Last week, in a quiet setting here on the Maine coast, seventeen of us spent two days focusing on a topic as commonplace as it is complex: ethics and parenting.

Our group included parents and grandparents, as well as a just-graduated future parent and several non-parents who had helped raise nieces and nephews. But we had several things in common: We’d been parented ourselves, we knew parenting was in trouble, and we sensed that the answers lay in the domain of ethics. We weren’t here to create manifestos or craft policies, to reform bad parents or help good ones manage unethical kids. We weren’t even here to discuss the ethics of parenting. We were here to develop a language for talking with children about the ethical issues facing today’s youth — and ultimately to help produce a book on how parents and children can have deeply satisfying conversations about tough moral issues.

Why is that so important? Because it seems that just when children are facing inordinate moral confusions at ever-younger ages, parents are increasingly unprepared to address those confusions. Through the centuries, a fundamental goal of parenting has been to pass on the moral values of the culture to its younger members — a task for which so many parents today feel inadequate.

That feeling isn’t new. Raising good kids has always been challenging. But it was never meant to be lonely, threatening, or futile. Parents were never meant to be solitary voices crying in the wilderness, but part of a great collective effort carrying youth into adulthood with its moral compass well calibrated. It was always assumed that the values, standards, and ethical practices of parents would find some kind of support in a surrounding fabric of religious institutions, formal education, extracurricular school-based activities, civic and volunteer groups, work relationships with adults, and a community of other parents.

In our time-deprived age, that fabric is rapidly fraying. The very idea that parenting should involve conversations about ethics has come under intense challenge from a media-drenched culture of moral lassitude. A fashionable ethical relativism has made parents fearful of standing up for ethical clarity lest they come across as old-fashioned, preachy, or naïve. The result has been a growing parental uncertainty about how — and even whether — to intervene when issues of integrity and character are at stake.

To be sure, there have been encouraging signs. Ethics has risen rapidly up the public agenda, pushed by high-profile scandals but pulled as well by increasing recognition of the value of a life lived ethically. Surveys suggest that compared to previous generations, today’s teens take more overt interest in ethics, are more explicit about their values, and are more apt to say they genuinely enjoy their parents’ company and feel close to them. In schools, the character education movement is bringing new vitality to programs that explicitly promote integrity and ethical decision making.

In this context, parents are reaching out. They are looking for greater understanding of their own roles as ethical exemplars and teachers. They need encouragement to seek opportunities for ethical conversations. And they need tools, tips, practical steps, and meaningful examples to bolster their confidence about engaging in such dialogue. Above all, they need to understand that they themselves don’t have to be angelic embodiments of perfection in order to lead the next generation to deeper considerations of ethics.

All of that was on our minds as we launched into our workshop. We started with a basic question: What are the five most important attributes of “good parenting”? Two hours later, with flip-charts filled with a fascinating collection of bullet-points, I asked if anyone would take a stab at synthesizing what we’d found.

Who knows, in moments like that, where creativity comes from? We might have just stared at the charts, groping for some way to make sense of it all. But I’d noticed that for the previous few minutes, one of our participants — Larry Wolfe, a second-grade teacher and parent from Concord, New Hampshire — had fallen silent, scratching away on his pad. When he said, “I’ll go,” I sensed he had put something together. What he said was so exactly right that it took our collective mental breath away.

“A good parent,” he said, “is one who

• listens,
• learns,
• laughs,
• limits, and
• loves.”

We’d talked a lot about the need for parents to say less and listen more — to have humility, curiosity, and a deep awareness of the child’s interests and talents. We’d talked about parenting as a learning curve, needing a capacity for laughter to keep things in perspective. We’d talked about the need for parents to set limits without being overbearing and tyrannical — another participant had already used the term “gentletarian” to suggest the merging of the gentle and the authoritarian. And of course we’d talked about love, which no one could quite define but which everyone recognized as crucial.

One could do worse than Larry’s list as the basis for good parenting. With that as the broad outline, and with a full quiver of conversational arrows based on ethical frameworks — a list of the core moral values, a right-versus-right decision-making process, an understanding of moral courage — parents need not shrink from addressing the toughest ethical questions their children can pose. That, at least, is the case that our book will be making.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

“Do not initiate any testing until we give the OK…. Once you get results and should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them.”

– Patrick Preston, a lawyer for the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), counseling the agency to avoid conducting toxic chemical tests in trailers provided by the government to victims of hurricane Katrina. As many as 120,000 families are in the trailers, some of which have registered “levels of a toxic chemical 75 times” beyond the safety limit, reports the Washington Post.

The Post notes that since early 2006, FEMA has “suppressed warnings from its own field workers” and abandoned chemical testing of the trailers “out of concern that the agency would be legally liable for any hazards or health problems.” That policy followed the agency’s own March 2006 tests showing dangerous levels of a cancer-causing chemical. The night before last week’s congressional hearing into FEMA’s actions, the agency reversed course and said it had solicited new tests.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called FEMA’s behavior “sickening” and symptomatic of “an official policy of premeditated ignorance.” One resident of the trailers, a former U.S. Army officer, told the Post, “We have lost a great deal through our dealings with FEMA, not the least of which is our faith in government.”

WASHINGTON
Ethical aspects of the war on terror dominated last week’s headlines. Among the top stories:

• President Bush last week allowed the CIA to resume harsh interrogation methods used on terror suspects, a year after the program was suspended amid criticism that it violates human rights and international law. Bush’s executive order said that the CIA interrogators will abide by restrictions against “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating or degrading treatment,” according to the Washington Post. But the executive order offered few details on what aspects of the program would not be used again, and administration officials, who have claimed that the “enhanced interrogation” techniques provided invaluable intelligence in the past, would not comment on specific methods that may or may not be allowed in the future, including the controversial practice known as “waterboarding,” which simulates the sensation of drowning, says the Post report.
• A federal appeals court last week ruled that the Bush administration must disclose to federal courts much more information on Guantánamo detainees who are challenging the terms of their imprisonment. CBS News reports that the Guantánamo inmates, whom the administration classifies as enemy combatants rather than prisoners of war — thus denying them certain legal rights — will now be allowed to have lawyers with them when they appear before military tribunals and can use full records of the tribunal when they appeal determinations to federal courts. Government attorneys had argued that federal judges should only be allowed a summary of the evidence put forward during tribunals.
• Marine Corps recruits will receive additional training in values and battlefield ethics, according to the Associated Press. During 12 weeks of boot camp, marines now will get 28 hours of values training, the highest among the U.S. armed forces. In reaction to a series of alleged abuse cases in Iraq and Afghanistan, Corps officials instituted the new ethics program, which includes Marine Corps commandant Gen. James Conway touring Marine bases and discussing recent incidents and pending criminal cases. A spokesman for Conway, Lt. Col. T. V. Johnson, told the AP that Conway “wants to make sure we are making marines the way we used to. If you look at the respect the American public has for marines, each one of these incidents is a withdrawal from the bank of respect.”

ATLANTA
Last week’s indictment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick on charges related to his alleged participation in a series of gruesome dog-fighting matches has put pressure on the National Football League (NFL) to suspend him.

The New York Times reports that league officials, waiting for the case to progress, did not immediately announce plans to remove Vick from the roster.

The NFL’s inaction has prompted protests by animal rights activists and a call from Massachusetts senator John Kerry asking the league commissioner to immediately suspend Vick, according to the Times.

Various press reports indicate that the Falcons are quietly attempting to persuade Vick to take a voluntary leave of absence, according to MSNBC.

Meanwhile, apparel and sporting goods manufacturer Nike is suspending the release of a new shoe named after Vick, reports the trade journal Advertising Age. But in a statement that deplored “any cruelty to animals” as “inhumane and abhorrent,” Nike kept the door open, saying that Vick should “be afforded the same due process as any citizen; therefore, we have not terminated our relationship.”

Vick is facing federal charges that he was in the midst of a dog-fighting operation that involved high-stakes gambling and the killing of several pit bulls, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Conviction, reports the paper, almost certainly would lead to prison time.

The case has brought attention to what activists and law-enforcement officials say is “an increasingly popular, savage underground culture,” according to a story from National Public Radio. Despite being outlawed in all U.S. states, NPR reports that the industry is thriving in urban areas and the rural South.

The fact that the case has been brought by federal authorities is particularly bad news for Vick, according to an analysis from the ESPN, which notes that prosecutors in federal cases have virtually unlimited resources and federal cases have a high rate of conviction.

VARIOUS DATELINES
Medical stories related to ethics of stem-cell research, drug marketing, privacy, and race were featured in the general and trade press last week. Among the major items:

• A German medical-ethics panel last week recommended legal changes that would make stem-cell research easier, according to the Reuters news agency. The National Ethics Council is advocating the repeal of a 2002 law banning the production of embryonic cells from pre-existing stem-cell lines, and also compels German scientists not to obtain cell lines from other countries. The issue of genetic research is particularly sensitive in Germany, according to Reuters, because of the unwelcome echoes of Nazi-era experiments designed to produce a master race.
• Purdue Pharma and three current and former executives last week were ordered by a federal court to pay a $634.5 million fine for misleading the public about the addictive nature of the company’s OxyContin drug. They also were sentenced to probation and community service in drug treatment programs. According to the AP, previous court decisions found that Purdue misbranded the drug as being less addictive and having a smaller potential for abuse than other painkillers.
• The American Medical Association (AMA) last week issued a report warning of possible ethics problems related to the implantation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips in humans. The report says that the use of RFID chips in labeling humans for medical purposes may improve patient safety, but also may cause physical risks and compromise patient privacy. Tiny implantable RFID chips can make detailed medical information immediately available to doctors with a scanning device, reports the trade publication RFID Journal. In related news, a report by the European Parliament’s technology task force also warned against privacy perils related to RFID chips, including the potential for abuse if they are used to monitor movements, spending, productivity, and consumer preferences, says a report from ComputerWorld.
• A Harvard University study contends that young doctors may harbor racial biases that interfere with the treatment of African-Americans, according to UPI. The study, which examined the “conscious and unconscious” attitudes of 220 interns, mostly white, claims that the interns tended to exhibit bias against black patients. In responding to hypothetical cases involving black and white patients, interns generally said they would provide more treatment to the white patient. Those interns who expressed more bias — in an answer asking whether they preferred black or white patients — were likely to give less treatment to black patients, the study claims.

LONDON
Former British prime minister Tony Blair and several of his political allies last week were cleared in the “Cash for Honors” probe involving the alleged sale of seats in the House of Lords in exchange for political contributions.

The London-based Independent reports that Blair reacted with a mixture of relief and resentment, saying that the investigation had been a “terrible, traumatic time” for people questioned by police.

Blair did not directly criticize police but instead blamed the furor on what he characterized as politically motivated charges brought by an opposing party.

The investigation took over 16 months, cost more than a million dollars, involved about 6,000 documents, and entailed interviews with 136 people, according to the Scotsman.

In the end, the Crown Prosecution Service concluded that there was “insufficient evidence” for the case to go forward, according to a statement on the Service’s website.

Blair and others involved in the case, including his chief fundraiser, Lord Levy, criticized leaks to the media that they claimed were inaccurate and damaging, reports the Times of London.

The Cash for Honors row had been a major factor in the erosion of political support for Blair. The International Herald Tribune notes that Blair, “in one of the most humiliating moments of his decade-long tenure,” was interviewed by police as a witness, though not a suspect, in the case.

Blair was the first sitting British prime minister ever interviewed as part of a criminal investigation.

NEW YORK
Fallout from convulsions in the subprime lending market continued last week as the value of some funds specializing in loans to borrowers with poor credit plummeted.

BusinessWeek reports that investors fled from subprime funds after a report issued last week concluded that two such financial vehicles offered by the Bear Stearns brokerage were now essentially worthless.

According to the Financial Times, confidence further eroded late last week after Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke commented on credit problems related to subprime lending during testimony before Congress.

Bernanke told lawmakers that “rising delinquencies and foreclosures are creating personal, economic, and social distress for many homeowners and communities, problems that likely will get worse before they get better,” according to a report from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Bernanke charged that the expansion of the subprime market was “clearly accompanied by deterioration in underwriting standards and, in some cases, by abusive lending practices and outright fraud.”

“In addition, some households took on mortgage obligations they could not meet, perhaps in some cases because they did not fully understand the terms,” he said.

Subprime lending became a profitable niche in recent years because lenders focused on customers with poor credit, offering loans at high interest rates on the theory that customers who couldn’t pay back the loans could simply refinance because housing prices would continue to climb. But an unexpected slowdown in the housing market resulted in a rising tide of slow-payers, no-payers, defaults, and repossessions.

In an opinion piece titled “Shaky Ethics of Subprime Lending Lead to Shaken Investors,” MarketWatch columnist Thomas Kostigen contends that “it should come as no surprise that investors in the subprime mortgage business are experiencing big losses. Investing in any business built on shaky ethical grounds is risky business in and of itself. And the subprime mortgage business is indeed built on shaky ethical grounds.”

Kostigen writes: “Several investment research firms have produced studies that show investing in ethically managed companies produces better and more stable profits over a long period of time. The studies point to a very simple business model: managers who seek to do good engender operations and morale that are positive. Positive means growth. That type of growth usually means more profits based on solid fundamentals — not flash-in-the pan schemes.”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska
U.S. Customs officials last week said that $400,000 worth of smuggled diamonds seized in Alaska may be “blood” or “conflict” diamonds — gems used to finance insurgencies and human rights abuses in Africa.

The Anchorage Daily News reports that while officials don’t know the precise origins of the stones, the way that various shipments were hidden indicates they may represent a resurgence in the blood diamond trade, which was thought to have been largely suppressed by a 2003 pact.

The agreement, called the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, certifies that that diamond has conflict-free origins.

According to the Kimberly protocols, any diamonds shipped across international borders must be sealed in tamperproof containers. But the ones seized in Alaska were in FedEx packages marked “rough stones,” according to Anchorage television station KTUU.

Some industry experts claim that the Kimberly Process lacks teeth and is easily circumvented. Investigators in India, the leading diamond-cutting nation in the world, claim that conflict diamonds are routinely smuggled into the country, cut and polished, and sold to firms that later export them with a Kimberly certification, according to the Mumbai-based Indian Express.

Many consumers have begun to specifically request conflict-free diamonds, according to an analysis from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

LONDON
The BBC last week suspended several senior staffers after learning that several contests aired on one of the network’s stations were faked.

The Agence France-Presse reports that members of the production team impersonated callers on phone-in competitions for three programs. That incident followed similar revelations that a competition on another BBC show actually involved no competition or prizes and that the callers were members of the production team or their friends.

Late last week, the BBC also suspended all of its phone-in and interactive Internet contests, which have become a popular and profitable staple of British broadcasting, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

According to London’s Daily Telegraph, Scotland Yard says the BBC may be facing a criminal investigation.

In a statement posted on the BBC’s website, director-general Mark Thompson said the network, which operates eight national television channels, 10 national radio channels, and 40 local radio stations, will implement “an unprecedented program of editorial training focusing on the issue of honesty with audiences.”

About 16,500 BBC employees will be expected to attend the training sessions.

From the Pew Research Center:

“In the span of the past decade, full-time work outside the home has lost some of its appeal to mothers. This trend holds both for mothers who have such jobs and those who don’t.

“Among working mothers with minor children (ages 17 and under), just one-in-five (21%) say full-time work is the ideal situation for them, down from the 32% who said this back in 1997, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Fully six-in-ten (up from 48% in 1997) of today’s working mothers say part-time work would be their ideal, and another one-in-five (19%) say she would prefer not working at all outside the home.

“There’s been a similar shift in preferences among at-home mothers with minor children. Today just 16% of these mothers say their ideal situation would be to work full time outside the home, down from the 24% who felt that way in 1997. Nearly half (48%) of all at-home moms now say that not working at all outside the home is the ideal situation for them, up from the 39% who felt that way in 1997.

“The lack of enthusiasm that mothers of all stripes have for full-time work outside the home isn’t shared by fathers û more than seven-in-ten (72%) fathers say the ideal situation for them is a full-time job.

“Meantime, even as mothers have grown less enamored with full-time work, a new division of opinion has opened up between working moms and at-home moms on the question of whether it’s good or bad for society that more mothers are working outside the home.

“A decade ago, nearly identical pluralities of both groups (38% among at-home moms; 39% among working moms) said this trend was bad for society. Since then, more working mothers have come to see this trend as good for society, while slightly more at-home moms have come to see it as bad.

“There are also differences in the way working moms and at-home moms assess the job they’re doing as parents. Mothers working full-time give themselves slightly lower ratings as parents, on average, than do at-home mothers or mothers employed part-time.

“This self-rating question about parenting performance wasn’t asked on the 1997 Pew survey, so there is no way to know whether these patterns have changed over time.

‘The parenting ratings also vary by level of education; mothers with more education tend to be harder on themselves than are mothers with less education….

“Respondents who grew up with a working mom are less negative about the impact of working mothers on society than are respondents whose own mother was not employed at the time they were growing up.

“African-Americans and Hispanics are a bit more positive than whites about the impact of working mothers on society. Republicans, political conservatives and white evangelical Protestants are more negative than their respective counterparts about the impact of working mothers on society….”

“Few minds wear out; most rust out.”

– Christian Bovée (U.S. lawyer, 1820-1904)