You are the head of a small household, having just moved to a large urban center. You are not wealthy,
but since you and your partner or spouse both work full-time, you make a little more each month than you
need to meet your family’s needs. That said, you can’t eat out very often, you can’t travel with your family
on vacation, and you haven’t ever really been able to buy the kinds of things for your kids that you know
they’d like to have. You and your partner/spouse have recently discussed whether you’d ever want to have
more children, and you both have agreed that, although you could cover the expenses, it would mean
further depriving yourselves and the kids you have of the sorts of small luxuries—an occasional trip to the
movies, dance classes, new bicycles on their birthdays, ice cream on the way home from school—that you
all enjoy.
One night, the two of you have some friends who are visiting from out of town over for dinner.
The conversation turns eventually to your kids, and your friends surprise you and your partner/spouse by
announcing that they have become foster parents. They’ve been foster parents for over a year now, in
fact. The idea intrigues both you and your partner, and your friends tell you all about their experience.
They begin by noting that there are countless children in desperate need of loving homes, even if only on
a temporary, foster basis. Many of these kids are older, they note, and many of them have had very rough,
troubled lives—violent lives, even. Many of the kids have themselves been the perpetrators of violence
against other children. You all agree that it’s a shame, and that something should be done to help these
poor children.
After dessert and coffee, your friends get ready to leave. There are hugs and good-byes, but then,
at the last moment, standing on your doorstep before heading out to their car, your friends turn to you
and say: “The foster agency we went through is desperately searching to place two older children,” one
of them says. “They have had no luck, as the kids have acted out violently in some of their other foster
homes. But they’re good kids, really. We’d take them ourselves, but Jim just lost his job, and we’re
broke.” Sensing your ambivalence, your friend says, “I understand that, right here on your front porch in
the middle of the night, it is difficult to make a decision. And Lord knows we wouldn’t hold it against you
if you didn’t want to take these children in. You have to look after your own children, too. But these kids
are guaranteed to have no future at all if no one helps them, and it looks like no one already in the foster
care system is willing to help them. You have the means and the opportunity to change these two kids’
lives for the better. Again, we totally understand if their past violence against other kids worries you. We
wouldn’t want to see any harm come to you, or your children. But these kids are in real need. They’re
fighting for their lives here. At least think about it.”
*In your paper, I want you to explain (and compare/contrast) how John Stuart Mill, Peter Singer,
and Susan Wolf would advise you to act in this situation. What is the morally right thing to do, for
each of the three philosophers you’ve chosen?
Requirements for the paper (please read these carefully):
•The paper must be 5 pages long, typed, double-spaced, in an 11- or 12-point font with reasonable
margins.
•You must use direct quotations from the text to support your claims about what the philosophers say
and/or believe. Please set quotations from the text apart from your own words by way of quotation marks
(“like this”), and please give a citation for each quotation (either in parentheses immediately after the
quotation, or in a footnote, that tells your reader which author you’re quoting, and what page in the
Marino anthology the quotation comes from). Papers that lack quotations altogether will receive an F
for the assignment; papers that only quote from two of the three philosophers you discuss will
receive a grade no higher than C; papers that only quote one of the three will receive a grade no
higher than D.
•Please include a works cited; this need not appear as a separate page, if there is room for it on the last
page of your paper.
•You are forbidden from making use of sources other than the writings of Mill, Singer, and Wolf as they
appear in the Marino anthology. You may not quote the introductions to the book or to each chapter
by Marino himself, nor are you permitted to quote my blog posts (or your classmates’ blog
comments) in your papers. Only quote those things written by the philosophers in question. Papers that
quote from forbidden sources will receive a severe grade penalty, depending upon the extent and
significance of the quotations
