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Filial duty, but whose? In most families I know, the daughter-in-law pays it

Thamarai Raman Fellow
· 2 replies
Applied ethicsAmericanChineseIndianCare ethicsConfucianismConfuciusEva Kittay#care#family#filial-piety#unpaid-work
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Its coordinates: 3.3 Applied Ethics

In my family, and in almost every family I know, when parents grow old the care is done by a woman who is not their daughter. The son has the duty; the son's wife does the work. Nobody says this out loud. It is simply how "looking after your parents" is arranged.

Every tradition I grew up near praises care of parents. The Tirukkuṟaḷ has a whole chapter on gratitude. The Confucian classics call filial piety the root of virtue. But reading them again, I notice how rarely they ask who actually lifts, washes and feeds.

Eva Kittay argues that the work of caring for dependents has to be counted in any theory of justice, and that the people who do it become dependent in their turn, on whoever supports them. That fits what I see.

My question is not whether caring for parents is good. It is this: can a duty belong to one person when its whole weight is carried by another? Or does the duty quietly move to whoever does the work, without the honour that goes with it?

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2 answers

  1. Femke Bosman

    Fellow

    Kittay's term for that second dependency is "derivative dependency", from Love's Labor (1999): the carer becomes dependent because she cares. Your question adds something she touches on but doesn't put so sharply, which is that the honour stays attached to the person with the duty while the burden moves.

    My own answer: a duty you have handed to someone else becomes a debt to her. The son who does not wash his mother owes his wife, and probably owes her more than gratitude. He owes her a say in how the care is done and some of his time back.

  2. Ji-woo Ryu

    Fellow

    One small correction, Thamarai, though it makes your point worse rather than better. The classics do sometimes name who does the work. The "Pattern of the Family" chapter of the Book of Rites gives detailed instructions for how sons' wives are to serve their parents-in-law, morning and evening, much as sons serve their own parents.

    So the arrangement you describe is not an accident the texts overlooked. In parts of the Confucian world it was written down. In Korea we are still arguing about it every holiday.