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Notes
British woman referring to her Indian surrogate, in Poonam Taneja, “The couple having four babies by two surrogates,” BBC Asian Network (2013) at <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24670212>.
Couples should also assess whether they are in an economic position to provide the child with a good enough upbringing. However, even really poor families might do a good enough job of parenting if they live in a state that bears much of the costs of childrearing. In this paper, I remain agnostic about how the financial costs of upbringing should be divided between parents and the state, and assume only that parents need to ensure that either alone, or with the support of their government (when available), they are in a financial position to the meet the needs of their child.
For a defense of the view that procreation is a harm, see Seana Valentine Shiffrin, “Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm,” Legal Theory 5 (1999), pp. 117–148.
In this essay, I remain agnostic about whether gamete donation and surrogacy are also morally problematic for reasons to do with exploitation and alienation. My contention is that the lack of intimacy between procreators is sufficient to render these practices morally problematic.
Here I refer to social parents as those who rear the child and are therefore socially perceived as responsible for the child. Social parents include adoptive parents, stepparents and biological parents.
H.L.A. Hart, “Bentham on Legal Rights”, in A.W. Simpson (ed.), Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, 2nd series (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 171–201. L.W. Sumner, The Moral Foundation of Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). For an agency account that does not exclude children (but at the theoretical price of including foetuses), see Anna-Karin Margareta Andersson, “Choices, Interests, and Potentiality: What Distinguishes Bearers of Rights,” Journal of Value Inquiry 47 (2013), pp. 175–190.
I therefore follow N. MacCormick in believing that children are the ultimate “test-case” for the appropriate theory of rights, in Legal righ and Social Democracy (Clarendon: Oxford, 1982).
See Ferdinand Schoeman, “Rights of Families: Rights of Parents, and the Moral Basis of the Family,” Ethics 91 (1980), pp. 6–19. Francis Schrag, “Children: Their Rights and Needs,” in W. Aiken and H. LaFollette (eds.), Whose Child? Parental Rights, Parental Authority and State Power (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co, 1980), pp. 237–253.
Ronald Dworkin, “Rights as Trumps,” in J. Waldron (ed.), Theories of Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 153–167.
I follow Feinberg in believing that children have a claim to an open future, but believe that such future need only be sufficiently open. That is, children need to develop a sufficient degree of autonomy in order to pursue what they value in adulthood, without it being the case that parents are under an obligation to try and expose their children to myriad of conceptions of the good. For Feinberg’s view, Joel Feinberg, ‘A Child's Right to an Open Future,’ in Whose Child?, pp. 147–148.
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). See also Cohen, I. Glenn. “Regulating Reproduction: The Problem with Best Interests,” Minnesota Law Review 96 (2011), pp. 423–519.
James Woodward, “The Non-Identity Problem,” Ethics 96 (1986), pp. 804–831; Doran Smolkin, “Toward a Rights-Based Solution to the Non-Identity Problem,” Journal of Social Philosophy 30 (1999), pp. 195–96. J. David Velleman, “Persons in Prospect,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 36 (2008), pp. 245–266.
Gregory Kavka, “The Paradox of Future Individuals,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1981), pp. 100–103.
For a complete defense of this view, see Luara Ferracioli, "Do Children have a Right to be Loved?," Ms. See also S. Matthew Liao, “The Right of Children to Be Loved,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 14 (2006), pp. 420–440.
For those who assume that parents need to be good enough in order to enjoy parental rights, see Matthew Clayton, Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 48–81; Anca Gheaus, “The Right to Parent One’s Biological Baby,” Journal of Political Philosophy, (2011), pp. 1–24; Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, “Parents’ Rights and the Value of the Family,” Ethics 117 (2006), pp. 80–108. For a discussion of where the threshold of competency should lie, see Liam Shields, “How Bad Can a Good Enough Parent Be,” Ms.
This is widely accepted in the literature. For explicit discussions, see Clayton, Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing, p. 60, and Brighouse & Swift, “Parents’ Rights and the Value of the Family,” pp. 87–89.
See Lisa Cassidy, “That Many of Us Should Not Parent,” Hypatia 21 (2006), pp. 40–57. My account differs from Cassidy in that she focuses on the self-regarding duty not to procreate when one would not make a great parent. I take it that Cassidy’s account is too demanding on good enough parents who cannot be great due to financial and social constraints beyond their control.
Here I follow Hugh LaFollette in thinking that capacity matters for the right to parent. However, I disagree with him that state bureaucrats can properly assess parental competency through the institutionalization of a license scheme, in Licensing Parents,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 9 (1980), pp. 183–97.
What if I set up a date between two friends who I know will have unprotected sex and make bad parents? This is a tricky question because there is a sense in which dating sites, friends and other such agents can, at times, enable procreation. At the same time, we don’t think that their acts count as voluntary procreative acts proper. As I see it, if an agent is confident that her friends will not meet without her interference and that they will indeed procreate and parent poorly, then there is an obligation not to enable procreation, but one that is less stringent than the obligation procreators themselves have.
I am in agreement with Giuliana Fuscaldo who believes that absent coercion and un-foreseeability, gamete donation and intercourse are sufficient for the acquisition of parental responsibility. As she puts it, “a less problematic interpretation of causation and moral accountability is that we are morally accountable for the intended and unintended reasonably foreseeable consequences of our free actions,” in “Genetic Ties: Are They Morally Binding,” Bioethics 20 (2006), p. 71.
A positive illusion is a positive “belief that departs from reality” in Shelley E. Taylor & Jonathon D. Brown “Illusion and Well-Being: A Social Psychological Perspective on Mental Health,” Psychological Bulletin 103 (1988), p. 194. See also Sandra L. Murray, John G. Holmes, and Dale W. Griffin, “The Benefits of Positive Illusion: Idealizations and the Construction of Satisfaction in Close Relationships,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70 (1996), pp. 79–98.
See Murray, Holmes, and Griffin, “The Benefits of Positive Illusion: Idealizations and the Construction of Satisfaction in Close Relationships.” Note that there is empirical evidence showing that close relationships benefit from negative illusions as well. See Martie G. Haselton & David M. Buss, “Error management theory: a new perspective on biases in cross-sex mind reading,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78 (2000), pp. 81.
See Faby Gagné & John E. Lydon, “Bias and Accuracy in Close Relationships: An Integrative Review,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 8 (2004), pp. 322–338.
Ibid., p. 332.
It is interesting to note that positive illusions give way to negative illusions in tasks considered hard (i.e., telling a really good joke). So it could also be that when it comes to one’s parental skills and the parental skills of others, people are not as optimistic as they would be about other kinds of competencies. For a discussion of negative illusions, see Justin Kruger, Steven Chan, and Neal Roese, “(Not so) Positive Illusions,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (2009), pp. 526–527.
Robert Lipkin, “Intimacy and Confidentiality in Psychotherapeutic Relationships,” Theoretical Medicine 10 (1989), pp. 311–330.
Robert I. Simon, “Treatment Boundary Violations: Clinical, Ethical and Legal Considerations,” Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 20 (1992), pp. 270–271.
Ibid. Boundary issues are when the relationship becomes less professional because the therapist and the patient enjoy a relationship outside the therapy session.
David Smith & Marilyn Fitzpatrick, “Patient-Therapist Boundary Issues: An Integrative Review of Theory and Research,” Professional Phycology: Research and Practice 26 (1995), p. 500. Simon adds that “[t]rust is the essential basis for a secure therapeutic relationship that permits patients to reveal their innermost yearnings and fears,’ in “Treatment Boundary Violations,” pp. 270–271.
Here I assume that parental rights piggyback on parental responsibilities. That is, parents acquire rights over children in order to discharge their parental responsibilities. See Jeffrey Blustein, Parents and Children: The Ethics of the Family (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 104–114.
J.L. Nelson, “Parental Obligations and the Ethics of Surrogacy: A Causal Perspective,” Public Affairs Quarterly 5 (1991), p. 60.
Velleman, “Persons in Prospect,” pp. 245–266.
Sally Haslanger, “Family, Ancestry and Self: What is the Moral Significance of Biological Ties?,” Adoption & Culture 2 (2009), pp. 1–40.
Velleman, “Persons in Prospect,” p. 266.
Tim Bayne, “Gamete Donation and Parental Responsibility,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 20 (2003), p. 84.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Acknowledgments
For very helpful comments and suggestions, I would like to thank Stephanie Collins, Ryan Cox, Alberto Giubilini, Pablo de Lora, Liam Shields, Rosa Terlazzo and George Tsai. Special thanks to the Philosophy Program at the Australian National University for hosting me during the 2013 visiting season, and for providing me with a great environment for writing this piece.
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Ferracioli, L. On the Value of Intimacy in Procreation. J Value Inquiry 48, 349–369 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9429-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9429-x