As a parent the legal term ‘duty of care’ seems to be not just logical but obviously so. Similar to the oath of medical professionals to ‘first, due no harm’ the obligation of ‘duty of care’ is a reminder to check our own egos and the need for power and control attached to them at the door when entering a relationship.
For a loving and caring parent the concept that one is obligated to protect another - one’s own child, in this case - with whom one has a relationship from any forseeable harm is generally not taught but considerd to naturally come with the territory of parenthood. Unfortunately, not every parent is loving and caring, not every parent inately comprehends the expansivness of the territory covered by the term ‘duty of care’. It turns out parenthood is no guarantee that one will remember to check one’s ego at the door anymore than not being a parent means that one will strut through life cloaked in one’s fabulous, powerful, controlling ego, deflecting all others as one passes them by.
Duty of care is just the legal term to define a naturally occuring emotion - empathy. With healthy function, empathy, our ability to understand and share the feelings of another enables each and everyone of us to adhere to a standard of resaonable care while performing any acts that could cause foreseeable harm to others; to avoid abusing others even if we’ve forgotten to check our ego at the door because we can imagine what it would feel like if someone suddenly ripped the cloak from our shoulders and we were left standing naked, powerless, and subjecated to forces beyond our control.
Empathy allows us to place ourselves in the position of the abused; duty of care incites us to act ways to prevent abuse. As a society we know by a quick observation of the impact of all forms of abuse on our world and the various institutions we are continually in the process of establishing in order to combat these abuses, all of which are a direct result of a shirking of ‘duty of care’ by parents and all members of society in witness to such (in)actions. However, each new organization, policy, law, or committee formed to address instances of abuse appears to not lessen the instances of abuse continually revealed and reported by the world media. Maybe it is time to begin asking ourselves why is this so?
It is simple to say that ‘duty of care’ only exists between certain individuals (or individual and institution) in a relationship and that others slightly removed or outside of the relationship yet in someway a witness to it, or perhaps party to a related relationship, have no obligation to adhere to standards of reasonable care despite witnessing acts that could cause forseeable harm. But then such behavior would be analogous to turning ones head to the sky while crossing to the other side of the street to avoid the older person who has fallen and is moaning for help.
Why should I get involved? It’s not my (grand)parent or friend; besides I have someplace important I need to be!
Or, to paraphrase a story currently circulating about the current US President’s response to economic advisors upon being shown financial figures and market trends showing that by the early 2020s not just the US but the whole world will potentially be in a major economic crisis - alongside the environmental/climate crisis reported just days earlier - as a result of his administrations (in)actions.
Yet the policies and laws we are finding enacted often do not limit the obligation of ‘duty of care’ to those in direct relationship or impacted by the harm. In the schools of my state all employees are required by law to report any signs of abuse to the Department of Children, Youth and Families; failure to do so is punishable by law. One would think this, if not the natural empathy one might feel for the abused, might be incentive to report; however, cases frequently appear where a teacher, a counselor, a principal, an upper-level district administrator chose to not report to the state but look the other way. Why?
Not my circus. Not my monkey.