Bio-heteronormative conceptions of the family have long reinforced a nuclear ideal of the family as a heterosexual marriage, with children who are the genetic progeny of that union. This ideal, however, has also long been resisted in light of recent social developments, exhibited through the increased incidence and acceptance of step-families, donor-conceived families, and so forth. Although to this end some might claim that the bio-heteronormative ideal is not necessary for a social unit to count as a family, a more (...) systematic conceptualization of the family—the kind of family that matters morally—is relatively underexplored in the philosophical literature. This paper makes a start at developing and defending an account of the family that is normatively attractive and in line with the growing prevalence of non-conventional families and methods of family-formation. Our account, which we call a constitutive-affirmative model of the family, takes the family to be constituted by an ongoing process of relevant affective and affirmative relations between the putative family members. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the objection that unilateral secession by a national group (e.g., the Scots) from a legitimate, nonusurping state would wrong minority nationalities within the seceding territory. I show first that most proponents of this objection assume that the ground of the right to national self-determination is the protection of the group’s culture. I show that there are alternative justifications available. I then set out a version of this objection that does not rely on this claim; on (...) this objection, a national minority that seceded and created its own state would commit an expressive wrong against minorities within the territory over which it claimed jurisdiction. I show that this objection is undermotivated: only under a specific set of circumstances would the minorities of the secessionist region be subject to an expressive wrong. Finally, I show that the correct way to think about the claims of minorities in secessionist regions is in terms of a claim to secure access to equal civic status such that they are not at risk of becoming justifiably alienated from their new state. If a secessionist group cannot provide this guarantee to the minority residents of their territory, then their seceding would commit wrongful harm, and the presumption in favour of collective autonomy is defeated. I call this defeater the ‘Alienation Defeater.’With this in hand, we are now in a position to explain why nations are normatively special. Responding to the objections broached by Allen Buchanan and others, I show that even if other kinds of groups, such as religious groups, have the features in virtue of which nations have a claim to self-determination, this does not entail that those groups also have the right to secede. This is because an account of self-determination needs a list of ‘defeaters’—features in virtue of which a group’s claim to self-determination is defeated. I argue that religious groups are the strongest candidate for having a claim to collective autonomy in virtue of sharing many features with nations. I then argue that religious groups will run afoul of the Alienation Defeater; religious identity is too narrow to be the basis of the dominant collective identity of a state. This does not apply to nationality. This, I explain, is because of qualitative differences between religious groups, qua religious groups, and nations. (shrink)

Most of us believe that it would be unjust to act with indifference about the plight of future generations. Zipper arguments in intergenerational justice aim to show that we have duties of justice regarding future generations, regardless of whether we have duties of justice to future generations. By doing so, such arguments circumvent the foundational challenges that come with theorising duties to remote future generations, which result from the non-existence, non-identity and non-contemporaneity of future generations. I argue that zipper arguments (...) face several significant challenges. The ought-implies-can challenge points out that because prior generations determine what later generations can transfer, they determine how much they ought to transfer. In addition, both intentional and non-intentional non-compliance can break the chain of duties towards future generations on which zipper arguments rely. Some versions are surprisingly resilient especially in real-world circumstances. This paper does not show that zipper arguments inevitably fail, but all ways forward come at significant theoretical costs. Unless the challenges posed here are met (or shown as irrelevant), theorists of justice cannot side-track the foundational challenges that come with doing intergenerational justice. (shrink)

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. Finally, we argue that not only is there no general obligation to breastfeed children, but that it is often morally right not to do so. Since much advice from health institutions on this issue implies that exclusive breastfeeding on demand is the best option for all families, our argument drives the feeding debate forward by showing that this advice often misrepresents parents’ moral obligations in potentially harmful ways. (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)

This paper supports the personal data platform cooperative as a means of bringing about John Rawls’s favoured institutional realisation of a just society, the property-owning democracy. It describes personal data platform cooperatives and applies Rawls’s political philosophy to analyse the institutional forms of a just society in relation to the economic power deriving from aggregating personal data. It argues that a society involving a significant number of personal data platform cooperatives will be more suitable to realising Rawls’s principle of fair (...) equality of opportunity. (shrink)

Paternalism is widely viewed as presumptively justifiable for children but morally problematic for adults. The standard explanation for this distinction is that children lack capacities relevant to the justifiability of paternalism. I argue that this explanation is more difficult to defend than typically assumed. If paternalism is often justified when needed to keep children safe from the negative consequences of their poor choices, then when adults make choices leading to the same negative consequences, what makes paternalism less justified? It seems (...) true that ordinary adults have capacities enabling them to promote their interests in ways most children lack. This can explain why paternalism is more often justified towards children than adults. What is not explained, however, is why paternalism would be justifiable for children, but not adults, when neither possess the relevant interest-promoting capacities—exactly the cases when paternalism towards adults might be considered. I argue that this dilemma undercuts capacities-based explanations for the belief that childhood is distinctively relevant for the permissibility of paternalism. I then address defenses of both consequentialist and deontological versions of the capacities-based explanation. Absent this capacities-based explanation, I argue that the intuition that less demanding justificatory standards apply to paternalism when directed at children than when directed towards adults presents unresolved problems for egalitarians. (shrink)

People who are involuntarily childless need to use assisted reproductive technologies if they want to have a genetically related child. Yet, from an ethical point of view it is unclear to what extent assistance to satisfy this specific desire should be warranted. We first show that the subjectively felt harm due to the inability to satisfy this reproductive desire does not in itself entail the normative conclusion that it has to be met. In response, we evaluate the alternative view according (...) to which the satisfaction of this desire is regarded as a way to meet one’s presumed intermediate need for parenthood. This view presupposes that parenthood is one of those general categories of experiences and activities that contribute an irreplaceable value to people’s lives, but the central difficulty is to find those characteristics that mark out parenthood as an irreplaceable constituent of a valuable life. We go on to argue, however, that even if one assumes that parenthood is such an irreplaceable constituent that makes life more valuable, this does not necessarily entail a moral duty to satisfy the desire for genetic parenthood. We conclude that there is a pro tanto obligation to help people conceive a genetically related child (if this is what they prefer), but that this can be outweighed by other moral considerations, such as safety and justice concerns. (shrink)

Many liberals and secularists believe that religious schooling should not be publicly funded or that it should simply be banned. Challenging those views, I claim that although liberal states may refuse to fund and may even ban certain illiberal separate religious schools, it is impermissible, for distinctively liberal reasons, to completely ban publicly funded religious schooling. I will however argue that providing religious instruction within common public schools is more desirable than having separate religious schools. I argue that providing religious (...) instruction within common public schools is a better way to balance the educational interests of parents, children and society than banning religious schooling altogether; authorizing it but refusing to fund it; or having publicly funded separate religious schools. (shrink)

Associative duties are agent-centered duties to give defeasible moral priority to our special ties. Our strongest associative duties are to close friends and family. According to reductionists, our associative duties are just special duties—i.e., duties arising from what I have done to others, or what others have done to me. These include duties to abide by promises and contracts, compensate our benefactors in ways expressing gratitude, and aid those whom we have made especially vulnerable to our conduct. I argue, though, (...) that reductionism faces a problem: special duties are not strong enough to account for the strength of our associative duties. At the bar of associative duties, we are required to do what no special duty can warrant. I then present an alternative reductionist analysis of associative duties—the ‘Identity-Enactment Account’—which not only accounts for the peculiar strength of our associative duties, but also characterizes them in an intuitively compelling way. On this account, our strongest associative duties are special duties to protect or promote the welfare of the duty’s beneficiary by adopting and enacting a practical identity in which the duty’s beneficiary features prominently. There are persons who can legitimately demand a prominent place in our mental lives, for the protection and intimacy it affords. They can, in effect, legitimately demand to be among our nearest and dearest. The correlative of such a demand is, on our part, an associative duty we have toward them. (shrink)

This paper comes out of a panel honoring the work of Anne Donchin (1940-2014), which took place at the 2016 Congress of the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB) in Edinburgh. My general aim is to highlight the contributions Anne made to feminist bioethics, and to feminist reproductive ethics in particular. My more specific aim, however, is to have a kind of conversation with Anne, through her work, about whether reproductive justice could demand insurance coverage for in vitro (...) fertilization. I quote liberally from Anne’s work for this purpose, but also to shower the reader with her words, reminding those of us who knew her well what a wonderful colleague she was. (shrink)

Do states have a right to exclude prospective immigrants as they see fit? According to statists the answer is a qualified yes. For these authors, self-determining political communities have a prima facie right to exclude, which can be overridden by the claims of vulnerable groups such as refugees and children born in the state’s territory. However, there is a concern in the literature that statists have not yet developed a theory that can protect children born in the territory from being (...) excluded from the political community. For if the self-determining political community has the right to decide who should form the self in the first place, then that right should count against both newcomers by immigration and newcomers by birth. Or so the concern goes. In this essay, I defend statism against this line of criticism and provide a liberal justification for the inclusion of children born within the state’s borders. My account leads to some surprising implication for citizenship law, as well as immigration arrangements in the area of asylum and unauthorized immigration. (shrink)

This article argues that the creation of artificial offspring could make our lives more meaningful. By ‘artificial offspring’ I mean beings that we construct, with a mix of human and non-human-like qualities. Robotic artificial intelligences are paradigmatic examples of the form. There are two reasons for thinking that the creation of such beings could make our lives more meaningful and valuable. The first is that the existence of a collective afterlife—i.e. a set of human-like lives that continue after we die—is (...) likely to be an important source and sustainer of meaning in our present lives. The second is that the creation of artificial offspring provides a plausible and potentially better pathway to a collective afterlife than the traditional biological pathway. Both of these arguments are defended from a variety of objections and misunderstandings. (shrink)

Debate has raged in Canada recently over whether in vitro fertilization should be funded through public health insurance. Such a move would require that the provinces classify IVF as a medically necessary service. In this paper, I defend the position I have taken publicly—especially in Ontario, my own province—that IVF is not medically necessary. I contend that, by funding IVF on grounds of medical necessity, governments like Ontario's violate their commitments to equality and fairness, and cause harm. They do the (...) last by suggesting that the lives of people who forgo procreation, and perhaps have children in other ways, will be stunted. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the relationship between a parent and a child is objectively valuable, but few believe that there is any objective value in first creating a child in order to parent her. But if it is indeed true that all of the objective value of procreative-parenting comes from parenting, then it is hard to see how procreative-parenting can overcome two particularly pressing philosophical challenges. A first challenge is to show that it is morally permissible for prospective parents to (...) procreate given that adoption takes us much closer to both environmental and social justice. A second challenge is to show that it is morally permissible for biological parents to parent their biological child given that other prospective parents are willing and able to do a much better job at furthering the child's interests. In this essay, I argue that there is value in procreative-parenting, and that this value is of sufficient magnitude so as to block both the case against procreation and the case in favour of child re-distribution. (shrink)

In this paper we carefully study the problem of liberty as it applies to school choice, and whether there ought to be restricted liberty in the case of homeschooling. We examine three prominent concerns that might be brought against homeschooling, viz., that it aggravates social inequality, worsens societal conflict and works against the best interests of children. To examine the tensions that occur between parental liberty, children's interests, and state oversight, we consider the case of homeschooling in the Dutch context.

In diesem Beitrag argumentiere ich, dass die Ermöglichung von Vereinbarkeit zwischen Erwerbsarbeit und Familienleben ein Erfordernis der Gerechtigkeit bildet. Eltern besitzen einen Anspruch auf Vereinbarkeit, der auf zwei Interessen gründet: Dem Interesse am Zugang zur Erwerbstätigkeit und dem Interesse an der Pflege der Eltern-Kind-Beziehung, durch die besondere Güter realisiert werden. Eine staatliche Politik der Vereinbarkeit lässt sich auch gegenüber denjenigen Gruppen rechtfertigen, die kein besonderes Interesse daran haben – gegenüber Erwachsenen, die keine Kinder haben, und gegenüber Eltern, die ein ‚Ernährermodell‘ (...) mit einer klaren Aufgabenteilung zwischen den Partnern bevorzugen. Eine entsprechende Politik muss allerdings die Dimension des Geschlechts beachten, um nicht zu einer Verschärfung der geschlechtsspezifischen Arbeitsteilung zu führen. (shrink)

It is technically possible to clone a human being. The result of the procedure would be a human being in its own right. Given the current level of cloning technology concerning other animals there is every reason to believe that early human clones will have shorter-than-average life-spans, and will be unusually prone to disease. In addition, they would be unusually at risk of genetic defects, though they would still, probably, have lives worth living. But with experimentation and experience, seriously unequal (...) prospects between cloned and noncloned people should erode. We shall ignore arguments about cloning that focus on the potential for harm to the fetus or resultant human being, where harm is understood solely in terms of physical and mental health. Unless the resultant people would generally have lives worth living there is no positive case for cloning, or any other form of reproduction, for that matter. If the resultant beings will generally have lives worth living there is a prima facie case for allowing cloning. We imagine the case in which the resultant beings will have lives well worth living. (shrink)

Since 2000, 11 human uterine transplantation procedures (UTx) have been performed across Europe and Asia. Five of these have, to date, resulted in pregnancy and four live births have now been recorded. The most significant obstacles to the availability of UTx are presently scientific and technical, relating to the safety and efficacy of the procedure itself. However, if and when such obstacles are overcome, the most likely barriers to its availability will be social and financial in nature, relating in particular (...) to the ability and willingness of patients, insurers or the state to pay. Thus, publicly funded healthcare systems such as the UK9s National Health Service (NHS) will eventually have to decide whether UTx should be funded. With this in mind, we seek to provide an answer to the question of whether there exist any compelling reasons for the state not to fund UTx. The paper proceeds as follows. It assumes, at least for the sake of argument, that UTx will become sufficiently safe and cost-effective to be a candidate for funding and then asks, given that, what objections to funding there might be. Three main arguments are considered and ultimately rejected as providing insufficient reason to withhold funding for UTx. The first two are broad in their scope and offer an opportunity to reflect on wider issues about funding for infertility treatment in general. The third is narrower in scope and could, in certain forms, apply to UTx but not other assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). The first argument suggests that UTx should not be publicly funded because doing so would be inconsistent with governments’ obligations to prevent climate change and environmental pollution. The second claims that UTx does not treat a disorder and is not medically necessary. Finally, the third asserts that funding for UTx should be denied because of the availability of alternatives such as adoption and surrogacy. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to demonstrate the enormous ethical complexity that is prevalent in child obesity cases. This complexity, we argue, favors a cautious approach. Against those perhaps inclined to blame neglectful parents, we argue that laying the blame for child obesity at the feet of parents is simplistic once the broader context is taken into account. We also show that parents not only enjoy important relational prerogatives worth defending, but that children, too, are beneficiaries of that relationship in (...) ways difficult to match elsewhere. Finally, against the backdrop of growing public concern and pressure to intervene earlier in the life cycle, we examine the perhaps unintended stigmatizing effects that labeling and intervention can have and consider a number of risks and potential harms occasioned by state interventions in these cases. (shrink)

The family disrupts equality while also, think many, providing goods of unique value. In Family Values, Brighouse and Swift tackle both of these tendencies, offering a refined and distinctive liberal egalitarian account both of the value of family life, and the limits of what may be done in its name. It builds up from an account of children's specific interests to a defence of ‘familial relationship goods’ as providing the best way of satisfying those interests. Thus though parenthood carries goods (...) of its own, parental prerogatives are delimited by what is good for children. The position which emerges plays out in nuanced, sometimes surprising ways. I raise three main lines of potential criticism, concerning, respectively, the distribution of family relationship goods, their value in relation to fair equality of opportunity, and the viability of distinguishing between family-located and other contributions to the realisation of a child's interests. (shrink)

The importance of education and its profound effect on people's life make it a central issue in discussions of distributive justice. However, promoting distributive justice in education comes at a price: prioritising the education of some, as is often entailed by the principles of justice, inevitably has negative effects on the education of others. As a result, all theories of distributive justice in education face the challenge of balancing their requirements with conflicting interests. This article aims to contribute to developing (...) an account of conflicting interests by identifying a category of conflicting interests—non-positional conflicting interests—the realisation of which does not necessarily disrupt distributive justice. Non-positional conflicting interests include, for example, the interest in realising one's full potential and parents’ interest in familial relations. The article argues that the core dimensions of non-positional conflicting interests can usually be realised without upsetting distributive justice, and that actions that do upset distributive justice tend to be peripheral to these interests. Either way, there is no severe friction between distributive justice and non-positional conflicting interests: in the former cases, both are realised simultaneously. In the latter, tension exists; however, because the infringement on the conflicting interest is of relatively little weight, it is often justified, all things considered, in order to promote distributive justice. The conclusion is that while there are indeed cases in which distributive justice must retreat in the face of other interests, the friction between distributive justice and other interests is actually weaker than meets the eye. (shrink)

New biotechnologies have the potential to both dramatically improve human well-being and dramatically widen inequalities in well-being. This paper addresses a question that lies squarely on the fault line of these two claims: When as a matter of justice are societies obligated to include a new biotechnology in a national healthcare system? This question is approached from the standpoint of a twin aim theory of justice, in which social structures, including nation-states, have double-barreled theoretical objectives with regard to human well-being. (...) The first aim is to achieve a sufficient level of well-being in each of six core dimensions. In the special case of healthcare systems, this aim is focally but not exclusively attentive to achieving health sufficiency as one of the core dimensions. The second aim is to combat the emergence and persistence of densely woven patterns of systematic disadvantage that tend to undermine the achievement of a sufficient level of health and the other core elements of well-being of some persons and groups. Judgments about entitlements to health related resources, including new biotechnologies, are made in light of a threshold notion of health sufficiency. What is enough or sufficient health? The answer that is defended here is that sufficient health is enough health for a decent human life, understood as enough health to live a full life course without preventable, significant functional disability or decrement in health, or treatable pain or suffering. When a state must include a new biotechnology in its national healthcare system is also influenced by ancillary concerns about the connection between health and other core dimensions of well-being. What counts as a significant functional impairment or health decrement is thus explicated, in part, in relation to the theory’s sufficiency aim for the other essential dimensions of well-being, and thus for a decent life, overall. Those elements of health that play a critical role in the experience of sufficient reasoning, affiliation, security, respect and self determination are especially important; any loss of health function or capacity that threatens the individual’s prospects for sufficiency in these other dimensions, including the relational egalitiarian concerns they entail, constitutes a significant functional impairment. Within national borders, individuals are thus entitled to those health-related goods and services that are essential for a sufficiency of each of the dimensions of well-being; with regard to self determination and respect, what is sufficient by way of guaranteed access to specific goods and services is going to depend on the implications of such access for where an individual stands in relation to her co-nationals. The content of any entitlement to health-related goods and services is also necessarily dynamic. What can be done for health and the other core dimensions of well-being as a function of technological innovation and diffusion is in constant flux. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this analysis for the conditions under which states are obligated to include access in their healthcare systems to one biotechnology, deep brain stimulation. (shrink)

This study is a contribution to the bioethical debate about new and possibly emerging reproductive technologies. Its point of departure is the intuition, which many people seem to share, that using such technologies to select non-disease traits – like sex and emotional stability - in yet unborn children is morally problematic, at least more so than using the technologies to avoid giving birth to children with severe genetic diseases, or attempting to shape the non-disease traits of already existing children by (...) environmental means, like education. The study employs philosophical analysis for the purpose of making this intuition intelligible and judging whether it is justified. Different ways in which the moral problems posed by reproductive technologies are often framed in bioethical debates are criticised as inadequate for this task. In particular, it is argued that the intuition cannot fully be made sense of in terms of harm to the children that such technologies help create. The study attempts to elaborate an alternative to that broadly consequentialist approach, by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, Hans Jonas’s ethics, and Aristotle’s practical philosophy, as it has been received and developed in the hermeneutical tradition. It is suggested that reproductive choices, unlike decisions for already born children, are characterised by a peculiar one-sidedness: the future child appears to the parents as something wholly theirs to decide about, not as a concrete other with whom they must interact in a responsive and attuned way. This is problematic because it means that such choices cannot call upon the particularised moral understanding only gained in interpersonal encounters. In particular, it makes them easily shaped by various tendencies, to which parents are always susceptible, to relate to children in instrumentalising ways, and at risk of reinforcing such tendencies. However, this does not mean that all uses of reproductive technologies are equally troubling. When selecting against severe disease the parents can rely on a widely shared illness experience to escape the dangers that one-sidedness involves. It is concluded that the intuition under discussion, thus explicated and in some ways qualified, makes sense morally. (shrink)

this paper advances a novel account of part of what justifies killing in war, grounded in the duties we owe to our loved ones to protect them from the severe harms with which war threatens them. It discusses the foundations of associative duties, then identifies the sorts of relationships, and the specific duties that they ground, which can be relevant to the ethics of war. It explains how those associa- tive duties can justify killing in theory—in particular how they can (...) justify overrid- ing the rights to life of some of those who must be killed to win a war. It then shows how these duties can be operationalised in practice: first, showing how soldiers who fight on behalf of their community can act on reasons that apply to the members of that community; second, showing that the argument from associative duties does not prove too much—in particular, that it does not license the intentional killing of noncombatants in war. (shrink)

The process of adopting a child is “not for the faint of heart.” This is what we were told the first time we, as a couple, began this process. Part of the challenge lies in fulfilling the licensing requirements for adoption, which, beyond the usual home study, can include mandatory participation in parenting classes. The question naturally arises for many people who are subjected to these requirements whether they are morally justified. We tackle this question in this paper. In our (...) view, while strong reasons exist in favour of licensing adoptive parents, these reasons support the licensing not only of adoptive parents, but of all or some subset of so-called “natural” parents as well. We therefore conclude that the status quo with respect to parental licensing, according to which only adoptive parents need to be licensed, is morally unjustified. (shrink)

This article explores the values that should be promoted in civic education for democracy and also how the promotion of values can be non-coercive. It will be argued that civic education should promote the values of reasonableness, mutual respect and fairness, but also that only public, political reasons count in attempting to justify the content of civic education. It will also be argued that the content of civic education may legitimately be broader than this, including but not restricted to the (...) values of autonomy, integrity, magnanimity, truthfulness and generosity. At the same time, if civic education is seen merely as a means to shape and form future citizens, then the promotion of values in civic education will be a coercive imposition on children and young people. If the promotion of values instead is to be non-coercive it must be defended with reasons that children and young people should be able to accept. (shrink)

Almost everyone accepts that parents must provide a good enough upbringing in order to retain custodial rights over children, but little has been said about how that level should be set. In this paper, I examine ways of specifying a good enough upbringing. I argue that the two dominant ways of setting this level, the Best Interests and Abuse and Neglect Views, are mistaken. I defend the Dual Comparative View, which holds that an upbringing is good enough when shortfalls from (...) the best alternative upbringing in terms of the child's interests are no more significant than the parents' interest. (shrink)

In the growing philosophical literature on the family and its value, the parents' fiduciary role often serves to explain why the family is valuable from a child-centred perspective. Recently it has been further argued that this fiduciary role also explains the distinctive value the family has for parents. By offering a critique of that argument, the paper advances an alternative parent-centred account of the value of the family. It points out the process in families whereby parents reproduce some of their (...) characteristics in their children and thereby establish a powerful sense of interconnectedness and continuity between their own identity and the child's. The fact that the family provides quite a unique platform for developing this type of interpersonal bond may account for the striking importance ascribed to families. Liberal theory should accommodate this fact when offering an account of legitimate parental authority. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a theory of the acquisition of parental rights. According to this investment theory, parental rights are generated by the performance of parental work. Thus, those who successfully parent a child have the right to continue to do so, and to exclude others from so doing. The account derives from a more general principle of desert that applies outside the domain of parenthood. It also has some interesting implications for the attribution of moral parenthood. In particular, (...) it implies that genetic relationships per se are irrelevant to parental rights and that it is possible to have more than two moral parents. (shrink)

The Dutch government has a double moral message for Dutch parents. On the one hand, they expect mothers to work more hours outside the home; on the other hand, they expect parents to perform better in their parental tasks. New research shows again that in spite of all stimulation measures, Dutch women with children prefer their part-time jobs, and parents prefer not to leave their children to the responsibility of day care all week. To what extent is the government allowed (...) to oblige mothers to work more hours a week if the consequence is that the responsibility for upbringing shifts from parents to day care centres? (shrink)

Recent defenses of same-sex marriage and polygamy have invoked the liberal doctrines of neutrality and public reason. Such reasoning is generally sound but does not go far enough. This paper traces the full implications of political liberalism for marriage. I argue that the constraints of public reason, applied to marriage law, entail ‘minimal marriage’, the most extensive set of state-determined restrictions on marriage compatible with political liberalism. Minimal marriage sets no principled restrictions on the sex or number of spouses and (...) the nature and purpose of their caring relationships, nor on which marital rights are exchanged, and whether they are exchanged reciprocally or asymmetrically. Minimal marriage supports adult care networks, urban tribes, friendships, and other forms of relationships as well as ‘traditional’ marriages. I provide a publically justifiable rationale for a legal framework supporting non-dependent caring relationships between adults. The argument is that caring relationships are primary goods, and that liberal justice accordingly requires legal frameworks supporting caring relationships. Minimal marriage is one such framework. (shrink)

Für viele liberale Denker fällt die religiöse Erziehung der eigenen Kinder unter die Erziehungsautorität der Eltern. Das heißt, dass die Eltern für ihre Kinder entscheiden sollen, ob Letztere religiös erzogen werden und welche Religion hierbei unter Umständen zugrunde liegen soll. In diesem Aufsatz wird ein Argument von Matthew Clayton kritisch diskutiert, das dieses traditionell liberale Verständnis der Erziehungsautorität infrage stellt. Clayton geht von Rawls‘ Rechtfertigungsmodell legitimer Autorität aus, nach dem staatliche Autorität durch öffentlich zugängliche Gründe zu rechtfertigen ist. Clayton wendet (...) dieses sogenannte Prinzip der Legitimität auf den Bereich der Familie an, woraus für ihn folgt, dass die religiöse Erziehung von Kindern auf einer illegitimen Ausübung von Autorität beruht, wenn Eltern ihre Kinder so beeinflussen wollen, dass diese die von ihnen bevorzugten religiösen Überzeugungen annehmen. Für Clayton muss die legitime Ausübung der Erziehungsautorität der Eltern auf die zukünftige Zustimmung, seinen retrospektiven „consent“, Bezug nehmen. Am Ende des Aufsatzes wird – unter Berücksichtigung von Clayton-Kritikern – untersucht, ob es Formen religiöser Erziehung gibt, die vereinbar sind mit dem Prinzip der Legitimität. (shrink)

Beschäftigt man sich systematisch mit der Konzeption von Gerechtigkeit für Kinder bzw. während der Kindheit, ist es hilfreich, drei verschiedene Fragen zu klären, die normalerweise in Hinblick auf Erwachsene diskutiert werden, doch auch für eine genauere Analyse der Ansprüche von Kindern relevant sind. Welche Güter sind für die Gerechtigkeitstheorie relevant? Nach welchen Prinzipien sollen diese Güter verteilt werden? Wer ist dafür verantwortlich, dass die angestrebte Güterverteilung verwirklicht wird? In dieser Einleitung umreißen wir kurz den gegenwärtigen Diskussionsstand, der in diesen drei (...) großen gerechtigkeitsrelevanten Themenfeldern hinsichtlich von Kindern besteht. Zunächst analysieren wir Ressourcen und Fähigkeiten als angemessene Metrik der Gerechtigkeit für Kinder. Hinsichtlich der Verteilungsprinzipien lassen sich vor allem egalitäre und suffizienztheoretische Herangehensweisen unterscheiden. Schließlich werden in Bezug auf die Frage nach den relevanten „Akteuren der Gerechtigkeit“ für Kinder hauptsächlich die Familie bzw. die Eltern und der Staat diskutiert. (shrink)

Equality of Opportunity is widely thought of as the normative ideal most relevant to the design of educational institutions. One widely discussed interpretation of this ideal is Rawls' principle of Fair Equality of Opportunity. In this paper I argue that theories, like Rawls, that give priority to the achievement of individual autonomy, are committed to giving that same priority to a principle of sufficient opportunity. Thus, the Rawlsian's primary focus when designing educational institutions should be on sufficiency and not equality. (...) The paper then argues this commitment has at least three attractive implications. Firstly, it enables defenders of Fair Equality of Opportunity to overcome Richard Arneson's powerful objections. Secondly, it suggests a revised version of the principle of Fair Equality of Opportunity that is more plausible. Thirdly, it has attractive practical implications for educational provision. (shrink)

À la suite des récentes décisions légales reconnaissant plus de deux parents à certains enfants canadiens, nous nous demandons s’il existe des raisons morales pour limiter à deux le nombre de parents qu’un enfant peut avoir. Nous examinons quelques arguments traditionnels soutenant cette position et nous trouvons qu’ils ne suffisent pas pour la justifier. Nous présentons aussi un argument inspiré par le travail de Brighouse et Swift au sujet des bienfaits d’être parent, et nous montrons qu’il n’est pas assez fort (...) pour soutenir la nécessité de limiter à deux le nombre de parents. En terminant, nous suggérons quelques autres façons de séparer de façon positive l’idée de «parent» des notions traditionnelles. (shrink)

This paper explores the debate between perfectionists and anti-perfectionists in the context of children. It suggests that the most influential and compelling arguments in favour of anti-perfectionism are adult-centric. It does this by considering four leading reasons given in favour of anti-perfectionism and shows that none apply in the case of children. In so doing, the paper defends a perfectionist account of upbringing from the attacks made against perfectionism more generally. Furthermore, because the refutation of the various anti-perfectionist arguments are (...) made exclusively dealing with children, the paper suggests that the perfectionist view of upbringing is compatible with anti-perfectionist restrictions on dealing with adults. This dual view combining perfectionism for children and anti-perfectionism for adults is referred to as restricted perfectionism. (shrink)

In “The Pecking Order,” Dalton Conley argues that inequalities between siblings are larger than inequalities at the level of the overall society. Our article discusses the normative implications for institutions of this observation. We show that the question of state intervention for curbing intra-family inequality reveals an internal tension within liberalism between autonomy and toleration, which bears on the forms that the intervention of institutions may take. Despite the pros and cons of both commitments, autonomy-based liberalism appears more compatible with (...) the involvement of the state for egalitarian reasons within the family than toleration-based liberalism.Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Family relationships are often believed to have a unique value; this is reflected both in the special expectations that family members have from each other and in the various ways in which states protect family relationships. Commitment appears to set apart family relationships from other close relationships; however, commitment is in fact present in other close relationships. I conclude that family relationships do not have any special value; love does. In the case of families with children, however, a high degree (...) of commitment between adults may be useful or even necessary for advancing children's wellbeing. This could be a reason to give special protection to relationships between co-parents. (shrink)

Sperm donation is a widely accepted and increasingly common practice. In the standard case, a sperm donor sells sperm to an agency, waives his parental rights, and is absolved of parental responsibility. We tend to assume that this involves no problematic abandonment of parental responsibility. If we regard the donor as having parental responsibilities at all, we may think that his parental responsibilities are transferred to the sperm recipients. But, if a man creates a child accidentally, via contraception failure, we (...) tend to assume that the man does indeed have parental responsibilities. Assessing these contrasting conclusions requires a theory of parental responsibility. I analyze prevalent theories of what makes someone parentally responsible and show that none of these theories can withstand scrutiny. I propose a new theory of parental responsibility, which, I argue, is more plausible than the alternatives. My theory of parental responsibility is based on our ownership and control over hazardous materials, namely, our gametes. I show that neither my theory, nor the theories I reject, can support our contrasting intuitions. I conclude that sperm donors are fathers, with parental responsibility. I argue that the alternative conclusion, that neither sperm donors nor accidental fathers are parentally responsible for their resulting offspring, is less plausible. I then consider whether parental responsibility can be transferred and argue that it is far from clear that it can. Finally, I address objections and consider some practical implications of these views. (shrink)

The immigration debate in political theory has produced a series of accounts that justify the state’s right to exclude potential immigrants, where the right of self-determination figures prominently. We challenge two prominent accounts of the self-determination-based right to exclude and defend a circumscribed right to exclude and a corollary duty to admit immigrants, based on our ‘people relationship goods’ account of self-determination. Our conception reconciles the moral claims of global opportunity migrants with the well-being and non-alienation interests of the locals. (...) It therefore provides a principled answer to the philosophical question underlying pressing political conflicts today, namely what is the permissible scope of exclusion by self-determining political communities, in light of weighty global moral demands of inclusion. (shrink)

Offering the first developed account of political liberal education, this book combines a thorough analysis of the theoretical groundwork of political liberal education with application-oriented approaches to contemporary educational challenges. Following in depth engagement with the shortcomings of Rawls’ theory and addressing some key objections to neutrality-based restrictions in education, the volume moves on to provide an insightful discussion of topics such as same-sex relations in sex-education, the position of migrant children and the rights of religious parents to determine the (...) education of their children. This book outlines a political liberal account of education which provides a useful contribution to the current debates about liberalism and education in a way unprecedented in the literature on political liberalism so far. It is of interest to anyone working at the intersection of political philosophy and philosophy of education as well as for scholars with a broader interest in how liberalism can respond to the challenges of value pluralism. (shrink)

Modern parents, particularly in countries with highly developed public health systems, are not short of guidance about how to feed their children.1 Advice flows freely from many sources. State organs, particularly health departments and health care providers, offer advice with a reassuringly official provenance. Nutritional and pediatric societies, health-related charities, childcare manuals, parenting websites, and nutrition publications draw on scientific research in formulating their advice. Newspapers and magazines report the findings of the latest nutrition studies. Advice is also relayed informally (...) and personally, often with glosses drawn from personal experience.. (shrink)

Parents typically favour their own children over others’. For example, most parents invest more time and money in their own children than in other children. This parental partiality is usually regarded as morally permissible, or even obligatory, but it can have undesirable distributive effects. For example, it may create unfair or otherwise undesirable advantages for the favoured child. A number of authors have found it necessary to justify parental partiality in the face of these distributive concerns, and they have typically (...) done so by appealing to features of the parent–child relationship. Parental partiality is said to be justified, despite its undesirable distributive effects, in part because the parent enjoys a special kind of relationship with her child. In this paper, I raise a problem for such relational defences of parental partiality. I report empirical findings suggesting that parental partiality will frequently create advantages—sometimes undesirable—not only for one’s children, but also for one’s more distant descendants; I argue that the creation of these latter advantages stands as much in need of justification as does the creation of advantages for one’s own children; and I claim that existing relational defences do not clearly contain the resources necessary to deliver such a justification. I then examine three possible responses to this problem. (shrink)

This paper explores the debate between perfectionists and anti-perfectionists in the context of children. It suggests that the most influential and compelling arguments in favour of anti-perfectionism are adult-centric. It does this by considering four leading reasons given in favour of anti-perfectionism and shows that none apply in the case of children. In so doing, the paper defends a perfectionist account of upbringing from the attacks made against perfectionism more generally. Furthermore, because the refutation of the various anti-perfectionist arguments are (...) made exclusively dealing with children, the paper suggests that the perfectionist view of upbringing is compatible with anti-perfectionist restrictions on dealing with adults. This dual view combining perfectionism for children and anti-perfectionism for adults is referred to as restricted perfectionism. (shrink)

Sociologists exploring educational injustice often focus on socio-economic segregation as a central measure of injustice. The comprehensive ideal, furthermore, has the idea of socio-economic integration built into it. The current paper argues that socio-economic segregation is valuable only insofar as it serves other, more fundamental values. This matters because sometimes policy-makers will find themselves facing trade-offs between increasing integration and promoting the other, more fundamental values that underpin the value of integration.

Assessing what counts as infertility has practical implications: access to (state-funded) fertility treatment is usually premised on meeting the criteria that constitute the chosen definition of infertility. In this paper, I argue that we should adopt the expression “involuntary childlessness” to discuss the normative dimensions of people’s inability to conceive. Once this conceptualization is adopted, it becomes clear that there exists a mismatch between those who experience involuntary childlessness and those that are currently able to access fertility treatment. My concern (...) in this article is explaining why such a mismatch deserves attention and what reasons can be advanced to justify addressing it. My case rests on a three-part argument: that there are good reasons to address the suffering associated with involuntary childlessness; that people would decide to insure against it; and that involuntary childlessness is characterized by a prima facie exceptional kind of desire. (shrink)