The Moralized View of Parental Partiality

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Bou-Habib
Keyword(s):  
Parental Partiality

Parental Partiality and Self-Efficacy in the Context of Adolescent Diabetes

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Nathan Story ◽  
Phung Pham ◽  
Cynthia A. Berg ◽  
Deborah J. Wiebe
Keyword(s):  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Parental Partiality

The puzzle of parental partiality

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin M. Macleod
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Private Schools ◽  
Private School ◽  
Parental Partiality ◽  
Fair Chance

In this article, I offer a response to Adam Swift’s book, How Not to be A Hypocrite: School Choice for the Morally Perplexed Parent, by developing some reflections on the nature, value and limits of parental partiality. I address two main issues. First, I consider the issue of how we should interpret the character and value of parental partiality. I argue that treating parental partiality as a kind of disposition helps to illuminate its distinctive value and also explains why we tend to judge some illegitimate expressions of partiality more harshly than others. Second, I examine one of the justifications Swift views as valid for sending children to private school. I criticize Swift’s contention that parents can be justified in sending children to private schools in order to secure for them a ‘fair chance in life’.

School Choice and the Burdens of Justice

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Clayton ◽  
David Stevens
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Equality Of Opportunity ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Fair Share ◽  
Educational Justice ◽  
Educational Adequacy ◽  
Private Schooling ◽  
Parental Partiality

This paper takes issue with Swift’s argument for the claim that parents who affirm equality of opportunity can justifiably buy advantageous private schooling if it is necessary to ensure educational adequacy for their children. We advance a number of reasons of justice and morality that support the view that egalitarian parents ought to accept a degree of educational inadequacy: parents have a pro tanto reason to share the burdens of injustice; it is not obvious that the legitimacy of parental partiality is as extensive in unjust circumstances as it is under just arrangements; we have some duty of justice to accept inadequacy for our children in the fight for the realization of educational justice; and we might be morally required to accept more than a fair share of the burden of establishing just educational institutions.

LIDIAN EMERSON, WIFE OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, ON THE DEATH OF HER FIVE-YEAR-OLD SON (1842)

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-192
Author(s):  
T. E. C.
Keyword(s):  
Scarlet Fever ◽  
Ralph Waldo Emerson ◽  
Large Circle ◽  
Parental Partiality ◽  
Better Than ◽  
As If

Lidian Jackson Emerson (1802-1892), the second wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson, corresponded with a large circle of relatives and friends between 1826 and 1876. In a letter to her sister, dated February 4, 1842, she described her grief on the death of her five-year-old son who had died a week before of scarlet fever. Dear Lucy, What shall I say—I feel at this moment almost comfortless—but I will write on and better hopes and feelings will return, so that I shall not make you grieve the more by my letter. My faith that all is yet well—all is better than ever—never quite leaves me—and sometimes I am cheerful, and no one would think one of my greatest sources of happiness had so lately stopped. . . . Such another bud of lovliest promise we may not hope for. I find it was not parental partiality that made us believe Waldo [her son] to be an uncommonly interesting child. Others have felt his loveliness, and now speak of him and of the impression he made upon them, in terms which surprise as much as they gratify us. Indeed it seems as if wherever he went the eyes that saw him have witness to him—the ear that heard him, bless him. He was an angel with wings but half concealed. But his body and mind were so healthful—he was far from any thing like precocity—that it had never occurred to us that Earth would be but a little while his home.... Mr. Emerson is very sorrowful. He has an unwavering faith that all is right; but sees not how the departure of the child is to be more to us than his presence would have been. I tell him I am sure, though I too, see not how—that greatly as he was blessed in the possession of such a treasure he is still more high blessed in its recall. I can give you no idea of the joy and hope the pride—the rapture, with which he regarded Waldo; he was always his companion and his best society. . . . I did not imagine till Waldo was taken from us, how deeply I loved him. He died in the evening and after all was over we sat together (Mr. Emerson, Mother and myself) and talked of our loss—and I then felt able to endure my bereavement. But after we had separated for the night and I was left alone with the baby—and Ellen [a three-year-old daughter] who was to take her father's place in my bed that I might take care of her, grief desolating grief came over me like a flood—and I feared that the charm of earthly life was forever destroyed. I saw not how I could ever feel happy again. I thought of the words "Time brings such wondrous easing" and believed Time could bring no easing to us. I lived over my life with the child and recalled all his sweet and lovely traits. His innocence, his wisdom, his generosity, his love for his mother I wished I could forget them all. . . . I was not worthy to be his mother—except my love for him made me worthy.

scholarly journals Parental Partiality and Future Children

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Common Sense Morality ◽  
Parental Partiality ◽  
Prospective Parents

Prospective parents are sometimes partial towards their future children, engaging in what I call ‘pre-parental partiality’. Common sense morality is as permissive of pre-parental partiality as it is of ordinary parental partiality—partiality towards one’s existing children. But I argue that pre-parental partiality is harder to justify: love-based justifications for ordinary parental partiality typically provide weaker reasons in support of pre-parental partiality than in support of parental partiality, and other candidate justifications fail to make up for this normative deficit. 

Parental partiality and justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Seglow
Keyword(s):  
Special Kind ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Convention ◽  
Personal Project ◽  
The Family ◽  
Acute Form ◽  
Children's Interests ◽  
Parental Partiality ◽  
Egalitarian Justice ◽  
Equal Concern

The problem of parental partiality and justice concerns the conflict between parents’ natural desire to put their own children’s interests first and the principles of egalitarian justice which express equal concern with the well-being of all. The underlying dilemma between partial concern and impartial treatment is a much discussed one in moral and political philosophy. Parental partiality raises that dilemma in an acute form given the very close attachment that parents have to their children and the substantial and ongoing social and economic inequalities present in contemporary societies. Investigating the meaning of egalitarian justice reveals that under any interpretation it imposes substantial obligations which many parents concerned with their own children’s interests will reject. Parental partiality, in turn, can be theorized as a social convention or personal project, but is most plausibly seen as realizing a special kind of value or form of flourishing, such as intimacy for example. Short of abolishing the family or abandoning the commitment to egalitarian justice, any reconciliation of this conflict will have to speak to both sets of values. One option is to circumscribe the domain of parental partiality by arguing that parents only have rights to realize a particular kind of valuable relationship with their children; another is to build in to our conception of parental partiality moral constraints of which egalitarian justice might be one. As long as we live in an unequal world where parents have strong attachments to their children, this debate looks set to continue.

Poverty, partiality, and the purchase of expensive education

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Freiman
Keyword(s):  
Educational Opportunities ◽  
Educational Equality ◽  
Educational Expenditures ◽  
Positive Spillover ◽  
Parental Partiality

Prioritarianism doesn’t value equality as such – any reason to equalize is due to the benefits for the worse off. But some argue that prioritarianism and egalitarianism coincide in their implications for the distribution of education: Equalizing educational opportunities improves the socioeconomic opportunities of the worse off. More specifically, a system that prohibits parents from making differential private educational expenditures would result in greater gains to the worse off than a system that permits these expenditures, all else equal. This article argues that prioritarianism opposes a cap on educational expenditures. The argument, in brief, is that an equalized provision of schooling does a worse job of channeling the partiality of rich families in ways that produce positive spillover for poorer children. My challenge to the prioritarian case for educational equality is an internal one: the very concerns about parental partiality that underlie prioritarian objections to uncapped educational expenditures apply with even greater force to a system that caps educational expenditures.

scholarly journals Reading bedtime stories to compatriots: Reconciling global equality of opportunity and self-determination

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-386
Author(s):  
Ayelet Banai ◽  
Eszter Kollar
Keyword(s):  
Global Justice ◽  
Equality Of Opportunity ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Contemporary Theory ◽  
The Family ◽  
Familial Relationship ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Parental Partiality

AbstractIn this article, we propose a reconciliation between global equality of opportunity and self-determination, two central and seemingly conflicting principles in the contemporary theory of global justice. Our conception of reconciliation draws on the family-people analogy, following the account of familial relationship goods, developed by Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, on permissible parental partiality and domestic equality of opportunity. We argue, first, that a plausible conception of global equality of opportunity must be able to distinguish morally arbitrary aspects of nationality that require mitigation from morally permissible ones. Second, we argue that a plausible criterion for the distinction integrates a person’s normative interests over a lifetime: (i) the interests of a child born into societal circumstances that impact her life prospects; and (ii) the interests of an adult citizen in collective self-determination. Third, we outline an account of ‘people relationship goods’, as a principled way to circumscribe the permissible scope of self-determination. Fair global equality of opportunity requires mitigating nationality-tracking inequalities, except those that fall within the permissible scope of collective self-determination.

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