This is an essay about the just distribution of resources between the young and old. It seeks a principled way, rooted in a theory of justice, to resolve disputes about how income support, health care, and other social resources should be allocated to different age groups in our society.

This is an essay about the just distribution of resources between the young and old. It seeks a principled way, rooted in a theory of justice, to resolve disputes about how income support, health care, and other social resources should be allocated to different age groups in our society.

A guide to caring for aging and ailing family members, which offers expert advice, illuminating vignettes, and a compassionate approach to building constructive, mutually gratifying relationships

Many adult children of mentally ill parents share similar problems óf guilt over having left home, poor self-esteem, lack of confidence, and inability to express emotions. This guide helps you to cope with guilt, bolster, self-esteem, and deepen intimacy.

"This book was written for you, the caregiver of someone afflicted with Alzheimer's disease ... [It] chronicles my own experiences while caring for my dad through his affliction with Alzheimer's disease and a stroke."--Page ix.

Modern industrial societies are characterized by long-term declines in fertility and steady increases in life expectancy. Together, these trends result in an aging population. The United States is no exception; since 1969 the median age has risen from 29.4 to a projected 36.4 in the year 2000. This fourth edition of the standard reader on the sociology of aging has been completely revised, with 90 percent new material, to reflect new information and new issues in this rapidly developing field. Students and practicing professionals will find it a lively, accessible overview.

The population is rapidly aging while access to proper and affordable medical treatment is becoming more and more limited. This impasse challenges us to make ethical decisions regarding the rationing of health care. Arguing that de facto rationing is already taking place due to economic necessity and that proper management of this rationing is essential to the fair and ethical treatment of all seeking care, Choosing Who's to Live directly addresses one of the most challenging moral questions of our day. Appearing in the wake of increasing awareness of health care reform, this volume identifies four compelling arguments for managed health care rationing: the number of citizens over age eighty-five will increase 500 percent by the year 2040; current baby boomers could live longer than today's elderly by seven to fifteen years; new medical technologies are appearing every day; and the ratio of workers to retirees will be 1:4 in forty years instead of the current 1:2.5. In this volume, six leading scholars take the discussion of rationing health care beyond the simple idea of withholding government-funded, live-saving treatment from the very old to a more ethical, effective treatment plan for all.

Lincoln's parenting manual explains how to understand different temperaments in order to meet a child's urgent and deep emotional needs.

Advances in medical technology and the rapidly increasing population of older Americans are causing people to question the ethical limits of life-extending interventions. How do we weigh issues involving equity, efficiency, autonomy, natural life span, and responsibility for the financial burdens of health care for the elderly? In this collection o

In The Ethics of Parenthood Norvin Richards explores the moral relationship between parents and children from slightly before the cradle to slightly before the grave. Richards maintains that biological parents do ordinarily have a right to raise their children, not as a property right but as an instance of our general right to continue whatever we have begun. The contention is that creating a child is a first act of parenthood, hence it ordinarily carries a right to continue as parent to that child. Implications are drawn for a wide range of cases, including those of Baby Jessica and Baby Richard, prenatal abandonment, babies switched at birth and sent home with the wrong parents, and families separated by war or natural disaster. A second contention is that children have a claim of their own to have their autonomy respected, and that this claim is stronger the better the grounds for believing that what the child's actions express is a self of the child's own. A final set of chapters concern parents and their grown children. Views are offered about what duties parents have at this stage of life, about what is required in order to treat grown children as adults, and about what obligations grown children have to their parents. In the final chapter Richards discusses the contention that parents sometimes have an obligation to die rather than permit their children to make the sacrifices needed to keep them alive, arguing that a leading view about this undervalues both love and autonomy.