The individual member is made into a component of the totality of the family, where his or her behavior affects everybody in the family. In addition to practical functions like pooling of familial resources, these close kinship ties serve important psychosocial functions, such as providing emotional support for individual members. Thus the family is the arena for the provision of emotional as well as material care for the parent. Filial Sacrifice Filial sacrifice can be defined as fully devoting oneself to one's parents, whether providing them with healthcare or caring for a bedridden parent. What parents do for their children is not motivated by self-interest or selfish purposes.
Parental care is natural, instinctive and unconditional.
In turn, this is what the children should do for their parents. Thus the ethic of parent care is grounded in sacrifice that transcends self-interest. Sacrifice for a parent does not necessarily mean dedicating one's life or body on behalf of the parent but rather giving as much energy to parent care as is required in the particular situation. Such sacrifice is usually followed by suffering, but the suffering is overcome when it becomes meaningful, as it does when the adult children realize that the sacrifice made for the parent is not simply one-sided. It should seem a small sacrifice for children to make compared to the many things the parents have sacrificed for the sake of the children.