 Since associative obligations attach to an agent simply in virtue of her occupying a role in a particular relationship, it makes no difference whether she comes to occupy that role voluntarily, as in the case of professional relationships and most friendships, or non-voluntarily, as in the case of sibling relationships or, in many cases, citizenship. As these examples suggest, occupying roles in various types of relationships often figures centrally in people’s identity. In part, this is a matter of people’s self-conception; many of us strongly identify with our role as parents, children, siblings, friends, teachers, members of specific religious communities, and so on. Some proponents of associative obligations advance a stronger claim, however. Human beings are not essentially unencumbered individuals who can move in and out of various roles while remaining the same person; rather, we are all embedded in a web of normative relationships, some of which we cannot exit without being “reborn” as radically different people.