The ’new familists’ argue that sociological evidence on the relation between traditional two‐parent nuclear family and positive outcomes for their children justifies public‐policy measures aimed at promoting this type of family. But the success of such families is due to the fact that many other institutional arrangements advantage this type of family. Such a family typically involves a sexist division of domestic labour. A ’critical theory of family structure’ identifies the developmental needs of children and examines the ways in which (...) various family structures can function to meet these needs. (shrink)

The family is hotly contested ideological terrain. Some defend the traditional two-parent heterosexual family while others welcome its demise. Opinions vary about how much control parents should have over their children's upbringing. Family Values provides a major new theoretical account of the morality and politics of the family, telling us why the family is valuable, who has the right to parent, and what rights parents should—and should not—have over their children. Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift argue that parent-child relationships produce (...) the "familial relationship goods" that people need to flourish. Children's healthy development depends on intimate relationships with authoritative adults, while the distinctive joys and challenges of parenting are part of a fulfilling life for adults. Yet the relationships that make these goods possible have little to do with biology, and do not require the extensive rights that parents currently enjoy. Challenging some of our most commonly held beliefs about the family, Brighouse and Swift explain why a child's interest in autonomy severely limits parents' right to shape their children's values, and why parents have no fundamental right to confer wealth or advantage on their children. Family Values reaffirms the vital importance of the family as a social institution while challenging its role in the reproduction of social inequality and carefully balancing the interests of parents and children. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

... i . La very is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man,and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation ; that 'tis hardly to be ...

We spend a lot of time arguing about how schools might be improved. But we rarely take a step back to ask what we as a society should be looking for from education—what exactly should those who make decisions be trying to achieve? In Educational Goods, two philosophers and two social scientists address this very question. They begin by broadening the language for talking about educational policy: “educational goods” are the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that children develop for their own (...) benefit and that of others; “childhood goods” are the valuable experiences and freedoms that make childhood a distinct phase of life. Balancing those, and understanding that not all of them can be measured through traditional methods, is a key first step. From there, they show how to think clearly about how those goods are distributed and propose a method for combining values and evidence to reach decisions. They conclude by showing the method in action, offering detailed accounts of how it might be applied in school finance, accountability, and choice. The result is a reimagining of our decision making about schools, one that will sharpen our thinking on familiar debates and push us toward better outcomes. (shrink)

_How not to be a hypocrite: _the indispensable guide to school choice that morally perplexed parents have been waiting for. Many of us believe in social justice and equality of opportunity - but we also want the best for our kids. How can we square our political principles with our special concern for our own children? This marvellous book takes us through the moral minefield that is school choice today. Does a commitment to social justice mean you have to send (...) your children to the local comprehensive - regardless of its academic results? Is it hypocritical to disapprove of private schools and yet send your child to one? Some parents feel guilty but shouldn't. Others should feel guilty but don't. Read _How Not to be a Hypocrite_, then answer the questionnaire, and work out where you stand on this crucial issue. (shrink)

Parents whose children will become adults are expected to help them do so, as opposed to only keeping them alive while they manage it on their own. The parental help must respect the child's standing as a separate individual: our children aren't ours to shape to our design, even if our aim is to help them flourish. But then how are we to raise our children with respect for their individuality? According to Matthew Clayton, doing so requires refraining from attempting (...) to provide our child with any values that reasonable persons would dispute. According to Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, it doesn't require that: parents have a right to try to instil values, including disputable ones, because they must have this right if families are to enjoy ‘family relationship goods’. I argue against Clayton's position, and against Brighouse and Swift's. I introduce a different approach, and flesh it out in light of a difficulty it faces. I then return to the initial problem, identifying some ways in which the approach I've offered explains how to raise one's child with respect. (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)

Inequalities that arise because of the influence of arbitrary factors of social or natural contingency, as opposed to choices, are unjust. But whilst liberals wish to preserve and protect the affective family, parental partiality to their own children can result in an inequality that is unjust on account of it being attributable to arbitrary factors. Children's access to resources and opportunities should not be significantly determined by parental entitlement to resources. Justice requires not the abandonment of the family, but it (...) does impose constraints on the ways in which parents can permissibly express their partiality for their children. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the philosophical foundations of parental rights. Some commonly held accounts are rejected. The question of whether parental rights are property rights is examined. It is argued that there are useful analogies with property rights which help us to see that the ultimate justification of parental rights lies in the special value of parenthood in human life. It is further argued that the idea of generation is essential to our understanding of parenthood as having special (...) value and that parental rights properly belong, in the first instance, to natural parents. (shrink)

William Galston is a distinguished political philosopher whose work is informed by the experience of having also served from 1993–5 as President Clinton's Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy. He is thus able to speak with an authority unique amongst political theorists about the implications of advancing certain moral and political values in practice. The foundational argument of this 2002 book is that liberalism is compatible with the value pluralism first espoused by Isaiah Berlin. William Galston defends a version of value (...) pluralism - liberal pluralism - and argues, against the contentions of John Gray and others, that it undergirds a kind of liberal politics that gives weight to the ability of individuals and groups to live their lives in accordance with their deepest beliefs about what gives meaning and purpose to life. (shrink)

This is a work of normative political philosophy that seeks to identify the legitimate goals of public education policy in liberal democratic states and the implications of those goals for arguments about public funding and regulation of religious schools. ;The thesis of the first section is that the inferiority of certain types of religious school as instruments of civic education in a pluralist state would not suffice to justify liberal states in a general refusal to fund such schools. States with (...) no position on the value of autonomy for the good life would have to balance civic concerns against the preferences of religious parents who want to send their children to narrowly religious schools to shield them from exposure to ethical diversity. But, I argue, the principles of liberal democracy actually presuppose the value of autonomy. ;In the second section, I develop a conception of ethical autonomy and argue for its adoption as a public value. Autonomy, understood to entail distinctively rational reflection that must nonetheless inevitably be situated within an unchosen cultural context, can be publicly justified as having instrumental value to all persons in their quest to live a good life. And I defend the legitimacy of adopting autonomy as a goal of public education policy against a series of objections, most notably those grounded in claims about parental rights and fairness to traditional cultures. ;In the third section, I explore the implications of the autonomy goal for religious schools. After defending secular public schools from several prominent criticisms, I consider the argument that religious secondary schools are unsuitable to deliver education for autonomy because they provide children with inadequate exposure to and rational engagement with ethical diversity: I conclude that states cannot justify prohibiting or even presumptively denying public funding to all religious secondary schools, but that there is need for extensive public regulation. Finally, I argue that religious primary schools should be treated differently because of the particular developmental needs and capacities of pre-adolescents. Religious primary schools whose pedagogy is non-authoritarian are specially suitable to lay the foundations for autonomy in young children from religious families. (shrink)

In contemporary Western society, people are more often called upon to justify the choice not to have children than they are to supply reasons for having them. In this book, Christine Overall maintains that the burden of proof should be reversed: that the choice to have children calls for more careful justification and reasoning than the choice not to. Arguing that the choice to have children is not just a prudential or pragmatic decision but one with ethical repercussions, Overall offers (...) a wide-ranging exploration of how we might think systematically and deeply about this fundamental aspect of human life. Writing from a feminist perspective, she also acknowledges the inevitably gendered nature of the decision; the choice has different meanings, implications, and risks for women than it has for men. After considering a series of ethical approaches to procreation, and finding them inadequate or incomplete, Overall offers instead a novel argument. Exploring the nature of the biological parent-child relationship -- which is not only genetic but also psychological, physical, intellectual, and moral -- she argues that the formation of that relationship is the best possible reason for choosing to have a child. (shrink)

At what age should children acquire adult rights? To what extent are parents morally permitted to shape the beliefs of their children? How should childbearing rights and resources be distributed? Matthew Clayton provides a controversial set of answers to these and related issues in this pivotal new work.

Many philosophers argue that religious schools are guilty of indoctrinatory harm. I think they are right to be worried about that. But in this article, I will postulate that there are other harms for many individuals that are more severe outside the religious school. Accordingly the full scope of harm should be taken into account when evaluating the harm that some religious schools may do. Once we do that, I suggest, justice may require that we choose the lesser harm. To (...) simplify matters, I focus my attention on the stigmatic harm done to Muslims, and the role that Islamic schools might be expected to play in mitigating that harm. If the full weight of stigmatic harm is factored into the ethical analysis concerning Islamic schools, then I suggest that there are sufficiently weighty pro tanto reasons for Muslim parents to prefer an Islamic school over the alternatives, notwithstanding the potential indoctrinatory harm. (shrink)

Among the most pressing philosophical questions occupying those interested in the ethics of the family is why should parents, as opposed to charity workers or state officials, raise children. In their recent Family Values, Brighouse and Swift have further articulated and strengthen their own justification of the parent-child relationship by appealing to its crucial role in enabling the child’s proper development and in allowing parents to play a valuable fiduciary role in the lives of children. In this paper, I argue (...) that the set of interests Brighouse and Swift identify as necessary for the justification of the family fails to account for the different stages and the different cultural settings that mark the parent-child relationship. In particular, I ague that their justification of the family fails to satisfy the following two desiderata: (i) that the justification for the parent-child relationship should ideally track the good-making feature(s) of the relationship that extend across its entire history, and (ii) such justification should ideally explain what is valuable about the parent-child relationship in both liberal and non-liberal family contexts. In light of my critique, I sketch an alternative account of family values, one that appeals directly to the special mode of caring we see in the parent-child relationship, a form of caring that is certainly present in non-liberal societies and that typically extends across a lifetime. (shrink)

William Galston is a distinguished political philosopher whose work is informed by the experience of having also served from 1993–5 as President Clinton's Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy. He is thus able to speak with an authority unique amongst political theorists about the implications of advancing certain moral and political values in practice. The foundational argument of this 2002 book is that liberalism is compatible with the value pluralism first espoused by Isaiah Berlin. William Galston defends a version of value (...) pluralism - liberal pluralism - and argues, against the contentions of John Gray and others, that it undergirds a kind of liberal politics that gives weight to the ability of individuals and groups to live their lives in accordance with their deepest beliefs about what gives meaning and purpose to life. (shrink)