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“This is an academic book, a philosophical book…Essentially, they are attempting to justify the family as an institution, the way that we raise children in societies like ours…they talk about the importance of the parent/child relationship. They say, ‘Well, look, this is something that we need, not only for children’s interests, but also for parents’ interests’. Parents have an interest, they argue, in the unique relationship that you have with children, and they think this isn’t like other relationships…One thing Brighouse and Swift talk about is the way in which the family as an institution could seem in tension both with a fully liberal society and a fully egalitarian society. They defend the family as institution, but they don’t defend unlimited discretion for parents to do whatever they want, to bring up their children however they see fit. They center these core familial relationship goods: the idea that there are certain things that need to happen between parents and children for the relationship to have its value and to play its role in children’s cognitive development, and so on. To provide these goods, you don’t have to pile endless advantages on your children or give them exactly the kind of narrowly determined view of life that you might think that they should have. This is about things like reading bedtime stories, sharing those sorts of close experiences. It’s about doing things that you value together. In saying that the family deserves to be protected as an institution, they’re not saying that parents have unlimited rights to make every single decision about what happens to their children. Essentially, it’s a right that deserves protection only insofar as it’s used to protect the children’s interests, because that’s what ultimately grounds it.” Read more...
The best books on The Ethics of Parenting
Elizabeth Cripps, Philosopher
