Parents concerned with what goes on when they leave their children at home under the care of someone else might wonder whether or not they should invest in video surveillance equipment. Such technology has become readily available and is relatively inexpensive, but is it morally permissible to use this sort of technology to monitor the care of one's children?
Those parents who are seriously concerned with doing what is morally best might employ the rationale of Utilitarianism. Often we wonder what is morally right or wrong, and what is good or bad, and, according to this theory, the moral worth of our actions is determined by the consequences of those actions. The morally best act is that which has the best consequences. The guiding moral principle for a Utilitarian is that the morally best thing to do is that which will produce the greatest amount of happiness.
While early versions of Utilitarianism sought to maximize only pleasure, later versions recognized that there are both ‘higher pleasures’ and ‘lower pleasures’ that are intrinsically good. Thus, if moral action is that which maximizes the good, moral acts are those that maximize, not simply bodily pleasure, but also the sort of pleasure that might come from, say, reading a good book, doing a good job, hearing a beautiful piece of music, solving a difficult problem, taking a hike in the woods, earning the respect of a colleague or learning something new.
In order to determine whether one's proposed course of action is the morally best action, the utilitarian must abide by certain guidelines. She must count the happiness of everyone involved equally, she must consider both the quality and the quantity of the happiness produced, she must consider the likelihood of her action producing its intended results, and she must consider both the short-term and long-term consequences of her action.
So how might a parent decide whether or not using a ‘nanny cam’ is the morally best action?
First, she should consider what her possible courses of action are. While there is the simple question of whether or not it is morally permissible to use surveillance equipment at all, there are the added questions of whether or not one has a moral obligation to inform the childcare provider that he or she may be monitored by such equipment and to what extent she should monitor her child's care. While she obviously has her children's interests in mind, she must also consider the consequences for herself, her childcare giver, and even other parents and caregivers and the society in general. She must compare the possible consequences of the competing choices she has to make and weigh the quantity and type of happiness and unhappiness produced by each.
This is no easy task. For example, while it is pretty obvious that her children's safety outweighs any discomfort the caregiver might experience knowing that she is being watched, it is not clear that the rights of an individual ought to be sacrificed, with or without his or her consent, on the slim possibility that one's children may be spared from harm.
A storyline in an episode of Lost during its first season nicely illustrates this. One of the passengers, Shannon, is having an asthma attack and several people believe that Sawyer has her medicine. Thinking like good Utilitarians, Jack, the doctor, and Saied, the former soldier, torture Sawyer because they believe he has the medicine that will save the asthmatic woman; that is, they justify their treatment of Sawyer on the basis of certain anticipated good consequences, namely, those of saving the woman.
Similarly, one might justify her treatment of her childcare provider on the basis of certain anticipated good consequences. But there is one thing to note about Utilitarianism, an act is the morally best act only if it in fact has the best consequences and not simply because one believes it will have the best consequences. If you watched this episode of Lost, you know that, not only did Sawyer not have the medicine, but the woman did not need it to survive her asthma attack. So, the act of torturing Sawyer, because it did not contribute to increasing overall happiness, was morally wrong.
Now suppose that the person who really had the medicine, upon seeing what happened to Sawyer, confesses that she stole the medicine and turns it over to the doctor. Would one want to say that in this case one is morally justified in torturing the innocent person because it had the good consequence of getting the medicine to the sick woman? If this is the case, then it would seem that the men were morally justified in torturing an innocent person simply because doing so had good consequences.
I hope this strikes you as counter-intuitive. One version of Utilitarianism accommodates this intuition by requiring not that we consider the consequences of each individual act separately but that we consider the consequences of our actions were those actions a general rule that everyone must follow. According to this version of Utilitarianism, aptly called Rule Utilitarianism, since overall happiness would in fact decline if the general practice were to torture innocent people, we are not morally allowed to do so.
How does this pan out for the case of secretly using video surveillance to monitor one's childcare provider? If one takes into consideration only the consequences of one particular act of violating the caregiver's rights, it might increase overall happiness – the parents’ and the children's happiness wins out over the caregiver's. However, if we commit ourselves to an act by act assessment of the consequences of our actions, we would have to accept that it is morally permissible to torture innocent people.
On the other hand, if we grant that we must consider the outcome of our actions were those actions to be a general rule that everyone must follow, we get a different result. If the general rule were to violate the privacy rights of individuals, if this were the general practice in society, if ‘Big Brother’ were always watching, it seems that overall happiness would go down not up. Thus on this version of Utilitarianism, we are not morally permitted to violate the privacy rights of a childcare giver because, as a general practice, doing so would decrease overall happiness.
The Lost case illustrates a general sort of problem with Utilitarianism, namely that we cannot possibly know in advance what the outcomes of our actions will be, but in no way do I mean to deny that the consequences of our actions are morally significant. Instead, I only mean to illustrate that, in addition to considering the consequences of our actions, we should think about the morality of our actions apart from their consequences. Suppose you do not know why someone is being tortured or what consequences are being sought – does it seem like a morally permissible thing to do, and, if so, why? Similarly, what about observing someone at work without her consent? Does this seem like the right thing to do?
Another moral theory, one defended by Immanuel Kant, grounds the moral worth of acts, not in their consequences, but in why they are done in the first place. If we do things because they are the right thing to do, then our acts have moral worth even if they do not have the anticipated consequences. For example, suppose you and I each jump into the ocean to save a drowning child. You do so because it is the right thing to do, and I do so to try to win a reward or get my name in the paper. For Kant, your action has moral worth while mine does not even if, in the end, I manage to save the child and you do not. Certain actions are morally right or wrong regardless of their consequences. To the outsider, my action may look like a morally good action, but because it is done from a non-moral motive, it has no moral worth.
For Kant, we are always morally required to respect people. According to this moral theory, it is never morally permissible to torture a person even if doing so would save one hundred other people. Human beings have an ultimate worth that we are not allowed to violate. According to one formulation of Kant's moral principle, we must treat others ‘not simple as a means but also as an ends.’ That is, we ought not to use people simply as a means because that violates their dignity as persons.
While Kant would say that it is morally permissible to ‘use’ a childcare provider to care for one's children, this is only because, at the same time, one is treating that person with respect, recognizing his or her interest, paying a fair wage, providing safe working conditions, not making unreasonable requests, etc. However, if one were to secretly monitor this caregiver, then one would be violating the caregiver's autonomy and denying the caregiver his or her human dignity.
Thus, there seems to be no way to morally justify, on either Rule Utilitarian or Kantian grounds, monitoring one's childcare provider without his or her consent to prevent some unknown harm to one's child. I would think that, if one had good reason to believe that harm was being done to one's child, the sort of evidence that might justify installing surveillance cameras on utilitarian grounds, then one should just report the caregiver to the authorities and find alternative childcare.
On the other hand, it might be the case that it is morally permissible to use surveillance equipment if the caregiver is aware that he or she may be monitored by such equipment. The caregiver should be informed of the reason for the monitoring and the location of the cameras. The caregiver's personal privacy should be respected and the aim of using the equipment should only be to monitor the children and the care of the children. On utilitarian grounds, one might argue that any discomfort that the caregiver feels on being distrusted is outweighed by the security the parent may feel knowing what is going on with her children when she is away. And, by informing the caregiver that he or she is being monitored, one is respecting his or her worth as a person and allowing him or her the freedom to accept or reject these working conditions.
If one's ultimate goal is to protect the safety of one's children when they are in another's care, one option that may be morally justifiable is using surveillance equipment with the consent of one's caregiver. Obviously, there are other steps one can take to increase the likelihood that one's children will be safe in another's care, for instance, being careful about with whom one leaves one's children.
We live in a moral community, and we should always aim to do the morally best thing. Doing so is not easy and sometimes what we ought to do conflicts with what we want to do. Simply because one wants to secretly videotape what goes on at home when one is away does not make this the morally right thing to do. Morality is not simply a matter of personal opinion – it is not simply what one feels or believes is right or wrong. Instead, it would seem that, at the very least, doing the morally right thing requires thinking about the consequences of one's actions – how will they affect oneself and others? – thinking about why one wants to perform some action – is it because it is the right thing to do? – and ultimately thinking about humanity itself – do one's actions respect the ultimate dignity of human beings?
