Cultural Relativism In Nursing Home Analysis

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Life seems to get busier and more hectic as each generation passes. As generations continue to age, a common dilemma arises that must be resolved: whether or not to put their aging loved ones into a nursing home. Nursing homes have become excessively more popular as the elderly continue to have longer life expectancies. Nursing homes at first were only for those who were poor and had no family to care for them, but now has become an option for families who simply cannot sacrifice the time and effort to care for their elderly loved ones. Morality and ethics is a huge factor in the difficult decision, which many moral factors are considered. In order to analyze how to effectively decide whether or not to put an elder in a nursing home, two theories …show more content…

Cultural relativism is a theory, which entails what a culture, believes is what is correct for that particular culture, each culture has different views on moral issues. For example, abortion is permissible by American culture and is tolerated by the majority of the culture. While, Catholic culture is against abortion, and is not tolerated by those who belong to the culture. Cultural relativism is a theory a lot of individuals obey when it comes to making moral decisions. What their culture believes is instilled over generations, and frequently has an enormous influence since their families with those cultural beliefs have raised them. With these beliefs, certain cultures have different answers for different moral dilemmas and at times, it is difficult to decide on a specific moral issue because the individual may belong to multiple …show more content…

Each culture has a different solution for a moral issue and there is an often conflict between cultures which leads to intolerance. Also, if the individuals deliberating are a part of two cultures, then an ultimate decision to decide on whether or not to put elderly loved ones in nursing homes will come about with some conflict and differences with the culture they belong to. For example, a high-income Hispanic has the income in order to finance the costs of the nursing home, but their Hispanic culture tells them that it is not right to abandon their family just because they are now older. In this case, one would have to rely on a different method in order to reach a moral decision without the consideration of their cultures values and views involved. Cultural relativism tends to be flawed when more than one culture is involved in deliberation, in order to successfully make a correct moral decision, we will compare cultural relativism's various solutions based on its cultures against utilitarianism's principle of

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