In today’s New York Times, Bob Herbert pens a poignant op-ed, linking violence among black youth to the failure of fathers to live up to their family responsibilities.  It is a depressing, and oft-told tale.  One thinks, again, of Partrick Moynihan’s 1965  report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action," where he wrote: "Negro children without fathers flounder — and fail."   I suspect that the problem is not confined to African-Americans; nor just to the absence of fathers.  The larger point here is parental duty: taking the time and the effort to keep kids out of trouble.  From my own experience, it seems having two parents makes the job more effective (good cop, bad cop; more capacity to maintain balance of earning household income while caring for kids, etc.).  But it is good that he gets in the face of fathers since there seem to be so many stories of men shirking family work. 

     Behind all this (as my title suggests) is a very Confucian idea.  Most people, when they hear the name "Confucius" think of oppressive family demands: sons owing absolute obedience to fathers; women subjugated; children strictly controlled, etc.  And, historically, there is truth in that stereotype.  But we need to separate that history, as real as it is, from what Confucius might be able to say to us about family responsibility in our own time and culture.  There is a loving impulse behind Confucius’s aspiration to cultivate close family relationships, precisely the impulse Herbert sees as missing in urban American society. 

     Confucius believes that we should fulfill our family duties because those duties are the primary means through which we develop our own, personal, humanity.  Humanity (ren, in Chinese) is the key goal of everything Confucius talks about.  It is his highest ideal of moral good.  It is more of a process that an accomplishment (he said that he, himself, had never fully attained Humanity), something we must work at.  And, in working at it we become fully realized, content, complete human beings.  We should do our family work not only because it is good for our children, but because it is good for our selves, and, in a broader sense, society at large. 

     But enough of my paraphrase:

     Master Yu [a leading Confucian disciple] said: "It’s honoring parents and elders that makes people human.  Then they rarely turn against authority.  And if people don’t turn against authority, they never rise up and pitch the country into chaos.   The noble-minded cultivate roots.  When roots are secure, the Way is born.  To honor parents and elders – isn’t that the root of Humanity?" (Analects 1.2)

      And, if parents and elders are not living up to their family responsibilities, they will not gain the honor that lies at the root of Humanity.