New article

I had a paper come out in the Journal of Philosophy of Education. Here’s the abstract:

The ways in we raise and educate children can appear to be at odds with basic liberal values. Relationships between parents and children are unequal, parents routinely control children’s behaviour in various ways, and they use their authority to shape children’s beliefs and values. Whether and how such practices can be made to accord with liberal values presents a significant puzzle. In what follows I will look at a recent and sophisticated attempt to resolve these tensions offered by Matthew Clayton in his book Justice in Child Rearing in the context of general account of the proper limits of parental authority. I argue that Clayton is unsuccessful in ways that point to fundamental and pervasive questions about the place of liberal values in child rearing and education that remain unanswered.

Licensing Parents

Time to shake of the cyber dust and get a bit more active here. So, to that effect, here are some thoughts on a controversial idea…

I read a little piece recently that recommended, among other things, requiring people to get a license before they could have and raise children. This is not a new idea, as various philosophers have argued for something along these lines, most prominently Hugh Lafayette as long ago as 1980. But  there are three trends whose confluence may point to its looking more attractive. First is the growing consensus that good parenting does not come naturally but requires a special expertise. This expertise involve both specialized knowledge of important facts of developmental and child psychology as well as specialized skills in caring for children. Second is an assumption that this expertise is not reliably acquired and passed on from one generation to the next. Rather it’s the sort of thing that must be directly taught by experts—hence the industry of parenting books, magazines, website, classes, and so on. Lastly is the assumption that the state has an essential role in guaranteeing children a minimally decent childhood at least to the extent of protecting them from gross abuse and neglect.  Keep Reading…