Why and How to Prefer a Causal Account of Parenthood

Porter, Lindsey

doi:10.1111/josp.12059

Cited by 17 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…For example, Chen and Rogan argue that breastfeeding is associated with a reduction in risk of postnatal death and that ‘children who were ever breastfed had 0.79 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.67–0.93) times the risk of never breastfed children for dying in the postneonatal period’ 22. However, based on their conclusion (breastfeeding can prevent 720 postnatal deaths in the USA per year) and a birth rate in the USA of about 4 million/year,23 the absolute risk reduction for an individual child is about 720/4 million=0.00018. That is, 1.8/10 000.…”

Section: Benefitting or Protecting?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Breastfeeding and defeasible duties to benefit

Woollard

Porter

2017

J Med Ethics

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For many women experiencing motherhood for the first time, the message they receive is clear: mothers who do not breastfeed ought to have good reasons not to; bottle feeding by choice is a failure of maternal duty. We argue that this pressure to breastfeed arises in part from two misconceptions about maternal duty: confusion about the scope of the duty to benefit and conflation between moral reasons and duties. While mothers have a general duty to benefit, we argue that this does not imply a duty to carry out any particular beneficent act. Therefore, the expectation that mothers should breastfeed unless they have sufficient countervailing reasons not to is morally unwarranted. Recognising the difference between reasons and duties can allow us to discuss the benefits of breastfeeding and the importance of supporting mothers who wish to breastfeed without subjecting mothers who bottle feed to guilt, blame and failure.

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Section: Benefitting or Protecting?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Breastfeeding and defeasible duties to benefit

Woollard

Porter

2017

J Med Ethics

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“…According to Macleod, the family is valuable in that it protects a number of valuable interests of its members. 7 The close parent-child 6 Brighouse and Swift 2006, 2009, 2014. The dual interest view defended by Austin (2007) presents several similarities to Brighouse and Swift's account.…”

Section: The Relationship Viewmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…18 I here refer to the causal view as the conjunct of both these claims; only Nelson explicitly defends both of them, while several other people, including those I mention in what follows, defend only one of them. obligations that procreators have), is defended, among others, by O'Neill (1979), Archard (2010b), andPorter (2012;2014).…”

Section: Parents' Obligations To Entermentioning

confidence: 99%

Liberal Equality and the Moral Status of Parent-Child Relationships

Olsaretti¹

2017

Oxford Scholarship Online

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The justification of the parent-child relationship that lies at the core of the family raises two main challenges for liberal egalitarianism: the challenge of authority and the challenge of partiality. These point, respectively, to the burdens of justifying to children their parents’ having rights over them, and to third parties parents’ favoring of their children in ways that negatively affects others. This paper examines some recent attempts at justifying the family and meeting these two challenges by appealing to the non-instrumental value of the parent-child relationship. It argues that these accounts do not capture some important convictions about the moral status of the parent-child relationship and thereby do not fully meet the two stated challenges. The paper also offers an alternative basis for justifying the parent-child relationship on which parents, by virtue of being morally responsible for their children’s existence, have an obligation to enter a relationship with them.

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“…Here we intervene in an existing debate on how adults come to have a bundle of rights and obligations with respect to a particular child. Competing accounts include the causal theory of parenthood (Porter 2014;Austin 2007), gestational accounts which locate parenting in pregnancy (Gheaus 2018) or genetic approaches (Velleman 2005). Each of these theories offer competing accounts of what properties properly make a person a parent, but the authors all rely on there being a sharp distinction between parent and non-parent.…”

Section: Restricting 'Family'mentioning

confidence: 99%

What Is a Family and Why Does It Matter?

Dermott

Fowler

2020

Social Sciences

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The family is increasingly a site of political intervention as a locus of pervasive social inequalities and a potential resource for resolving injustices. Contemporary political theory has engaged in extensive debate about what justice in the family requires, but rather less on how family is understood: ethicists have tended to use placeholder definitions which dismiss the need to engage with real-world practices. We show that this is problematic because it obscures morally important aspects of day to day family life and risks taking privileged positions as representative. The paper proposes that theorists could gain from adopting the sociological ‘family practice’ framework, which we argue can form the basis of a distinct and plausible ethical theory of family. This can provide a fruitful basis for further research and engagement in political debate because it better conceptualizes contemporary family life. The paper therefore also illustrates how research from empirical social sciences can be helpful to the development of normative principles.

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Why and How to Prefer a Causal Account of Parenthood

Cited by 17 publications

References 11 publications

Breastfeeding and defeasible duties to benefit

Breastfeeding and defeasible duties to benefit

Liberal Equality and the Moral Status of Parent-Child Relationships

What Is a Family and Why Does It Matter?

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