Restitution and retribution

In the Nurturant Parent model of the family, a just way of dealing with a child's moderate violation of proscribed behavior is restitution, not retribution – to have the child help perform some helpful or otherwise nurturant act. But Nurturant Parents also are responsible for protecting their children, and they protect their children fiercely. They want retribution against people who hurt children – against polluters, drug dealers, manufacturers of products known to be unsafe, and so on. Thus, in the cases of harm to children they advocate retribution, but in the cases of impermissible acts by children, they favor restitution. Thus, they too use moral accounting to characterize justice, but the details are different.

The moral authority of the nurturant

Nurturing parents within the Nurturant Parent family have and deserve parental authority. Nurturance is a precondition to authority, and indeed is seen as productive of authority: a fully nurturant parent deserves to be listened to. The same is true of leaders who fulfill their nurturant obligations – who are empathetic, who successfully help people, who are fair, who communicate effectively, and who nurture social ties successfully. Such leaders deserve moral authority. But, in a nurturant morality, moral authority is not the ability to set rules and the responsibility for setting them. Rather it has to do with trust, the trust that a leader will communicate effectively, arrange for participation, be honest, and have the wisdom, experience, and strength to succeed in helping.

Nurturance and evolution

Evolution is sometimes mistakenly seen in terms of survival of the fittest. Such a view ignores nurturance. No species survives if it does not successfully nurture its young. Evolution can be thought of in terms of nurturance – the survival of species that adapt so as to continue successful nurturance. This idea may not change the theory of evolution itself, but it does change its metaphorical applications.

I mention this because the idea of evolution is sometimes imbued with Strict Father morality: the species that survive are the fittest and strongest, the ones most successful in pursuing self-interest. This Strict Father interpretation of evolution can then be turned metaphorically into Social Darwinism, the survival of the fittest in society; and then, via the metaphor of the Moral Order Is the Natural Order, the social survival of the fittest can be seen as moral. None of this makes any sense under the interpretation of evolution in terms of nurturance. If evolution is understood in terms of the survival of the nurturant, it becomes nonsense to think of the social survival of the fittest as moral on the grounds of an evolutionary metaphor for society plus the Moral Order metaphor.

The Structure of the Model

Like Strict Father morality, Nurturant Parent morality is an elaborate and important moral system centered around a central, idealized model of the Nurturant Parent family. The centerpiece of the system is the metaphor of Morality As Nurturance, which extends morality in family life to morality in general. This metaphor induces other metaphors by structuring morality in terms of concepts intimately related to nurturance, such as empathy, self-nurturance, the nurturance of social ties, self-development, happiness, and fairness. These metaphors have the highest priority in the system.

MORALITY AS NURTURANCE: This is the most direct expression of the nurturance ethic.

MORALITY AS EMPATHY: Empathy, as a precondition for nurturance, is of preeminent importance.

MORAL SELF-NURTURANCE: Self-nurturance is a necessary condition for nurturance.

MORALITY AS THE NURTURANCE OF SOCIAL TIES: This is necessary for nurturance within a wider community.

MORALITY AS SELF-DEVELOPMENT: Since the development of the child's potential is a major object of nurturance, self-development is a major aspect of a nurturant morality.

MORALITY AS HAPPINESS: Because unhappy people are less likely to be empathetic, the cultivation of one's own happi¬ness is crucial to the cultivation of empathy.

MORALITY AS FAIR DISTRIBUTION! Just as nurturance requires fairness of distribution among one's children, so moral nurturance requires this metaphor.

MORAL GROWTH: Since an objective of literal nurturance is physical growth, an objective of moral nurturance becomes moral growth.

MORAL STRENGTH: Strength is critical to nurturance. In childrearing, strength serves nurturance; in morality, moral strength is in the service of morality conceptualized as nurturance. The subservient role of moral strength in this system vastly affects its meaning.

RETRIBUTION AND RESTITUTION: Nurturance requires protection, and fiercely nurturant parents seek retribution against those who would harm children. But when children transgress, nurturance requires the preference of restitution over retribution.

MORAL BOUNDARIES: Nurturant morality produces a different form of transgression.

MORAL AUTHORITY: It arises from your track record as a nurturer.

These metaphors for morality, structured in this way, jointly entail a major mode of moral thought. Here is what each contributes.

MORALITY AS NURTURANCE: From this, it follows that helping people in need of help is moral. MORALITY AS EMPATHY: Empathy is a projection of your capacity to feel onto another person. An empathetic person will therefore not want others to experience a lack of well-being. And a truly empathetic person will be able to feel what it is like to have another person's values and to see the world from their perspective. According to this metaphor, this is a moral activity and should lead one to be nurturant.

MORAL SELF-NURTURANCE: This states that it is moral to take care of oneself; otherwise, one cannot nurture others and instead imposes obligations on others.

MORALITY AS SELF-DEVELOPMENT: This makes the development of human potential, in oneself and others, into a moral calling.

MORALITY AS HAPPINESS: This creates an anti-ascetic morality and turns the capacity for aesthetic experience into a virtue. Since communing with the natural world is a major aesthetic experience, this makes nurturance toward nature a form of morality.

MORALITY AS FAIR DISTRIBUTION: This brings issues of equality and equitability into the moral system. MORAL GROWTH: Nurturance promotes moral growth, and although moral growth doesn't always occur if one is too morally stunted, nonetheless it is taken to be possible in a wide range of cases.

MORAL STRENGTH: This stresses protection and, in the context of the system, creates a host of virtues and moral failings. The moral failings are: lack of social responsibility, selfishness, self-righteousness, narrow-mindedness, inability to experience pleasure, aesthetic insensitivity, lack of curiosity, uncommunicativeness, dishonesty, insensitivity to feelings, inconsiderateness, uncooperativeness, meanness, self-centeredness, and lack of self-respect. The virtues are the opposites: social responsibility, generosity, respect for the values of others, open-mindedness, a capacity for pleasure, aesthetic sensitivity, inquisitiveness, ability to communicate, honesty, sensitivity to feelings, considerateness, cooperativeness, kindness, community-mindedness, and self-respect. A person of good character is a person who has these virtues.

MORAL BOUNDARIES: These are defined by actions that produce nonnurturant effects.

MORAL SELF-INTEREST: This is redefined by its subservient role within this system. The violation of nurturant ethics is not in anyone's self-interest in this system. Morality As Self-Nurturance, Morality As Happiness and Morality As Self-Development take priority over Moral Self-interest and are not instances of it. Moral Self-interest, as constrained by nurturant morality, characterizes a morality of business.

MORAL AUTHORITY: Moral authority accrues by virtue of successful nurturance and the responsibility for nurturance. It is not the ability to set and enforce rules; it is earned trust.

The priorities that we saw in the Strict Father model are reversed here. Suppose we use the term "The Nurturance Group" for Moral Nurturance, Moral Empathy, the Nurturance of Social Ties, Moral Self-Development, Moral Happiness, and Morality as Fair Distribution. The hierarchy of moral values in Nurturant Parent morality can be expressed as:

The Nurturance Group

Moral Self-interest

The Strength Group

This is just the reversal of the priorities we found in the Strict Father model. In one case, however, there is more than just a reversal of priorities. Morality As Fairness is in the Nurturance Group and Moral Order is in the Strength Group. The priority given to Fairness overwhelms Moral Order. There is virtually no place left for it to apply, except in the religious instances where God has moral authority over human beings. Among human beings, it disappears.