There is much dispute about what we owe the children we are responsible for creating. Some argue that so long as we provide offspring with lives worth living we do no wrong. Others argue that our procreative obligations are weightier and oblige us to provide (or attempt to provide) our offspring with a reasonable opportunity to thrive, or meet some other standard beyond merely providing a life worth living. Our practices and intuitions on this matter are inconsistent. For example, gamete (...) donors who intentionally participate in the project of creating a child are thought to have few obligations to their offspring, but those who create a child accidentally are thought to have weighty obligations. Furthermore, a justification for why we are obliged to provide offspring with more than a life worth living has been elusive. To resolve this puzzle I argue that an under-theorized element of morality, the directed duty of care, explains why we owe our offspring more than a life worth living. (shrink)

Children created through mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRTs) are commonly presented as possessing 50% of their mother’s nuclear DNA, 50% of their father’s nuclear DNA and the mitochondrial DNA of an egg donor. This lab-engineered genetic composition has prompted two questions: Do children who are the product of an MRT procedure have threegeneticparents? And, do MRT egg donors have parental responsibilities for the children created? In this paper, I address the second question and in doing so I also address the first (...) one. First, I present a brief account of mitochondrial diseases and MRTs. Second, I examine how MRTs affect the numerical identity of eggs and zygotes. Third, I investigate two genetic accounts of parenthood and MRT egg donation. Fourth, I explore three causal accounts of parenthood and MRT egg donation. My conclusion is that, under the appropriate circumstances, MRT egg donors are parentally responsible for the children created under genetic accounts of parenthood and under causal accounts of parenthood. (shrink)