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In this mixed-methods study, I found that the majority of 17 and 18-year-old adolescents from a privileged suburban community conceived of themselves as possessing little or no obligation for the well-being of those who are less fortunate. These adolescents offered numerous rationales for this perspective that ranged from a defense of capitalism to the assertion that one's obligations are limited to family and close friends. In order to consider the attitudes of these emerging adults, I drew upon their student writing from a course on social justice issues as well as survey and interview data collected at the start and conclusion of the social justice course. I utilized these data to investigate the reasoning underlying these adolescents' beliefs about obligation.
In his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Illinois Senator Barack Obama urged his fellow citizens to consider themselves members of a "single American family." He explained that,
If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. (Obama, 2004)
In these words, Obama echoed the sentiment expressed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1968) that Americans of all backgrounds and creeds "are caught in an inescapable web of mutuality" (p. 1). Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006) has gone even further in his work on cosmopolitanism, arguing that, "We have obligations to others . . . that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kind, or even the more formal ties of shared citizenship" (p. xv). According to Appiah, an individual's obligation to others extends even beyond the boundaries of nationhood.
At the foundation of Obama, King, and Appiah' s assertions is the belief that the world is a better place when individuals feel a sense of obligation for the well-being of others. However, I describe here a study that found many privileged adolescents do not conceive of themselves as possessing such obligations. In this study, I investigated these adolescents' attitudes towards obligation in order to consider the implications for...