patients and must find a balance while delivering patient care. There are four main principles of ethics: autonomy, beneficence, justice, and non-maleficence.

Each patient has the right to make their own decisions based on their own beliefs and values. [4] . This is known as autonomy. A patient's need for autonomy may conflict with care guidelines or suggestions that nurses or other healthcare workers believe is best. A person has a right to refuse medications, treatment, surgery, or other medical interventions regardless of what benefit may come from it. If a patient chooses not to receive a treatment that could potentially provide a benefit, the nurse must respect that choice.

Healthcare workers have a duty to refrain from maltreatment, minimize harm, and promote good towards patients. [4]  This duty of particular treatment describing beneficence. Healthcare workers demonstrate this by providing a balance of benefits against risks to the patient. Assisting patients with tasks that they are unable to perform on their own, keeping side rails up for fall precautions, or providing medications in a quick and timely manner are all examples of beneficence.

All patients have a right to be treated fair and equally by others. Justice involves how people are treated when their interest competes with others. [5] . A current hot topic that addresses this is the lack of healthcare insurance for some. Another example is with patients in rural settings who may not have access to the same healthcare services that are offered in metropolitan areas.

Patients have a right to no harm. Non-maleficence requires that nurses avoid causing harm to patients. [6]  This principle is likely the most difficult to uphold. Where life support is stopped or patients have chosen to stop taking medication that can save their lives, the nurse is put in a morally challenging position.

Nurses should know the Code of Ethics within their profession and be aware and recognize their own integrity and moral character. Nurses should have a basic and clear understanding of key ethical principles. The nursing profession must remain true to patient care while advocating for patient rights to self-identify needs and cultural norms. Ethical considerations in nursing, though challenging, represent a true integration of the art of patient care.

Nurses have a responsibility to themselves, their profession, and their patients to maintain the highest ethical principals. Many organizations have ethics boards in place to review ethical concerns. Nurses at all levels of practice should be involved in ethics review in their targeted specialty area. It is important to advocate for patient care, patient rights, and ethical consideration of practice. Ethics inclusion should begin in nursing school and continue as long as the nurse is practicing.

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Disclosure: Lisa Haddad declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

Disclosure: Robin Geiger declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

This book is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ), which permits others to distribute the work, provided that the article is not altered or used commercially. You are not required to obtain permission to distribute this article, provided that you credit the author and journal.

• Cite this Page Haddad LM, Geiger RA. Nursing Ethical Considerations. [Updated 2023 Aug 14]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-.

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• Arts & Humanities

Our Family Code of Ethics: What We Stand For

12 Aug 2022

• Arts & Humanities

Format: APA

Academic level: College

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Guiding Principles 

All members of the family must treat each other with dignity and respect regardless of the circumstances.

All family members must work collaboratively during crisis and emergencies to ensure that the well-being of all individuals is safeguarded.

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Parents must not treat any of their children preferentially. All children must be treated equally.

The children in the household must heed the instructions of their parents, and if they have any objections, they must raise them politely and engage in a discussion on the best course forward with their parents.

Parents are expected to create a safe and secure environment for the children in the household to ensure that the youngsters feel both physically and emotionally safe while living within the family.

The purpose of the code of ethics is to ensure that all the members of the family live in a peaceful and harmonious environment, which fulfils the belonging needs of all household members. Abiding by the guidelines stated above is expected to enhance the functionality of the family unit and better the relations of all the individuals that are involved.

Core Values & Definitions 

Respect: The regard for the feelings, values and wishes of other family members.

Integrity: The ability to remain honest and possess strong moral principles.

Fairness: The capacity to treat all family members justly, without favoritism.

Obedience: The submission to the parents’ authority.

Responsibility: The state of accountability for actions and decisions made.

Training and Education 

The first step of training the other family members about the code of ethics would entail creating a handbook for the ethical code and giving it to all relevant members for preliminary analysis. The second phase would be characterized by organizing and setting a training date based on the availability of all family members. On the training day, all members of the family should be present, and since the ethical code is simple and straightforward, only one training session would require to be scheduled. Thirdly, I would create a program and schedule for the workshop, which would focus on the combination of various teaching methods such as role-playing and group discussions to ensure that all family members understand the contents of the code of ethics and its importance to the household. Finally, the training workshop would be concluded with a question-and-answer session during which any queries raised would be addressed by either the facilitator of the program or any family member that feels equipped enough to respond (Weber, 2015). Importantly, the training will be based on an integrative teaching approach that advocates for both the input of the trainees and the trainer to increase its effectiveness through dialogue.

Moreover, to ensure that the training is effective, the trainer will avoid the provision of excess information to other family members to mitigate the chances of information overload. Instead of introducing all items on the training agenda at a go, the trainer will draw the trainee’s attention to each topic at a time. Secondly, in the course of the training, the trainer will ask trainees questions to make the session more interactive and facilitate the exploration of the ideas presented. Additionally, the modules used for training will be short and straightforward, and the code of ethics will further be simplified to a list of dos and don’ts. The simplicity of the training content will enhance its clarity and the retention of the concepts thereof (Curtis & Williams, 2014). It is necessary to apply techniques that improve the effectiveness of the training because the goal of the program is to ensure that all family members understand what is required of them by the code of ethics.

Who is covered? 

The code of ethics covers all members of the family, including the parents and their three children, all five individuals that are part of the Insert Family Name household.

Mission Statement 

The mission of the household is to live as a united unit based on the observation of the primary values of respect and integrity to create an environment that allows all family members to thrive in various aspects of their lives.

Vision Statement 

Our household is dedicated to safeguarding the well-being of all family members.

Ethical Code Evaluation

The key individuals that have a vested interest in the ethical behavior defined by the code can be categorized into two groups, including the parents and the children. The role of the parents is to set an example for the children in terms of upholding the core values of code. The parents are expected to spearhead the resolution of crisis to ensure that the well-being of all household members is safeguarded. Moreover, they must ascertain that the household provides a physically and emotionally safe environment for the children. The youngsters in the family are expected to uphold the core values of the code and play a subordinate role in the implementation of its requirements. They are required to heed to the instructions of their parents, and in case they object to the parental authority they must raise their concerns in a manner that displays their regard for the core values presented by the ethical code.

The thought process and strategies behind the creation of the prepared code of ethics focused on the roles that the nuclear family plays in an individual’s life. The nuclear family featured fits the traditional definition which characterizes such a unit as one that comprises of a mother father and children. Primarily, the function of the family in society is to facilitate continuation through procreation. Within a nuclear family, the said role is fulfilled by the parents who sire children, and as their offspring grow, the purpose of reproduction is passed on to the youngsters when they become adults (Bales & Parsons, 2014). Moreover, apart from the mentioned role, families also perform vital cultural and socio-economic functions within the society, which provide individuals with a framework for financial, material and emotional support that facilitates the growth and development of their members, specifically children and other dependants. The family forms the cornerstone of the world community and is a primary socialization agent that facilitates the transmission of cultural values (Widmer, 2016). Therefore, the code of ethics created aims at training, moulding and educating the members of the household as an investment in their future growth and development into responsible members of the society.

The strategic implementation of the code of ethics would entail undertaking a one-on-one training with the other family members as well as providing the training content on an online platform that allows the relevant individuals to assess the topics at their own pace. Also, the implementation phase would be characterized by providing the ethical guidelines on an online resource that is available to all family members, offering a typed handbook and putting up a copy of the moral code in an area that all family members often access such by the kitchen door or the refrigerator (Business Queensland, 2019). Furthermore, the effective communication of the values stipulated in the code must be facilitated by the use of the right channels and reference to core family values in a clear language. Similarly, technological tools can also be used to communicate the ethical principles presented by the code to increase their accessibility to all household members and examples used to express the stipulated values when in action (Park, 2019). The creation of the ethical code is essential, but its effective implementation and communication are necessary for the realization of the goal of enhancing household ethical standards.

After the successful implementation and communication of the ethical code, it will be vital to implement monitoring techniques that assess the practice of moral decision-making within the household. Each family member will be required to monitor their adherence to the code to make them high self-monitors who understand social cues and can adapt their behavior to fit the specifications of the ethical guidelines (Bon, Volkema & Silva, 2017). Additionally, the family will hold periodic assessment meetings once every four weeks, where the least and best complaints will be named to encourage household members to apply the principles of the code consistently.

Despite the existence of laws, the implementation of a code of ethics is vital because it establishes behavioural rules and creates a basis for pre-emptive warning. Ethical regulations facilitate the stipulation of legal terms in the context of specific organizations, such as the family unit, a factor that increases the possibility of the protection of the rights of all individuals involved. An ethical code also eases the process of making difficult decisions as well as enhances the cooperation among the individuals it covers, who are inclined to behave in the manner stipulated by the code towards each other, mitigating any unfair treatment (ECI, 2019). Thus, ethical codes fine-tune stipulations of the law based on the beliefs and practices of specific entities, a factor that increases the applicability of legal provisions.

Bales, R. F., & Parsons, T. (2014).  Family: Socialization and interaction process . Routledge.

Bon, A. C., Volkema, R. J., & Silva, J. F. D. (2017). Ethical decision-making: The role of self-monitoring, future orientation, and social networks.  BAR-Brazilian Administration Review ,  14 (1).

Business Queensland. (2019). Implementing a code of conduct | Business Queensland. Retrieved 14 August 2019, from https://www.business.qld.gov.au/running-business/employing/taking-on-staff/staff-code-conduct/implementing 

Curtis, M. B., & Williams, J. M. (2014). The impact of culture and training on code of conduct effectiveness: reporting of observed unethical behavior. In  Research on Professional Responsibility and Ethics in Accounting  (pp. 1-31). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Ethics and Compliance Initiative (ECI). (2019). Why Have a Code of Conduct - Free Ethics & Compliance Toolkit. Retrieved 14 August 2019, from https://www.ethics.org/resources/free-toolkit/code-of-conduct/ 

Park, C. (2019). Communicating Ethical Values | Industry News. Retrieved 14 August 2019, from https://www.ioic.org.uk/industry-news/communicating-ethical-values 

Weber, J. (2015). Investigating and assessing the quality of employee ethics training programs among US-based global organizations.  Journal of Business Ethics ,  129 (1), 27-42.

Widmer, E. D. (2016).  Family configurations: A structural approach to family diversity . Routledge.

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University of Notre Dame to establish Jenkins Center for Virtue Ethics

Published: April 09, 2024

Author: Kate Garry and Laura Moran Walton

The University of Notre Dame today announced the establishment of the Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Center for Virtue Ethics, a signature element of the Notre Dame Ethics Initiative emerging from the University’s strategic framework .

The Jenkins Center for Virtue Ethics will support preeminent scholars whose research advances human flourishing in both moral and spiritual contexts, facilitate the development of undergraduate courses exploring topics such as justice and the common good, and deepen the ethical formation of Notre Dame students and faculty. The center will also play a transformative role in public discussion, drawing citizens into meaningful dialogue informed by virtue ethics — one of the most powerful and enduring contributions of the Catholic philosophical tradition.

The initial funding for this new center was made possible through the generosity of several members of the University’s Board of Trustees, along with other benefactors, and named in honor of University President Father Jenkins , who announced in October that he would step  down at the end of the 2023–24 academic year to return to teaching and ministry at the University.

“As a professor of philosophy and as the president of Notre Dame for 19 years, Father Jenkins has devoted his career to building a world-class research university where both faith and reason are brought to bear on the most pressing questions of our day,” said Jack Brennan, chair of the University’s Board of Trustees. “The Jenkins Center for Virtue Ethics will advance his work by creating a dedicated arena in which the enduring relevance of virtue ethics thrives, where faith and reason flourish, and where major moral ideas unite people, rather than divide them.”

The center will be an essential part of the Notre Dame Ethics Initiative , a University-wide effort to establish Notre Dame as a premier global destination for the study of ethics, offering superb training for future generations of ethicists and moral leaders, a platform for engagement of the Catholic moral tradition with other modes of inquiry, and an opportunity to forge insights into some of the most significant ethical issues of our time. Virtue ethics will be a key area of focus for the initiative, as well as technology ethics, business ethics and environmental ethics, among others.

“Virtue ethics tells us that the moral life is not simply about discrete actions properly performed, nor about achieving laudable results in the world, but about becoming a certain kind of person,” Father Jenkins said. “In an age of moral confusion and uncertainty, this center will provide a powerful voice and compelling vision.”

A system of ethical inquiry focused on human flourishing, virtue ethics began with Plato and Aristotle and became the philosophical foundation of Christianity through the work of Augustine and Aquinas. It was reinvigorated in the 20th century by Catholic philosophers such as Elizabeth Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre, who was an endowed chair in Notre Dame’s Department of Philosophy for nearly two decades.

“Through the Jenkins Center for Virtue Ethics, Notre Dame will be at the forefront of new research in virtue ethics, continuing the long history of Catholic thought leadership in this field,” said Meghan Sullivan, the Ethics Initiative director and Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy.

  “Father Jenkins’ legacy will thrive and expand through this center, ensuring that his deep commitment to civil dialogue, intellectual and spiritual humility, human flourishing, and the common good will be at the core of Notre Dame’s work in the world.”

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One Year On, American Journalist Evan Gershkovich Remains In Russian Prison

US journalist Evan Gershkovich, arrested on espionage charges, stands inside a defendants' cage before a hearing to consider an appeal on his extended detention at The Moscow City Court in Moscow on June 22, 2023. (Photo by Natalia KOLESNIKOVA / AFP) (Photo by NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images) NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

US journalist Evan Gershkovich, arrested on espionage charges, stands inside a defendants' cage before a hearing to consider an appeal on his extended detention at The Moscow City Court in Moscow on June 22, 2023. (Photo by Natalia KOLESNIKOVA / AFP) (Photo by NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images)

Last year, in March, American journalist Evan Gershkovich was detained by Russian security forces on espionage charges. At the time, he was on an assignment, reporting for the Wall Street Journal.

Gershkovich is the first American reporter to be charged with espionage in Russia since 1986.

Gershkovich and the Journal deny the allegations. The U.S. State Department has designated Gershkovich as "wrongfully detained" - an official phrase that opens the way for government efforts to secure his release. But today, Evan Gershkovich remains imprisoned.

This week Russian authorities added on another three months to his detention. But they have provided no evidence to support the charges, and no trial date has been set.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with his sister, Danielle Gershkovich, on how the family is coping and the continuing efforts to bring her brother home.

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org .

Email us at [email protected] .

This episode was produced by Marc Rivers. Ted Mebane was the engineer. It was edited by Christopher Intagliata and Jeanette Woods. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

Pros and Cons of Moving to Moscow

This guide was written prior to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and is therefore not reflective of the current situation. Travel to Russia is currently not advisable due to the area's volatile political situation.

Rich in history and culture, Moscow is an exciting destination for expats. Nevertheless, they may experience frustrations arising from bureaucracy, a difficult language adjustment and extreme weather conditions. Nonetheless, the city offers an attractive lifestyle with its active social life and vibrant arts and culture scene. 

Accommodation in Moscow

Densely populated Moscow offers a variety of options for accommodation, though lots of competition and high prices make finding the perfect home a bit tricky.

+ PRO: Range of options

There are many different types of accommodation available in Moscow. Expats are just as likely to find themselves in a pre-revolutionary apartment with high ceilings, thick walls and interesting architecture as in a modern apartment block with good facilities and high-tech features. There are also several international compounds with other expats. These gated communities usually offer their own sports facilities and social activities. 

- CON: High demand and expensive 

With so many people living in Moscow, housing is in great demand and can therefore be expensive. Apartments are also often small, and expats may be disappointed with what their money can buy. Realistically, size, quality and location are the most important factors influencing the cost of accommodation in Moscow. Expats with a limited budget may need to compromise on one or more of these factors to find a home that best suits them.

Lifestyle in Moscow

Moscow is a huge city, offering a wide range of activities and events . The expat community is close-knit, giving new arrivals the opportunity to make friends.

+ PRO: Great social scene 

There is so much to do in Moscow, with activities catering for every interest. Most groups and organisations are well-organised and welcoming to newcomers. The expat community is busy throughout the year with balls and charity events.

Nightlife within the city is excellent, with a variety of bars, clubs and restaurants to choose from. The quality of museums, art galleries, theatres and concerts is also outstanding.

- CON: Eating out can be expensive

Restaurants in Moscow can be extremely expensive. Expats may find their social life is limited if living on a budget. Luckily, knowing the right places will help make going out more affordable.

Education and schools in Moscow

+ pro: international schools are available .

There are several international schools in Moscow offering excellent quality education and facilities. There are also good private Russian schools, although only a small percentage of expat children attend these.

- CON: Demand is high and space is limited

The demand for schools outweighs the supply. Therefore, schools in Moscow can be expensive with long waiting lists. Schools are usually located outside of central Moscow. So, unless expats live close to the school, children will have to travel some distance by school bus or car each day.

Climate in Moscow

+ pro: many winter and summer outdoor activities.

The climate in Moscow is quite extreme. Winter weather can be beautiful in Moscow, with blue skies and sunshine on the white snow. Cross-country skiing is popular with expats and ice-skating is possible all over the city as many playgrounds are made into ice-rinks. Summer is a great time to explore Moscow, as the city is generally quieter. There are lakeside and river beaches in Moscow, where expats and locals alike can take advantage of the good weather.

- CON: Long winters 

The extreme winter weather can make living in Moscow challenging for most of the year. Expats should make sure to have enough thick and warm winter clothing to get them through. 

Safety in Moscow

- con: bribery and corruption.

Bribery and corruption are still issues in Moscow, and expats are sometimes affected by this. It's also not uncommon to find incidents of racism.

Healthcare in Moscow

+ pro: medical facilities are of a high standard .

There are many private medical centres in Moscow with well-trained doctors who can, in most cases, speak English. Dental treatment is also of a high standard in the city.

- CON: Healthcare is expensive

Getting medical treatment can sometimes be expensive, although most expats have insurance to cover these costs. Dental treatment is also pricey, although competitive with other European prices. 

Public transport in Moscow

+ pro: comprehensive public transport system.

Moscow has an impressive public transport system . The metro is not only clean, safe, efficient and fast; it is also a tourist attraction. Daily tours explore the metro system, with guides showing tourists through some of the city's most beautiful stations. These stations often resemble palaces, with sculptures, mosaics and even chandeliers. There is also an extensive bus, trolleybus and tram route throughout Moscow. Many of Moscow’s buses now even have Wi-Fi access.

- CON: Crowded public transport during rush hour 

Rush hour on the metro can be unpleasantly crowded. Many of the metro stations and trains also haven’t changed all their signs to show both the Cyrillic alphabet and the Latin alphabet. Being able to read place names in Russian is therefore helpful to avoid getting lost in the rush hour chaos.

- CON: Heavy traffic

Bad traffic can put people off travelling in and around Moscow. Luckily, the metro system is good and expats living near transport stops shouldn't have any issues getting around. The traffic could be a problem for those who choose to drive in Moscow, however. 

Further reading

►For a breakdown of what you can expect to pay for basic goods and services in Moscow, see  Cost of Living in Russia .

Expat Interviews " What I like the most about Moscow is the city itself. It is always clean, vibrant, and full of entertainment and friendly pedestrians. It means that you can walk as far as you want to and feel safe about doing so." Read about Eva's experience living in Moscow as an expat .  "What I like about Moscow is that it’s very dynamic and animated; there is always something to do at any time of the day and of the night!"  Read about Laurent's experience and his likes and dislikes of living in Moscow.

Are you an expat living in Moscow?

Expat Arrivals is looking for locals to contribute to this guide, and answer forum questions from others planning their move to Moscow. Please contact us if you'd like to contribute.

Expat Health Insurance

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Moving Internationally?

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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise’

Inside the notorious “catch and kill” campaign that now stands at the heart of the former president’s legal trial..

By Lachlan Cartwright

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At the center of the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Manhattan is the accusation that Trump took part in a scheme to turn The National Enquirer and its sister publications into an arm of his 2016 presidential campaign. The documents detailed three “hush money” payments made to a series of individuals to guarantee their silence about potentially damaging stories in the months before the election. Because this was done with the goal of helping his election chances, the case implied, these payments amounted to a form of illegal, undisclosed campaign spending. And because Trump created paperwork to make the payments seem like regular legal expenses, that amounted to a criminal effort at a coverup, argued Alvin Bragg, the district attorney of Manhattan. Trump has denied the charges against him.

For Lachlan Cartwright, reading the indictment was like stepping through the looking glass, because it described a three-year period in his own professional life, one that he has come to deeply regret. Now, as a former president faces a criminal trial for the first time in American history, Cartwright is forced to grapple with what really happened at The Enquirer in those years — and whether and how he can ever set things right.

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