Consumer Ethics and Family Relations: The Economic Side of Fathering

Abstract

Among contexts in which consumer ethics unfold, the family is a very relevant one because it holds a sizeable share of consumption decisions, and is intimately connected to the search and sustaining of a common life project. Based on interviews with 20 fathers cohabiting with their partners and children, we examine the role of the father in family consumption, including the progressive weakening of the breadwinner model in favor of more involved ways of male presence in the family. We explore whether fathers show any kind of ethical concern in their family consumption decisions and, if that is the case, whether those concerns are better understood through the lens of an ethics of care –as usually done in the case of mothers– or through the lens of virtue ethics –which is connected to consumers’ projects and their search for the good life.