Procreation, Parenthood, and Educational Rights: Ethical and Philosophical Issues

284 Pages·2016·2.145 MB·English

by  Jaime Ahlberg, Michael Cholbi

Procreation, Parenthood, and
Educational Rights
This volume explores important issues at the nexus of two burgeoning
areas within moral and social philosophy: procreative ethics and parental
rights. Surprisingly, there has been comparatively little scholarly engage-
ment across these subdisciplinary boundaries, despite the fact that parental
rights are paradigmatically ascribed to individuals responsible for procre-
ating particular children. This collection thus brings expert scholars from
these literatures into fruitful and innovative dialogue around questions at
the intersection of procreation and parenthood. Among these questions are:
Must individuals be found competent in order to have the right to procre-
ate or to parent? What, if anything, can justify parents’ special authority
over, or special obligations toward, their children, particularly children they
biologically procreate? How is the relationship between the right to procre-
ate and the right to parent best understood? How ought liberal societies
understand the parent–child relationship and the rights and claims it gives
rise to? A distinguishing feature of the collection is that several of its chap-
ters address these issues by drawing on philosophical work in the realm of
education, one of the most controversial areas in the ethics of parenthood.
This book represents a distinctive synthesis of topics and literatures likely
to appeal to scholars and advanced students working across a wide range
of disciplines.
Jaime Ahlberg is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Florida. Her main areas of interest are ethics and political philosophy,
with emphases in bioethics, education, and feminism. Recent publications
include “Educational Justice for Students with Cognitive Disabilities” in
Social Philosophy & Policy and “An Argument Against Cloning” (with
Harry Brighouse) in Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
Michael Cholbi is Professor of Philosophy at California State Polytechnic
University, Pomona. He has published widely in theoretical and practical
ethics. His most recent work addresses paternalism, grief, and the ethics of
suicide. His books include Suicide: The Philosophical Dimensions (2011)
and Understanding Kant’s Ethics (2016).
Routledge Research in Applied Ethics
1 Vulnerability, Autonomy and Applied Ethics
Edited by Christine Straehle
2 Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement
Serena Parekh
3 Procreation, Parenthood, and Education Rights
Ethical and Philosophical Issues
Edited by Jaime Ahlberg and Michael Chobli
Procreation, Parenthood, and
Educational Rights
Ethical and Philosophical Issues
Edited by Jaime Ahlberg and
Michael Chobli
First published 2017
by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Ahlberg, Jaime, editor.
Title: Procreation, parenthood, and educational rights : ethical and
philosophical issues / edited by Jaime Ahlberg and Michael Chobli.
Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series:
Routledge research in applied ethics ; 3 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016038392 | ISBN 9781138206229 (hardback :
alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Family planning—Moral and ethical aspects. |
Parenthood—Moral and ethical aspects. | Education—Moral
and ethical aspects.
Classification: LCC HQ766.15 .P76 2016 | DDC 363.9/6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038392
ISBN: 978-1-138-20622-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-46553-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Introduction 1
JAIME AHLBERG AND MICHAEL CHOLBI
1 How Procreation Generates Parental Rights and Obligations 15
MICHAEL CHOLBI
2 Teach Your Children Well: Origins, Rights, and the Education
of “My” Child 37
RUSSELL DISILVESTRO
3 Children of Choice and Educational Responsibility 53
JAIME AHLBERG
4 The Problem of Choosing (For) Our Children 73
K. LINDSEY CHAMBERS
5 A Chip off the Old Block: The Ethics of Shaping Children
to Be Like Their Parents 94
ROBERT NOGGLE
6 Liberalism and the Status of Family Making 113
MIANNA LOTZ
7 Parents’ Rights and the Control of Children’s Education 137
ROGER MARPLES
8 Liberalism, Parental Rights, and Moral Education:
Yet Another Reflection on Mozert v. Hawkins 168
MARC RAMSAY
vi Contents
9 An Interest, Not a Project: Hegel on Ethical Love
and Procreation 201
ASHLI ANDA
10 Parenthood and Personally Transformative Experiences 211
MICHAEL W. AUSTIN
11 Fundamentally Incompetent: Homophobia, Religion, and
the Right to Parent 230
SAMANTHA BRENNAN AND COLIN MACLEOD
12 Parental Licensing and Pregnancy as a Form of Education 246
CHRISTINE OVERALL
Contributors 269
Index 271
Introduction
Jaime Ahlberg and Michael Cholbi
Historically, the vast majority of human societies have been strongly
‘pro-natalist.’ These societies socially validate and materially incentivize
biological reproduction, while their legal systems accord procreation the
status of a basic right, a liberty that authorities could only infringe or deny
under very limited circumstances. Such societies have by and large taken
procreation to raise few, if any, ethical challenges. In recent decades, how-
ever, several sociological undercurrents have begun to exert pressure on
this pro-natalist consensus. For one, procreation is less ‘natural’ than in the
past, inasmuch as birth control measures and artificial reproductive tech-
nologies enable far greater control over the circumstances of pregnancy and
procreation. Moreover, threats to the natural environment and to natural
resources have raised concerns about the planet’s ability to absorb addi-
tional human beings. And as the societal roles of women have changed, the
assumption that women do or should prioritize childbearing and mother-
hood over other goods is less widespread.
Academic philosophers have also begun to subject procreation to greater
scrutiny, resulting in a now lively literature on procreative ethics. The central
questions within this field include whether procreation is a right; whether
procreation ever harms children; whether prospective parents may aim at
creating children with specific characteristics; whether procreation is per-
missible only within the context of a certain kind of relationship; the condi-
tions under which the use of alternative reproductive technologies such as
surrogacy, gamete donation, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, etc., are
morally justified; etc. A diverse range of views are represented within this
literature. Some procreative ethicists affirm a largely pro-natalist position,
holding that reproduction is a basic moral right on the part of would-be par-
ents the pursuit of which should be subject to few if any limitations. Con-
versely, this literature also contains anti-natalist voices, who maintain that
procreation is a serious wrong or harm to children (or to others) and should
thereby be avoided or discouraged. Between these lie a range of moderate,
or qualified positions: that only some instances of procreation (knowingly
bringing into existence a child with disadvantageous traits, for instance) are
wrong, that procreation beyond one child is morally impermissible; etc.
2 Jaime Ahlberg and Michael Cholbi
Simultaneous to the emergence of procreative ethics has been a growth
in interest in the ethics of parenthood, and in particular, in the nature and
extent of parental rights. To become another person’s parent is to undergo
a significant moral, political, and legal transformation. For parenthood is
a relationship defined in no small measure by the rights (and obligations)
that a parent has toward their child. Some of these rights correspond to
children’s needs. Children need nutrition, shelter, and the like, and parents
are presumed to have the right to act so as to meet such needs. Other paren-
tal rights seem grounded at least in part in parental interests. Legally and
socially, parents are accorded a broad liberty to establish intimate relations
with their children and to shape their children’s attitudes and character.
While the exercise of such liberty may benefit children, its rationale seems in
part to be that parents have reasons to want such relations with, or author-
ity over, their children.
This rough sketch of parental rights nevertheless obscures several ethical
questions about such rights. One such question is how to justify the appar-
ent particularity of such rights: An individual with a parental right to do X
with respect to a particular child can rightfully preclude others doing X with
respect to that child. But why should parents alone have these rights? Parents
have an interest in their children and their welfare, but so too (arguably) do
other individuals and the community at large. In virtue of what facts, then
does a person (or set of persons) come to have such rights over a particular
child? One possibility is that the particularity of parental rights stems from
the particularity of procreation: Adoption excepted, only a child’s parents
are responsible for its existence, either through their own procreative activi-
ties. But why should such biological facts be the basis for the various moral
claims and relations that ground parental rights? Whatever the general nor-
mative rationale for parents enjoying the particular rights they have with
respect to their own children (parents’ interests, children’s interests, etc.),
the relationship between this rationale and the procreative facts that actu-
ally generate particular parental rights claims is not transparent. Indeed, the
introduction of new reproductive technologies helps to reveal the opacity
of this relationship. For example, legal and social controversy has arisen in
cases in which many more than two persons have a biological connection
with one child, and in which different procreative parties wish to claim
exclusive parental rights.
A second question raised about this sketch of parental rights concerns the
content and scope of parental rights. Such rights must at the very least be
constrained in some way by the rights of children themselves, including their
basic rights to healthcare, education, and a non-abusive environment. But
some go further to argue that, since parental rights are themselves only made
possible by the fiduciary responsibilities parents have to their children, their
content is circumscribed by the interests of children. Of course, there is a
diverse range of the positions articulating the way and extent to which chil-
dren’s interests ought to constrain parental freedom in child-rearing. One
Introduction 3
arena in which the tensions between parents’ and children’s rights run deep
is education. Children have a right to be educated. From the standpoint of
children and the overall trajectory of their lives, they benefit from an educa-
tion that provides them various goods: basic literacy and numeracy; voca-
tional skills; socialization into group norms; cultural, historical, and esthetic
literacy; and more broadly, personal autonomy, decision-making capacity,
and a sense of self. Clearly, children’s interests in these goods can collide
with presumed parental rights and interests. A parent whose religious faith
maintains that women are suited only for roles as mothers and homemak-
ers may contend that her interest in raising a child in that faith should take
precedence over any putative interest the child may have in being educated
so as to question the tenets of that faith. A parent with strong patriotic
sentiments may argue that parents’ right to raise children whose values mir-
ror their own should permit her to remove her children from public school
activities that question those sentiments. Such examples make vivid the dif-
ficulty of circumscribing the boundaries of parental discretion in providing
educational goods. At what point do parents’ shaping of their children’s
lives begin to threaten children’s’ well-being and autonomy-related inter-
ests? What do parents gain from the experiences of sharing their values, pas-
sions, and general orientation to the world with their children, and should
those experiences be accorded moral weight? Because education is a central
tool of social formation, conflicts between parental rights and children’s
rights are especially acute in the educational domain. Add to this (again) the
apparent interest communities have in the education of their future mem-
bers, and the potential for conflicting claims regarding the proper aims of
education grows larger still.
To date, contact between procreative ethics and the ethics of parenthood
has been sporadic (with questions relating to educational rights in particu-
lar receiving sparse attention). This is surprising, inasmuch there may well
be logical and justificatory relations, admittedly very complex, between
claims about the morality of procreation and about parental rights. As we
have noted, parental rights are paradigmatically acquired via procreation.
This suggests that parental rights may well turn on procreative facts. An
obvious example is procreation resulting from nonconsensual sexual activ-
ity. An individual who compels another to engage in sex acts that result in
conception may not have the same parental rights with the child so con-
ceived (including rights to shape the child’s education and upbringing) that
an individual who engages in consensual sex would have. (Of course, in
the former case, the individual may still have many of the same obligations
with respect to that child.) Conversely, moral claims about procreation may
well be predicated upon what rights parents are presumed to have over
shaping their children’s lives. Consider, for instance, the desire of some deaf
parents to use genetic selection technologies to identify and gestate embryos
predisposed to deafness. These parents may claim they have a right to pro-
create so as to parent children who will participate in, and thereby serve to