12538Nankai University, China.
Nurs Ethics. 2021 May;28(3):346-357. doi: 10.1177/0969733020921497. Epub 2020 May 26.
Adult children's particular obligations to their parents are filial obligations. The gratitude of filial obligations that treats one's filial obligations as duties of gratitude to one's parents is a mainstream view. However, in terms of the requirements of such obligations, the gratitude account fails to provide practical guidance. The general requirement seems that children should benefit their parents as the beneficiary should benefit the benefactor. The question is what kinds of benefits adult children should provide to their parents? In some cases, adult children feel obligated to provide particular benefits to their parents like paying their medical bills or spending time with them. While in some other cases, it seems that they can use their own discretion to decide how to satisfy the filial obligations so long as what they do benefits their parents. In this article, I am trying to argue that although the general requirement of the filial obligations is to benefit the parents, there are two kinds of benefits that adult children are strongly obligated to provide. These are special goods that parents can only get from their children and things that meet their parents' basic needs. In addition, although adult children have filial obligations to benefit their parents, there should be some limitations on the requirements of filial obligation. Namely, adult children do not have a filial obligation to meet their parents' desires that could only be satisfied at the cost of adult children's liberty related to significant aspects of their lives, or to meet their parents' desires that could only be satisfied at the cost of infringing their capacity to fulfil other important duties.
成年子女对父母的特殊义务是孝顺义务。将孝顺义务视为对父母的感激之责的感激论是主流观点。然而,就这些义务的要求而言,感激论未能提供实际指导。一般要求似乎是子女应该像受益人应该受益于恩人那样使父母受益。问题是成年子女应该为父母提供什么样的利益?在某些情况下,成年子女感到有义务向父母提供特定的利益,如支付他们的医疗费用或与他们共度时光。而在其他情况下,他们似乎可以自行决定如何满足孝顺义务,只要他们所做的对父母有益。在本文中,我试图论证,尽管孝顺义务的一般要求是使父母受益,但成年子女有义务提供两种利益。这些是父母只能从子女那里获得的特殊利益和满足父母基本需求的东西。此外,尽管成年子女有孝顺父母的义务,但对孝顺义务的要求应该有一些限制。即,成年子女没有孝顺义务来满足父母的欲望,这些欲望只能以牺牲成年子女与生活重要方面相关的自由为代价来满足,或者以牺牲他们履行其他重要职责的能力为代价来满足。