There is no war on parents, though if the work of a growing number of philosophers becomes known to certain kinds of political commentators we may very well begin hearing there is. Careful and creative philosophical work on parenting is increasing, which is wonderful, but it is striking how quickly a range of radical positions is becoming orthodoxy. These include claims such as:
- parents have no moral right to impart their religious beliefs to their children;
- parents should not have a legal right to have their children privately educated;
- parents should not have a legal right to homeschool their children;
- families where two biological parents raise their own children should not be favored over those in which any of a number of different constellations of adults are raising children;
- the moral and perhaps legal standards of minimally decent parenting requires that children not be taught certain things, such as that homosexuality is immoral, or that traditional gender roles are justified by natural differences between men and women.
To be clear, one would be hard pressed to find a philosopher who endorses all these things, but it is easy now to find many thinkers actively arguing any combination of them. Keep Reading…