Family Values and Social Justice

Reflections on Family Values: the Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships by H. Brighouse and A. Swift

Andrée-Anne Cormier, Christine Sypnowich

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429825163
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

In making the argument for the remedy of inequality, contemporary political philosophers often emphasize the arbitrariness of disadvantage, stressing how one's lot in life is to a significant extent determined by the circumstances of one's birth, that is, in which family, and in what part of the world. In the latter instance, people differ in how well they live in a large part because of their context in the global order. But equally important for a person's chances in life is the family that raises her (if the person is lucky enough to have a family in the first place). In Family Values: the Ethics of Parent - Child Relationships, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift provide a systematic analysis of the morality and politics of the family, exploring why families are valuable, whether people have a right to parent, what rights and duties parents have, and, in particular, what rights children have that may constrain the rights of their parents. The essays in this volume assess Brighouse and Swift's contribution, taking up a number of controversial issues about autonomy, human flourishing, parental rights, and indeed the nature of childhood itself. Contributors offer a range of arguments, some challenging, others complementing, of Brighouse and Swift's account of the ethics of parent-child relationships.

The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue in the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

What abolishing the family would not do

Anca Gheaus

ABSTRACT

Because families disrupt fair patterns of distribution and, in particular, equality of opportunity, egalitarians believe that the institution of the family needs to be defended at the bar of justice. In their recent book, Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift have argued that the moral gains of preserving the family outweigh its moral costs. Yet, I claim that the egalitarian case for abolishing the family has been overstated due to a failure to consider how alternatives to the family would also disturb fair distributions and, in particular, equality of opportunity. Absent the family, children would continue to be exposed to care-givers of different levels of ability, investment in childrearing and beneficial partiality. In addition, social mechanisms other than the family would lead to the accumulation of economic inequalities. Any kind of upbringing will fail to realise equality for reasons that go deeper than the family: our partiality and unequal abilities to nurture.

Introduction

There is an influential tradition of philosophers worrying that the institution of the family poses a challenge to distributive justice – most importantly (and most unavoidably) to the ideal of equality of opportunity. Following Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift’s discussion of this problem in their book Family Values: The Ethics of Parent - Child Relationships (2014), I call it ‘the egalitarian challenge to the family’. By ‘family’ one should understand here the raising of children by a very small number of adults, who freely associate with each other and undertake long-term fiduciary responsibilities towards their biological, or adopted, children.

Brighouse and Swift think that taking seriously the egalitarian challenge requires us to ask the question of ‘why it would be a bad idea to abolish the family’ (2014, p. 4). Their analysis seems to rely on the assumption that, absent the family and other things being equal, there would be significantly less disruption of distributive justice. Yet, such an assumption is too quick. In this paper I question it, and suggest – somewhat speculatively – that the real root of the problem is not the family. Rather, the root of those disruptions of equality the vehicle of which is, in existing societies, the family, is the combination of human partiality and our unequal interest in, and abilities to, nurture others – in particular, children. Since children’s (even minimal) development depends on the nurturing they receive from some adults in the context of personal relationships, and since it is not possible to have all children raised by the same person, any upbringing will embody an element of brute luck for children when it comes to the quality of care they receive. The main claim of the paper is that any form of upbringing alternative to the family – whether or not designed with the aim of meeting children’s needs as much as it is possible outside the family – will disturb equality, in particular equality of opportunity. Moreover, I raise doubts that equality of opportunity would be any more attainable in a society that rears its children outside the family – that is, in a society without families – than it is in a society with families properly reformed, along egalitarian lines.

This paper is grounded in the belief that partiality is universal, and likely to make its equality-disturbing appearance in any kind of upbringing. Partiality is probably impossible to eradicate and, moreover, desirable. Bernard Williams (1973) thought that one’s integrity as an agent depends on allowing one’s partial concerns to play an important role in guiding one’s action. In other words, agency itself – and, with it, morality – may depend on permitting partiality. I think he was right; and in due course I shall elaborate on the thought that, as children, we need to experience partiality in the form of love if we are to flourish.

My argument, if correct, in no way distracts from the value of considering which kinds of family are legitimate given their impact on distributive justice – which is the real aim of Brighouse and Swift’s enterprise. But it does bear on the usefulness of framing the discussion in terms of ‘abolishing the family’ rather than merely reforming it. This is because talk of abolishing the family for the sake of equality may be a red herring (Macleod, 2017): In order to answer the question of whether one has any reason to abolish the family in light of the egalitarian challenge – and even in order to judge whether it is worth engaging with this question – one needs to know if alternative childrearing institutions would be significantly less likely to disrupt fair distributions than a (properly reformed) family. If they would not, then inequalities of opportunity between children raised by different parents cannot, even prima facie, be a good reason to abolish the family. Furthermore, talk of abolishing the family also risks to unnecessarily polarise the discussion and antagonise the public – including the academic, and, perhaps, even some of the philosophical, public – which is likely to be detrimental to much needed egalitarian reforms.

The family and patterns of distributions – a brief overview

The ideal of equal opportunity has been interpreted in very different ways, ranging from the belief that there should be a level playing field when it comes to social competition for desirable goods to the thought that we should all have the same chance to be well off, as long as we display the same level of responsible behaviour (Mason, 2006). The family seems to prevent the full realisation of the principle of equal opportunity across the entire range of its possible interpretations. One’s family largely determines one’s access to a variety of resources that shape one’s opportunities: people get jobs based on family relationships – like managing a family business – and have access to privileged sources of information and social connections that tilt the playing field in their favour. Parents shape children’s future opportunities by influencing the cultivation of their talents and ambitions. Some parents buy private schooling for their children or use their superior knowledge to send them to better state schools, or they organise additional educational activities (like special holidays and trips to the museum). Micro-interactions between parents and children – such as dinner conversations and the reading of bedtime stories – directly shape children’s values, abilities and aspirations. Last, but not least, different children have parents who are unequally good at bringing them up, which results in different opportunities to lead good lives as children and to develop into happy, resourceful and resilient adults.

John Rawls noted that ‘the principle of fair opportunity can be only imperfectly carried out, at least as long as the institution of the family exists’ (Rawls, 1971, p. 74). He thought that the existence of the family was inconsistent with the full realisation of the just society in which native talent and ambition alone determine individuals’ opportunity for socially desirable positions. Yet, parents’ level of income and education unavoidably influences the development of their children’s talent, and therefore also the opportunities that their children will have, over time, to access wealth, income and positions of power and prestige. These inequalities cannot be justified, on Rawlsian terms, since they are not necessary in order to make the situation of the worst-off members of society as good as possible. Rawls has explicitly wondered, perhaps rhetorically: ‘Is the family to be abolished, then?’ and gave his own, negative, reasoned answer.

Not only Rawlsians, but also luck egalitarians should be bothered by the impact of the family on just distributions. James Fishkin (1983, p. 3) noted that three principles of justice that are widely endorsed by liberal egalitarians generate a trilemma. These principles demand that social positions be assigned on merit, that individuals enjoy equality of life chances, and that we respect the autonomy of the family. The last of these principles protects parents’ freedom to rear their children as they judge fit (within the usual constraints imposed by morality). Yet, for the reasons mentioned above, parental freedom unavoidably translates into unequal life chances for children insofar as desirable resources – good jobs for instance – are distributed in a competitive manner and according to merit.

But the influence of the family on life chances is not limited to people’s access to good jobs, positions of power or social prestige, nor – more generally – to goods whose distribution can, or should, be governed by competition. Egalitarians ought to be concerned about the family, and about childrearing in general, while embracing any of a very wide range of assumptions about what goods, material or not, represent advantage, and how they are to be distributed (competitively or not). For instance, coming to value certain things may itself be a form of advantage, which has a non-competitive, as well as a competitive, dimension – since we could all have worthwhile conceptions of the good. As Veronique Munoz-Dared notes (1999, pp. 40–41), the influence of the family goes beyond its influence on economic or social success, shaping who people are¹ and how they think about a good life:

as long as there are families, and hence deep inequalities between people’s initial circumstances as regard class, social condition, cultivated attitudes to effort, to self-sacrifice, to autonomy, and so on, the ideal of equal realization of people’s natural capacities and moral powers, including their capability to form, revise and pursue their own conception of the good, shall not be delivered. [my emphasis]

Familial relationship goods as the justification of the family

So, given that the family shapes who we are and how we think about a good life as well as our chances to access this good, what, if anything, can justify it? Family Values offers an elaborate argument drawing on the value of parent–child intimacy to explain why, on the balance of reasons, we ought to preserve the family (in a reformed version), in spite of its unavoidable disruption of fairness. This is my own attempt to reconstruct their argument:

• (1) The family inevitably disrupts just distributions – and as is, it perpetuates and exacerbates objectionable inequalities of income, status and various other non-material goods; even well regulated, it would undermine equality of opportunity.
• (2) But the family is uniquely able to generate, via the parent–child intimacy, very important goods for both children and adults.
• (3) The value indicated in (2) is more important than the disvalue indicated in (1).
• (4) Therefore, all things considered, reasons of equality of opportunity do not show that the family is morally unjustified.

Many people are convinced that some interpretation of the second premise is correct (Archard, 2003). Yet, the authors of Family Values make the strongest case that I know of for this belief, by elaborating on the kinds of goods available only within (good) families, which they call ‘familial relationship goods’. They also provide some support for the third premise and, mutatis mutandis, for the conclusion. In a nutshell the argument of the book is that the family provides both children and parents – who stand in an authoritative and intimate relationship with children – the good of meeting children’s interests in a happy childhood and in physical, emotional, intellectual and social development; the good of giving children and parents a sense of continuity with the past and the future; and, for adults, the good of playing well the parental role. Of these, the most important consideration is the meeting of children’s interests. Proper care for children requires the continuity in care uniquely afforded by growing up in a family. On Brighouse and Swift’s view, familial relationship goods are very weighty and cannot be substituted by other relationship goods, which makes them a part of the distribuenda of justice. Abolishing the family would deprive all individuals – qua children and then qua adults – of goods to which they ought to have an opportunity.

This defence of the family is not meant to justify anything like the prerogatives that parents currently enjoy with respect to conferring advantage on to their children. Brighouse and Swift note that parents’ freedom, for instance, to buy private education, or to bequest large amounts of wealth, cannot be justified by appeal to familial relationship goods. They also advocate egalitarian reforms to ensure that all children, and all adults who wish to parent and can parent well, are able to enjoy familial relationship goods. As I shall explain shortly, Brighouse and Swift do not believe that these reforms can write out all inequality of opportunity resulting from different children growing up in different families. But they argue, convincingly, that a world with perfect equality of opportunity yet devoid of the goods of parenting is worse than a world of families and imperfect equality of opportunity.

Indeed, Brighouse and Swift are not the first egalitarians to argue that the egalitarian challenge to the family can be addressed through a radical reform of the family, but they are more explicit than others that no amount of desirable reform can eliminate all inequality of opportunity resulting from childrearing in the family. Others thought that Fishkin’s trilemma can be dissolved by rejecting a strong version of the autonomy of the family principle. Peter Vallentyne and Morry Lipson (1989) make this case, noting that today’s children will have the right to equal opportunities to pursue their conception of the good once they become adults, and hence today’s adults ought to ensure that all children have an equal opportunity to develop the skills they will need for this pursuit. They argue we ought to abandon the principle that protects the current extent of parental freedom and, moreover, to engage in reforms such as the banning of certain adults from parenting, as well as providing state-funded training and information programmes for would-be parents and numerous subsidised educational programmes for children. Such reforms could indeed reduce the inequalities of opportunity between children raised in different families.

But there are good reasons to think, contra Vallentyne and Lipson, that even the properly reformed family will remain incompatible with equal opportunities for all to pursue their conception of the good. Assume 100% inheritance taxes, no private education and all the reforms suggested by Vallentyne and Lipson. These measures would fall short of ensuring equally good childhoods to all children and equally favourable conditions for the development of their abilities and values. This is because, as Brighouse and Swift (2014) and Swift in earlier work (2003) noted – drawing on much sociological data – parental influence on children is to a large extent exercised through everyday micro-interactions that constitute the very substance of parent–child intimacy, such as the reading of bedtime stories and conversations over dinner. Moreover, as feminists working on the ethics of care have observed, the quality of care that children receive is constitutive of better or worse conditions for them to develop their abilities and conception of the good, including, for instance, a capacity to engage in, sustain and value caring relationships as adults (Gheaus, 2009). Yet, it is most likely impossible to fully monitor and shape parent–child interactions – and even trying to do so would undermine the nurturing intimacy that justifies the family in the first place. So attempts to equalise the effects of family life on children’s opportunities are likely to result in the much-dreaded phenomenon of levelling down (Brighouse & Swift, 2014). Further, if micro-interactions are largely responsible for the transmission of advantage, this is probably to be explained, in part, through the fact that different parents have different levels of nurturing ability, views about good parenting and investment in their children. Some are mor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 What abolishing the family would not do
• 2 Equality and family values: conflict or harmony?
• 3 Flourishing children, flourishing adults: families, equality and the neutralism-perfectionism debate
• 4 On the permissibility of shaping children’s values
• 5 For a political philosophy of parent–child relationships
• 6 Childhood bads, parenting goods, and the right to procreate
• 7 Family values reconsidered: a response
• Index