Science, Ethics, and Politics: Conversations and Investigations by Kristen Renwick Monroe

Author:Kristen Renwick Monroe [Monroe, Kristen Renwick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317252429
Google: 5AzvCgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 27890740
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Bibliography

Ramsey, Frank P. 1928. “A Mathematical Theory of Saving.” The Economic Journal 38(152): 543–59.

Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Stern, Nicholas. 2006. “The Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change.” London: HM Treasury.

The Responsibility of Parents to Children

Kenneth J. Arrow

Investigation

The ethical obligations of parents to children belong to an intellectual realm that does not seem to me to have been very thoroughly explored. In secular discourse, especially that associated with economic and, more generally, consequentialist thinking, all individuals, including children, have rights and obligations induced by the need to preserve the benefits of society, but there is no special emphasis on the parent-child relation. Even religious discourse, though emphatic on the obligations of children to parents, places little emphasis on the reciprocal obligations. In fact, of course, a great deal of social activity, including economic activity, consists of parental support and maintenance of children. Moreover, the future adult life of children is profoundly affected by the family environment, so parental behavior becomes a serious externality for children, to use the economists’ jargon. In fact, the legal systems of most countries recognize these problems, if only in an ad hoc manner.

I want to examine the questions of obligation that are raised by a consideration of these issues. I don’t claim to have any definite answers. I do, however, want to illustrate that the issue is not purely imaginary, that there are real problems in the parent-child relation and in the legal system surrounding it.

Let me explain how I came to be interested in this question. It arose from considering some questions that are very much in the mainstream of economics. I realize that to many this will be a strange way of approaching the question announced in the title. Nevertheless, I believe the economic “take” on this social issue can be very useful. In any case, the reverse direction of influence is of great importance to economic understanding. Resources flow from parents to children both individually and collectively. The child is (typically) maintained by the parents up to some point and, to an extent, governed by both individual preferences and social norms enforced to some extent by the law. Inheritance and inter vivos gifts are significant factors in the distribution of income. These factors in turn are motives for saving and consumption. Further, society provides education largely, though not entirely, through collective means. The increasing concern over the environment, particularly with regard to its more permanent features such as climate change, are in part a concern for our children (and their children and so on).

My main scholarly concerns with this issue have only been through the problems of economic growth and especially the implications of environmental and resource degradation. But in the course of generally keeping up with the literature, a number of issues have bothered me.

The first was a minor issue in the controversies over the book by Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman (1974), which dealt with the economics of slavery. Among many other courageous calculations, they attempted to measure the degree to which slaves were exploited.

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