Relational Potential versus the Parent‐Child Relationship

In an article in this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Aaron Wightman and his coauthors attempt to address health care providers’ moral distress about acceding to parents’ requests to provide life‐sustaining medical treatment to children who have profound cognitive disabilities. They propose combining John Arras's relational potential standard and care ethics, and they argue that the capacity for caring relationships can provide an independent moral justification for honoring such requests. This combination is, however, unstable. Wightman et al.'s language of potential and capacity opens the possibility of substantial misinterpretation. They rely on epistemological and prognostic uncertainty to argue that reciprocity and participation may be present in the parent‐child relationship even when the child's engagement cannot be observed. The terminology suggests that these are characteristics that can be gained or lost rather than characteristics of being born within certain social practices. In contrast, Eva Feder Kittay illuminates family membership as an important social relation. Her articulation of the independent moral value of parenting stands on its own without being conjoined to Arras's position

Distress · Epistemology · Linguistics · Psychotherapist · Reciprocity (cultural anthropology) · Sociology · Terminology · Value (mathematics) · Ethics and Legal Issues in Pediatric Healthcare · Ethics in medical practice · Patient Dignity and Privacy · Psychology · Social Psychology

• At the Margins of Moral Personhood

  Eva Feder Kittay•Ethics•2005

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• The Relational Potential Standard

  Open Access•Aaron Wightman, Jennifer Kett et al.•The Hastings Center Report•2019

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• Toward an Ethic of Ambiguity

  John D Arras•The Hastings Center Report•1984

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