Ethical Issues In My Sisters Keeper

Parents spending the majority of their time with a sick child, often leave their other children to take care of themselves.Parents can tend to focus entirely on one child when the others are in need. In the book, My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult, a family goes through something many people couldn't even imagine, their daughter being seriously sick. In the town of Upper Derby, Rhode Island in 2004, Brian and Sarah Fitzgerald, the parents in the book, have a sick daughter and learns that she only has a limited amount of time to live. While Sarah is pregnant she says, “Although I am nine months pregnant, although I have had plenty of time to dream, I have not really considered the specifics of this child. I have thought of this daughter only in terms of what she will be

At preschool age, guilt is a common aspect expressed by children when they do something they know they shouldn’t. Erikson’s theory is initiative versus guilt. By now the child has become convinced that they are a person all their own, discovering who they are as a person. Their emotional development is also a growing awareness of self, which is linked to the ability to feel a wide range of emotions. This allows them to make sense of other people’s reactions and to control their own. After a negative behavior, a child will feel guilt or shame after being told what they did was bad.

Lawrence Kohlberg, a developmental psychologist, identified six developmental stages of human moral reasoning. The first stage that he recognized was the Punishment-Obedience Orientation, where the person’s concern is for avoiding punishment through obedience. The second stage was the Instrumental Relativist Orientation, where the person’s concern is to work in their self interest, and better their position. The third stage of moral development was the Good Boy-Nice Girl Orientation, where the person’s concern lies with their reputation. Next was the Law And Order Orientation, where the person was less concerned with their own immediate well being to the maintenance of a larger society. The fifth stage was the Social Contract

“My Sister`s Keeper,” explores the moral, practical and emotional complications of putting one human being in pain or in danger for the wellbeing of another. There are many different kinds of ethical problems that Anna, as the “designer baby,” is the role she plays in her family, loyalty, illness, and medical ethics, and rights. Anna believes that her only role is to be a donor for Kate. Therefore, she wants to sue her parents for rights of her own body.

One idea, I agree with, from Chapter Three discussed how punishment hinders ethical development. Before students act out or do something bad, they think about what consequences they might face for such actions. This “suggests a disturbingly primitive level of moral development, yet it is our use of punishment that causes kids to get stuck there” (p. 29). I could not agree more with this sentence. I remember as a child thinking about doing something bad and the consequences that might result. I remember how I typically would do the “bad” thing because either I would not get caught or I could take the consequences. However, the book suggests getting children to think about the consequences of their misbehaviors is not effective and does not instill better values or awareness of others’ needs. Because of this, we as educators must

This paper is written to examine various influences on the moral development of young children. Specifically, the paper will speak to the definition of moral development, the views held by educators Piaget and Kohlberg on this area of development in young children and the application of moral development theories by Early Childhood Educators. Theories posited by Sigmund Freud with regards to the psychological development of children in the early childhood arena will be discussed as well. Suggestions for parents on supporting the moral development of their children will also be addressed.

In the book My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult, Anna’s older sister has cancer. For as long as Anna has been alive, she has been her donor. Anna has turned thirteen and finally realizes what she has been doing for all these years. She has been giving her sister white blood cells and bone marrow without being asked for permission. She does not want to donate to her anymore. Although Anna and Kate are sisters, Anna has to change this.

My Sister's Keeper is the story of Anna Fitzgerald, who by the age of thirteen has undergone many blood transfusions, numerous surgeries, and multiple bone marrow transplants. “Most babies are accidents, not me. I was engineered, born to save my sister’s life.” At the beginning of the movie Anna explains that she as conceived to be a donor for her sister, Kate. Kate is a 16 year old with renal failure due to a very rare form of leukemia. The girls' parents expect Anna to donate her kidney to help her sister. Instead of donating the kidney, Anna files a lawsuit against her parents for the rights of her own body so that she could not be forced into the surgery against her will. This causes mixed reactions between Anna’s parents, Brain

Children ask countless questions as they mature. Children often turn to their parents for guidance. If a parent is unable or unwilling to answer these questions, a child, left to their own devices, will look for answers from their friends, the internet, and other authority figures. In his article “I Listen to My Parents and I Wonder What They Believe,” Robert Cole explains that children have an inborn desire to build their own morals by questioning authority figures around them, especially their parents. Therefore, A parent’s guidance influences a child’s morals as he/she develops.

As a future teacher, it will be part of my job to increase my students’ moral reasoning. Moral reasoning deals with how individuals think about moral issues. Lawrence Kohlberg developed stages of moral reasoning which researchers use to assess an individual. According to Steinberg (2014), the adults in an adolescent’s life can impact their moral development. Therefore, as their teacher, I will conduct activities in my classroom, such as Collaborative Reasoning, Think-Pair-Share, a line activity, and an online discussion board, which will foster my students’ moral development. In addition, I will monitor my students’ growth by conducting a pre-assessment as well as a final assessment. Through my classroom activities, I expect my students to

The movie “My sisters keeper” is about 13 year-old Anna, who sues her parents for medical emancipation when she is expected to donate a kidney to her sister Kate, who has leukemia. This essay will focus on three events in Anna’s life, and discuss how each event in the characters life had an affect on her physical, psychosocial and cognitive development. The events that will be discussed are: how being brought into the world to save Kate affected Anna’s psychosocial development, how having to undergo many surgeries at a very young age affected Anna’s physical development, and also how Anna’s cognitive development was affected by her sisters sickness and death.

The 3 children that I observed also have different social development. Alexander, who is 7 years old is in the level 2 conventional morality. When I read to him the story and the dilemma that Kenny had his answer to my questions were based on how it was right to return the wallet and it was wrong to keep it. For him it was right to return the wallet because it was the right thing to do. Which, reflects the conventional morality of acting as a good member of society. Enrique’s social development is also in the level 2 conventional morality because he focused on how he is a good person if he returned the wallet. He mentioned that it’s not good to keep things that aren’t yours. Which, reflects on the interest in pleasing others by acting as good members of society. Finally, Alexis is in the level 3 postconventional morality because for him it’s okay to keep the wallet if the owner were rich

As soon as birth, children are exposed to new things; new life experiences that will develop the path of which direction their life will take. Adolescence is the most important time in a child’s life because it is where they learn appropriate behavior from their family and the outside world. Some children are able to use these experiences to differentiate at an early age what is right and what is wrong and hopefully carry this into adulthood. What happens when children are exposed to the wrong experiences at an early age? What happens if children assume that what they are seeing is okay because one of their parents are

The complexity of this area and the concepts involved necessitates a rather expansive look at the perspectives on Moral Development in order to develop contextual

Children develop their ability to think and act morally through several stages. If they fail to reach the conventional stage, in which adolescents realize that their parents and society have rules that should be followed because they are morally right to follow, they might well engage in harmful behavior. Whereas boys tend to use formal rules to decide what is right or wrong, girls tend to take personal relationships into account.