The Nature of Children's Well-Being by Alexander Bagattini & Colin Macleod

Author:Alexander Bagattini & Colin Macleod
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

8.3 The Case for Parental Anti-perfectionism

What are the implications of political anti-perfectionism for what parents are permitted to do to or for their children? The most popular view articulated by those who subscribe to political anti-perfectionism is that, within certain constraints, it is legitimate for parents to raise their child according to a religious view even if that religious view is not widely shared within society. Provided that they educate her so that she has the wherewithal to live an independent life as an adult and they observe other constraints such as the duty not to inflict physical harm on her, parents may legitimately raise their child as they choose. Among the constraints placed on this permission are that parents must raise their child in a way that enables her to understand the various ends she might pursue and to deliberate rationally about which ends she ought to embrace, and they must impart to her the mental and physical wherewithal to pursue those ends rationally.4

On this view parents are permitted to maximise their child’s well-being subject to the constraints discussed above involving duties to third parties and to parents’ own self-regarding duties. They are also permitted to act in ways that fail to maximise their child’s well-being. According to the popular view, anti-perfectionist political morality refuses to engage with the question of which comprehensive ends are worthy or pursuit and, thus, it gives parents rights over their child that permit them to act in ways that make their child’s life go worse than it might with an alternative upbringing.5

I reject the popular view of the implications of political anti-perfectionism for parental conduct.6 I claim that if anti-perfectionism applies to the relationship between state and citizen, then it should also govern the relationship between parent and child. Like citizens, children are also born into families that have significant effects on their life-chances and the values they adopt. Parents also force their children to do various things. If the ideal of independence requires us to arrange unchosen coercive political arrangements so that they can be affirmed by citizens whatever the particular comprehensive ends they endorse, then the activities of parents should be similarly constrained. For these reasons, parental anti-perfectionism appears to be a required extension of political anti-perfectionism.

An obvious objection to the parallel case argument described above is that there is a morally relevant difference between the relationship between adult citizens and the state, on the one hand, and that between children and parents, on the other. Because adults reflectively endorse their religious convictions, making them worship or live under laws that promote religion involves requiring them to act against their reasoned convictions. By contrast, parents who make their child worship do not thereby require her to act in ways she reflectively rejects. The child, at least when a young child, does not possess appropriately formed beliefs and desires that constitute the basis for principled moral constraints on how parents may treat her. True, she is entitled to certain kinds of treatment that serve her various interests.

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