Should practices of parenting be organised by reference to the child's interests, the parents' interests, or both?

Gheaus, 2012

Adequate parents have a moral right to raised
babies born to them because of one kind of biological tie

Argument is justified by parents' own interests in keeping
and raising their biological babies

Parent-centric view sees parental rights as complementary rather than opposed to the fiduciary (child-centred) model

Aims to supplement Brighouse + Swift account of fundamental parental rights with an account of how adequate parents acquire the right to parent their biological babies

Intimate relationship with future baby starts even before the baby is born

Mothers gestating baby in womb are emotionally invested


Intimate relationships are intrinsically invaluable


Biological ties only pertains to the birth parents


Pregnancy is important due to the physical, psychological, social and financial csots


Emotional, intimate relationship with their foetus - GROUND A PARENT-INTEREST based on right to keep one's birth baby

Brennan & Noggle, 1997

3 Commonsense Claims about the Moral Status of Children:


  1. Equal Consideration Thesis
  2. Unequal Treatment Thesis
  3. Limited Parental Rights Thesis

Brennan & Noggle, claim that the Unequal Treatment Thesis is compatible with the Equal consideration thesis

Locke: Parents must govern the children until children develop the use of reason and come to be able to govern themselves

Brennan & Noggle accept this, but also believe that children's rights also impose limits on the rights of parents

Parental rights derive from fact that children are often incapable of effectively exercising their rights and making rational decisions about their interests

STEWARDSHIP RIGHTS

Rights and relationships both enshrine and respect the same thing

Haslanger, 2012

  • Supports open adoption, believes that even non-kin adoptions where children have no contact with biological relatives


  • Argues against Velleman's position


  • Velleman's evidence and conceptual tools are used for interpreting are lacking

Plausibly some self-knowledge is important to bring a healthy functioning individual

Self: Cluster of basic traits that allow an individual to function as an agent


Identity/Social Identity: Individual's reference group orientation (RGO)

Less obvious is an obligation to provide children particular identities, especially those that conform to standard reference groups or culturally dominant narrative tropes

Velleman makes unclear what the relationship is between self and identity

Cameron, 2012

Gap in Calyton's analogy, argument can be made using children' interests in becoming autonomous

Conclude most plausible understanding autonomy, this argument also fails

We can respect the interest children have in achieving autonomy without condemning parents who enrol their children into at least some comprehensive doctrines

Autonomy: Being one's own person, directed by considerations, desires., conditions and characteristics that are not simply imposed externally on one but are part of a what can somehow be considered one's authentic self

Critiques Clayton's Public Reason Consideration of autonomy

Fowler, 2010

Political Liberalism (Rawlsian) Principle of Legitimacy means State cannot intervene in parenting - Rawls gives too much free hand to Parenting which makes Liberal position absent as Liberal State cannot make judgement on Comprehensive Doctrines in practices of parentings


Clayton -tries to extend principle of legitimacy to the parents so suggests they cannot have much control over their children either apart from upbringing for citizens and an understanding of injustice

Political liberalism is problematic in approaching parenting

Brighouse & Swift, 2006 - Parents' Rights and the Value of the Family

Our argument gives parents' interests of children and third parties. On our view, the interests of parents count too and justify some prohibitions on state intervention even when that intervention would reliably promote the interests of children or society in general


An Account of the parental interest in parent-child relationship


  • Believes this justifies some rights
  • Parent-child relationship is fiduciary
  • Parents rights are fundamental, conditional and limited

Fundamental: owed to a person in virtue of simply being a person, and its justification is grounded in the benefits it will bring to that person and not to others


  • There are rights limited in scope - distinction between fundamentalness and extensiveness

Non-Parent centred arguments for Parental Rights - Focuses on the interests of children


  • Nuclear family - best suited for meeting children's interests
  • people must have incentives to be parents and to be the kind who will do well by their children
  • More regulation and monitoring - less they will enjoy and less appealing
  • Public goods are created by good parenting
  • Well-raised children are public goods in many senses

^^^ Brighouse & Swift argue this account fails to show parents have any fundamental rights with respect to their children. They focus exclusively on ways that the family benefits children or third parties

Brighouse & Swift, 2009

LEGITIMATE PARENTAL PARTIALITY

Conflict between the Family and equality of opportunity , B+S show that the content of the special responsibilities to the nature of the relationship. Certain goods are realized through the relationship

  • Aim to make a theory of family values
  • Show that what is most valuable about familial relationships without abandoning egalitarian goals
  • Suggested kind of parent-child interactions that are of fundamental importance for human wellbeing
  • Children need secure attachments to particular adults
  • loving attention that is needed for children to become capable of loving themselves
  • Claims that parenting is a distinctive and important source of flourishing
  • Familial goods are produced when parents act on their loving motivations

BUT


  • Parents are limited by the duty to facilitate the development of autonomy
  • decreasing in strength and scope as the child grows older
  • facilitation of parental interest

Burtt, 2003

Towards A Critical Theory of the Family Structure - Burtt critiques the position of the New Familists and the push towards 'one model' of the two-parent nuclear family structure


In doing so Burtt gives the foundations of a critical theory examining the different roles that are required in a child's development:


  • Lover
  • Physical Care-giver
  • Homemaker
  • Financial Provider
  • Socializer
  • Moral Educator
  • Teacher
  • Gender role-model

^^^ Burtt accounts how two parents are not the only persons involved and that family structures can differ in the provision of these roles

Griffin, 2003

Do Children Have Rights?

Griffin Argues that Children may have rights as infants based on the necessary conditions for becoming a being and developing agency, this is seen as a personhood account of children's rights. Whilst Human infants aren't agents they may have the potential which the value of agency rests within and affords them some rights

Brennan, 2003

Advocates a gradualist approach wherein child's rights protect their interests and gradually come to protect their choices as they gain the ability to make choices on a more long-term preference