Parental Duties

We argue that individual and institutional caregivers have a defeasible moral duty to provide dependent children with plant-based diets and related education. Notably, our three arguments for this claim do not presuppose any general duty of veganism. Instead, they are grounded in widely shared intuitions about children’s interests and caregivers’ responsibilities, as well as recent empirical research relevant to children’s moral development, autonomy development, and physical health. Together, these arguments constitute a strong cumulative case against inculcating in children the dietary (...) practice of regularly eating meat (and other animal products)—a practice we call “carnism.”. (shrink)

Surrogacy involves a private agreement whereby a woman who gestates a child attempts to surrender her (putative) moral right to become the parent of that child such that another person (or persons), of the woman’s choice, can acquire it. Since people lack the normative power to privately transfer custody, attempts to do so are illegitimate, and the law should reflect this fact.

Health institutions recommend that young infants be exclusively breastfed on demand, and it is widely held that parents who can breastfeed have an obligation to do so. This has been challenged in recent philosophical work, especially by Fiona Woollard. Woollard’s work critically engages with two distinct views of parental obligation that might ground such an obligation—based on maximal benefit and avoidance of significant harm—to reject an obligation to breastfeed. While agreeing with Woollard’s substantive conclusion, this paper (drawing on philosophical discussion (...) of the ‘right to rear’) argues that there are several more moderate views of parental obligation which might also be thought to ground parental obligation. We first show that an obligation to breastfeed might result not from a general obligation to maximally benefit one’s child, but from what we call ‘choice-specific’ obligations to maximise benefit within particular activities. We then develop this idea through two views of parental obligation—the Dual Interest view, and the Best Custodian view—to ground an obligation to exclusively breastfeed on demand, before showing how both these more moderate views fail. (shrink)

I defend two collapsing or reductionist arguments against Weak Pro-Natalism (WPN), the view that procreation is generally merely permissible. In particular, I argue that WPN collapses into Strong Pro-Natalism (SPN), the view that procreation is generally obligatory. Because SPN conflicts with the dominant view that procreation is never obligatory, demonstrating that WPN collapses into or entails SPN establishes epistemic parity (at least as concerns reproductive liberty) between WPN and Anti-Natalism (AN), the view that procreation is always impermissible. First, I distinguish (...) between two moral goods: the good of procreation itself and the good of procreative potential. Second, I contend that the average moral agent is obligated to assist needy children via adoption, fostering, or other financial or interpersonal support. Third, I present the first collapsing argument: If an agent’s justification for not assisting needy children is preservation of their resources (financial or interpersonal) for their actual future offspring, that justification is preserved only if they eventually and actually procreate. Thus, their eventual procreation is morally obligatory, and SPN follows. Fourth, I present the second collapsing argument, which assumes procreative potential as the relevant good: If an agent’s justification for not assisting needy children is preservation of their resources for their potential future offspring, that justification holds only if (a) the objective or subjective valuation of the opportunity is of the relevant type and valence to justify not assisting needy children and (b) the agent sincerely values the opportunity. Fifth, I argue that (a) is unsatisfied and that while (b) is satisfied in most cases, it entails that most agents are obligated to desire or be behaviorally disposed to pursue procreation for themselves (i.e., SPN). Thus, I conclude that both actual procreation and procreative potential are either insufficient justifications for not assisting needy children or that they entail obligatory pro-reproductive attitudes or behaviors. (shrink)

The paper offers an account of co-parenthood according to which co-parents are parent and child to one another. The paper begins by reviewing extant theories of the value of being a parent, to see whether the value of co-parenthood is reducible to this. Finding that it is not, I briefly elaborate a theory of parenthood on which parents are those who create persons. Using Aristotle’s four causes as a helpful prism, I outline how parents are the cause of their child, (...) and how in causing a child together co-parents become parent and child to one another. For instance, since parents create children by offering themselves as models to be copied, co-parents should enjoy the best type of friendship with one another, each treating the other’s flourishing as a human person as their end. I suggest that co-parenthood contains parenthood virtually, that the co-parents’ love of their child is a manifestation of their love for one another, that the teleological fulfilled state of the friendship between parent and child exists in the friendship of co-parents. (shrink)

The institution of the family and its importance have recently received considerable attention from political theorists. Leading views maintain that the institution’s justification is grounded, at least in part, in the non-instrumental value of the parent-child relationship itself. Such views face the challenge of identifying a specific good in the parent-child relationship that can account for how adults acquire parental rights over a particular child—as opposed to general parental rights, which need not warrant a claim to parent one’s biological progeny. (...) I develop a view that meets this challenge. This Project View identifies the pursuit of a parental project as a distinctive non-instrumentally valuable good that provides a justification for the family and whose pursuit is necessary and sufficient for the acquisition of parental rights. This view grounds moral parenthood in a normative relation as opposed to a biological one, supports polyadic forms of parenting, and provides plausible guidance in cases of assisted reproduction. (shrink)

In this article, I examine a case involving an equity-minded parent caught in a quandary about which school to select for her child, knowing that her decision may have consequences for others. To do so, I heuristically construct a fictional portrait and explore the deliberative process a parent might have through a dialogue taking place among ‘friends’, where each friend personifies a different set of ethical considerations. I then briefly consider two competing philosophical assessments but argue that neither position helpfully (...) assists in resolving the quandary. To conclude, I ask the provocative question whether parental motives – but also their school choices – actually matter if the inequitable outcomes seem to remain unchanged. (shrink)

This article brings into relief two desiderata in childrearing, the importance of which the pandemic has made clearer than ever. The first is to ensure that, in schools as well as outside them, children have ample opportunities to enjoy goods that are particular to childhood: unstructured time, to be spent playing with other children, discovering the world in company or alone, or indeed pursuing any of the creative activities that make children happy and help them learn. I refer to these (...) as “special goods of childhood.” The second desiderata is to turn childrearing into a more communal practice, with lesser parental monopoly of care. For this, we need to give children access to multiple caring adults, and thus more opportunities to form secure and protected relationships. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty claims that the idea of objective knowledge is supported by "our reveries." My aim in this paper is to explore this argument with respect to the idea of health. As a case study, I focus on bioethical issues surrounding return of results of incidental variants with respect to the use of genetic and genomic screening technologies (GSTs) in newborn and pediatric contexts. Drawing on a range of Merleau-Ponty’s texts, I argue that this case suggests the modern idea of health (...) to turn largely on the desire for control over one’s fate. More specifically, this is a desire for control aimed at assuring that the meaning of one’s life will stay the same as indexed by one’s ability expectations. I term this a desire for existential homeostasis. I further contend that the desire for existential homeostasis is underwritten by multiple sorts of privilege and, insofar as it informs health as a reverie, it is a desire that is particularly apt to contribute to and maintain injustice in both theory and practice. (shrink)

Parenting involves an extraordinary degree of power over children. Republicans are concerned about domination, which, on one view, is the holding of power that fails to track the interests of those over whom it is exercised. On this account, parenting as we know it is dominating due to the low standards necessary for acquiring and retaining parental rights and the extent of parental power. Domination cannot be fully eliminated from child-rearing without unacceptable loss of value. Most likely, republicanism requires that (...) we minimise children’s domination. I examine alternative models of child-rearing that are immune to republican criticism. (shrink)

Cases of non-traditional family-making offer a rich seam for thinking about normative parenthood. Gamete donors are genetically related to the resulting offspring but are not thought to be normative parents. Gestational surrogates are also typically not thought to be normative parents, despite having gestated a child. Adoptive parents are typically thought to be normative parents even though they are neither genetically nor gestationally related to their child. Philosophers have paid attention to these kinds of cases. But they have not paid (...) attention to what the people who have engaged in these forms of family-making have to say about what they’re doing and, more specifically, how they answer the questions: “Who is the normative parent? And why?” Paying attention to their answers reveals two things. First, accounts of parenthood from people involved in two forms of non-traditional family-making – reproduction with gestational surrogacy and reproduction with donated eggs – are mutually inconsistent. This is not surprising. What is surprising is that the contradictory aspects of the views evince a common commitment to, as I shall put it, naturalizing parenthood. The central goal of this paper is to explain what that means, but rough idea is that in naturalizing parenthood, prospective parents aim to put the features that make someone a normative parent beyond the reach of human agency. I conclude by briefly suggesting that we should think of the grounds of normative parenthood – and the very task of theorizing about the grounds of normative parenthood – in a way that avoids the need to naturalize altogether. (shrink)

The Significant Interest view entails that even if there were no medical reasons to have access to genetic knowledge, there would still be reason for prospective parents to use an identity-release donor as opposed to an anonymous donor. This view does not depend on either the idea that genetic knowledge is profoundly prudentially important or that donor-conceived people have a right to genetic knowledge. Rather, it turns on general claims about parents’ obligations to help promote their children’s well-being and the (...) connection between a person’s well-being and the satisfaction of what I call their “worthwhile significant subjective interests.” To put this view simply, the fact that a donor-conceived person—who knows she is donor-conceived—is likely to be very interested in acquiring genetic knowledge gives prospective parents a weighty reason to use an identity-release donor. This is because parents should promote their children’s well-being through the satisfaction of their children’s worthwhile significant interests. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to criticisms toward my account of the difference in moral status between fetuses and newborns. I show my critics have not adequately argued for their view that pregnant women participate in a parent-child relationship. While an important counterexample is raised against my account, this counterexample had already been dealt with in my original paper. Because the criticisms against my account lack argumentative support, they do not pose a problem for my account. I conclude the raised (...) criticisms do not amount to a strong philosophical case against my account. (shrink)

Many accounts of the morality of abortion assume that early fetuses must all have or lack moral status in virtue of developmental features that they share. Our actual attitudes toward early fetuses don’t reflect this all-or-nothing assumption: early fetuses can elicit feelings of joy, love, indifference, or distress. If we start with the assumption that our attitudes toward fetuses reflect a real difference in their moral status, then we need an account of fetal moral status that can explain that difference. (...) I argue that we can have or lack relational obligations to early fetuses in light of our own activities or choices, independent of the fetus’s own features or properties. Those relational obligations make the early fetus morally considerable to the persons who stand in a moral relation to it. Pregnant persons (and other participants in the procreative process) can come to have relational obligations to an early fetus just in virtue of their own decision to create a person, either by intentionally getting pregnant or by deciding to continue a pregnancy. That decision not only makes it appropriate for them to care about the fetus, but it also generates obligations to the fetus that they didn’t have before that decision. (shrink)

I defend a relational account of difference in the moral status between fetuses and newborns. The difference in moral status between a fetus and a newborn is that the newborn baby is the proper object of ‘parental responsibility’ whereas the fetus is not. ‘Parental responsibilities’ are a moral dimension of a ‘parent-child relation’, a relation which newborn babies stand in, but fetuses do not. I defend this relational account by analyzing the concepts of ‘parent’ and ‘child’, and conclude that the (...) difference in the moral status between fetuses and newborns means one may claim abortion is morally permissible while also claiming infanticide is not morally permissible, without inconsistency between the two claims. (shrink)

A short piece exploring some arguments for mandating vaccination for Covid-19.

The view that it is better for life to be created free of disability is pervasive in both common sense and philosophy. We cast doubt on this view by focusing on an influential line of thinking that manifests it. That thinking begins with a widely-discussed principle, Procreative Beneficence, and draws conclusions about parental choice and disability. After reconstructing two versions of this argument, we critique the first by exploring the relationship between different understandings of well-being and disability, and the second (...) by more briefly focusing on the idea of a significant reason. By placing these results against the broader historical and ongoing contexts in which the lives of those with disabilities have been deemed of inferior quality, we conclude with a call for greater humility about disability and well-being in thought and practice. (shrink)

The dominant framework for addressing procreative ethics has revolved around the notion of harm, largely due to Derek Parfit’s famous non-identity problem. Focusing exclusively on the question of harm treats what procreators owe their offspring as akin to what they would owe strangers (if they owe them anything at all). Procreators, however, usually expect (and are expected) to parent the persons they create, so we cannot understand what procreators owe their offspring without also appealing to their role as prospective parents. (...) I argue that prospective parents can wrong their future children just by failing to act well in their role as parents, whether or not their offspring are ultimately harmed or benefitted by their creation. Their obligations as prospective parents bear on the motivations behind their reproductive choices, including the choice to select for some genetic trait in their offspring. Even when procreators’ motivations aren’t malicious, or purely selfish, they can still fail to recognize and act for the end of the parental role. Procreators can wrong their offspring by selecting for some genetic trait, then, when doing so would violate their obligations as prospective parents, or when their motivation for doing so is antithetical to the end of the parental role. (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that we should limit procreation – for instance, to one child per person or one child per couple – in order to reduce our aggregate carbon footprint. I provide additional support to the claim that population size is a matter of justice, by explaining that we have a duty of justice towards the current generation of children to pass on to them a sustainable population. But instead of, or, more likely, alongside with, having fewer children in in (...) each family, we could also create families with more than two parents. I explore this possibility by pointing out the ways in which multi-parenting can advance children’s interests: in higher levels of well-being, in non-monopolistic child-rearing, and in a future opportunity to become themselves parents. (shrink)

Children's vulnerability gives rise to duties of justice towards children and determines when authority over them is legitimately exercised. I argue for two claims. First, children's general vulnerability to objectionable dependency on their caregivers entails that they have a right not to be subject to monopolies of care, and therefore determines the structure of legitimate authority over them. Second, children's vulnerability to the loss of some special goods of childhood determines the content of legitimate authority over them. My interest is (...) in the so-far little-discussed goods of engaging in world discovery, artistic creation, philosophical pursuits and experimentation with one's self. I call these ‘special goods of childhood’ because individuals, in general, only have full access to them during childhood and they make a distinctive and weighty contribution to wellbeing. Therefore, they are part of the metric of justice towards children. The overall conclusion is that we ought to make good institutional care part of every child's upbringing. (shrink)

Hugh LaFollette proposed parental licensing in 1980 (and 2010)--not as a requirement for pregnancy, but for raising a child. If you have a baby, are not licensed, and do not get licensed, the baby would be put up for adoption. Despite the intervention required in an extremely personal area of life, I argue that those who endorse the harm principle ought to endorse parental licensing of this sort. Put differently, I show how the harm principle strengthens the case for parental (...) licensing. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers tend to agree that intentional parental genetic shaping and intentional parental environmental shaping for the same feature are, normatively, on a par. I challenge this view by advancing a novel argument, grounded in the value of fair relationships between parents and children: Parental genetic shaping is morally objectionable because it unjustifiably exacerbates the asymmetry between parent and child with respect to the voluntariness of their entrance into the parent–child relationship. Parental genetic shaping is, for this reason, different from (...) and more objectionable than parental environmental shaping. I introduce a distinction between procreative decisions one makes qua mere procreator—that is, without the intention to rear the resulting child—and procreative decisions one makes qua procreator-and-future childrearer. Genetic shaping is objectionable when undertaken in the latter capacity: Both selection and enhancement are objectionable because they introduce an unnecessary and avoidable inequality in the parent–child relationship; in the case of enhancement, this also results in harm to the future child. (shrink)

Liam Shields’ sufficientarian commitments mean that he should subscribe to a child-centered account of the right to parent. This point most likely generalizes: sufficientarians who acknowledge children’s full moral status must embrace a child-centered account of the right to parent.

Anca Gheaus considers the reasons we owe our children a sustainable world.

What connection (if any) is there between living well, in the sense of living a life of ethical virtue, and faring well, in the sense of living a life that is good for the agent whose life it is? Philosophical arguments that attempt to defend a connection between exercising the virtues and living a good life typically display two commitments: first, a commitment to addressing their answer to the person whose life is in question and, second, a commitment to showing (...) that virtue is what I call a reliability conferring property. I urge we reject both. I propose instead that we take up the question from the point of view of a person charged with the care of the character of another (an “ethical trustee”) and argue that virtue is what I call a status conferring property. Ethical trustees benefit their charges by inculcating the virtues because in doing so they bestow on them a status that is necessary for a good life. Although circumstances may conspire against the path of virtue proving to be the best bet, statistically speaking, for happiness, my account begins to make sense of the thought that when such tragedies come to pass the fault lies not in the agent but the world. (shrink)

Most theories of parenthood assume, at least implicitly, that a child will grow up to be an independent, autonomous adult. However, some children with cognitive limitations or psychiatric illness are unable to do so. For this reason, these accounts do not accommodate the circumstances and responsibilities of parents of such adult children. Our article attempts to correct this deficiency. In particular, we describe some of the common characteristics and experiences of this population of parents and children, examine the unique aspects (...) of their relationships, review several philosophical accounts of parental obligations, consider how these accounts might be extrapolated to semiautonomous adult children, and provide suggestions about parental obligations to promote autonomy and independence in adult children with cognitive limitations or psychiatric illness. In extending accounts of parental responsibilities to the case of semiautonomous adults, we find that the parental role includes the duty to continue to provide care—indefinitely if necessary—while cultivating autonomy and independence. (shrink)

This chapter argues that there is a collective responsibility to have enough children in order to ensure that people will not, in the future, suffer great harm due to depopulation. Moreover, if people stopped having children voluntarily, it could be legitimate for states to incentivize and maybe even coerce individuals to bear and rear children. Various arguments against the enforceability of an individual duty to bear and rear children are examined. Coercing people to have children would come at significant moral (...) cost; however, none of the arguments against enforceability seem decisive. The existence of a collective responsibility to have children bears on the question of whether parents and non-parents ought to shoulder the costs of childbearing and child rearing together. (shrink)

Parental Obligations and Bioethics: The Duties of a Creator collects and supplements Bernard G. Prusak’s work on the ethics of procreation and parenthood, and applies his unique theoretical approach to related issues in bioethics and social philosophy. In this review, I’ll first summarize what I take to be the argumentative core of the book, and then offer a brief critical assessment.

A discussion of Malthusian mythology yielding the classification as a 'theological utilitarian' followed by a revision of 18th Anglican moral theology re-described in terms of consequentialist voluntarism and an interpretation of Malthus's view on morality, population and political economics.

It is commonly believed that parents have special duties toward their children—weightier duties than they owe other children. How these duties are acquired, however, is not well understood. This is problematic when claims about parental responsibilities are challenged; for example, when people deny that they are morally responsible for their biological offspring. In this paper I present a theory of the origins of parental responsibilities that can resolve such cases of disputed moral parenthood.

For many, it is far from clear where the prerogatives of parents to educate as they deem appropriate end and the interests of their children, immediate or future, begin. In this article I consider the educational interests of children and argue that children have an interest in their own well-being. Following this, I will examine the interests of parents and consider where the limits of paternalism lie. Finally, I will consider the state's interest in the education of children and discuss (...) a familiar view that argues that we have a central obligation to cultivate good citizens. The article will focus on the tensions which inevitably arise from the sometimes conflicting interests between them. (shrink)