1. Chapter 8: Your Child and the Children of Others

2. Summary: In this chapter Singer asks the important question of “do your obligations to your own children override your obligations to strangers, no matter how great their need or suffering?” (130) He provides examples to help the reader understand the different factors that can influence a decision. Each example consists of a situation that is separated into 3 parts: 1. Horrible Circumstance 2. Difficult Decision 3. Consequence ** In the next couple of slides please keep this question in mind: 1. What would you do? Why?

3. Situation # 1: A mother is walking to meet her husband. On her way she realizes that a dam holding back on artificial lake is giving away. She immediately runs to warn the people living in the village where her baby is sleeping. Rescueing her child will prevent her from getting word to the villagers. **Points to think about while making decision: - If she saves her child she will only be saving one life as opposed to the millions of lives that she could save by going to the village. - Her duties as a mother.

4. Situation # 2: After seeing many children die from kidney failure Zell Kravinsky wants to donate one of his kidneys to a stranger. His wife, Emily, objects to this decision because she says that one of their kids may need it in the future. Is Emily a bad person because she is preventing her husband from donating his kidney to someone who is in between the border of life and death? What would you do? **Points to consider: - Their child may need the kidney in the future. - You are indirectly choosing to not help the person in need.

5. The Real Dilemma: The situations in the previous slides go back to the question asked in slide one: -Do your obligations to your own children override your obligations to strangers, no matter how great their need or suffering? In other words… - Is it wrong and unnatural to reject our children’s pleas for the latest clothing or toys because the savings you gain by taking the less expensive options will allow you to donate money to saving the lives of strangers?

6. Question: “Of course, we have to respond to our immediate family, but, once they are okay, we need to expand the circle. A larger sense o f family is a radical idea, but we get into trouble as a society when we don’t see that we’re in the same boat” “Okay” is a very vague notion. What is your definition of okay?

7. Singer’s Conclusion: “ No principle of obligation is going to be widely accepted unless it recognizes that parents will and should love their own children more than the children of strangers, and, for that reason, will meet the basic needs of their children before they meet the needs of strangers. But this doesn’t mean that parents are justified in providing luxuries for their children ahead of the basic needs of others” (139).