Parents resemble trustees, conservators, and other fiduciaries; they exercise broad discretion while making choices for vulnerable people. Like other fiduciaries, parents can be tempted to neglect their duties or pursue self-interest at the expense of those they should protect. This article argues against treating parents as fiduciaries for three reasons. First, the scope of parental fiduciary duties cannot be narrowed enough to make them tolerable. Arguments limiting fiduciary duties to cases where parents exercise delegated powers or act within parenting roles (...) fail. Most parental decisions involve dual powers or roles. Efforts to address these dual-role cases produce principles that are unduly demanding, complex, arbitrary, and morally unappealing. Second, we could limit parental fiduciary duties by designing parental roles to benefit children. Since children need devoted, happy, well-rounded parents, the principle of designing parental roles to benefit children would produce rules that leave room for parents to flourish. However, this principle does not justify specific legal or moral fiduciary norms. Third, we could redefine fiduciary duties so parents can balance their interests against children’s interests, making fiduciary duties less burdensome. However, expanding the definition of fiduciary threatens to encompass many duties within the fiduciary category, rendering the description almost meaningless. (shrink)

This discussion responds to two recent articles defending a child-centered view of parenting. Anca Gheaus and James Dwyer argue that children should be reared by the best available parent, who, in turn, should make choices based only on children’s welfare. They claim that love and respect require this fiduciary stance. However, love and respect do not justify child-centered norms. If children were competent, they would embrace norms that accommodate parental interests because they benefit from nonfiduciary rules, are grateful to their (...) parents, and reject discrimination produced by child-centered principles. Furthermore, child-centered accounts imply unreasonably broad obligations to children. (shrink)

This paper reinterprets a child’s right to an open future as justified by authenticity rather than autonomy. It argues that authenticity can be recognized as valuable by people whose conceptions of the good do not value autonomy. As a running example, the paper considers ultra-Orthodox Jews who lead separatist lives and who deny their sons secular education beyond an elementary school level. If their adult sons want to have careers and participate in life outside the religious enclave, they cannot easily (...) do so. The parents see no reason to protect their child’s autonomy or to prepare their child for a life that conflicts with their values. This paper provides one response to their concerns. Following a political-liberal project of seeking overlapping consensus, it tries to base demands that children be prepared for varied futures on values that reasonable religious people can embrace. (shrink)

Parents typically direct many aspects of their children’s lives and often believe that they deserve protection from interference by governments and third parties. Justifications for such parental control rights sometimes rely on the interests of children or of society. But they can also rely directly on parental interests. This paper considers whether parental control rights can be justified based on parental interests. It????first considers two parental interests sometimes put forward as warranting parental control rights: an interest in intimacy and an (...) interest in acting as a????fiduciary. The????first fails as a justification for parental rights because intimacy is unlikely to be undermined by most intrusions. The second fails because it misunderstands the nature of????fiduciary roles. The paper then considers an alternative parental interest in nurturing, counselling, and educating. This interest requires both authenticity and discretion to play a meaningful role in a parent’s life and facilitating this interest warrants protecting parental control rights. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

Boycotts, shunning, and shaming sometimes wrong their targets by offering corrupt incentives that undermine significant individual aims. These tactics unjustly harm targets when they aim to impede living authentically, deterring them from declaring their beliefs in public or pursuing important projects. They are corrupt because they make their targets willing participants in these harms. They subvert their targets’ ambitions not to allow money or social pressure to influence their most important actions. Although individuals must maintain their integrity, people also have (...) a moral responsibility not to undermine those efforts. Not all uses of these tactics conflict with an anti-corruption norm. Many labor and consumer boycotts likely do not threaten authenticity. Other uses arguably pursue non-corrupt aims, such as punishment, norm-reinforcement, or non-complicity, threatening corruption only as an unintended consequence. Even as to these, several considerations weigh against using boycotts, shunning, and shaming. Using these techniques for punishment and norm-reinforcement is often inappropriate in a liberal society. Some uses that appear to aim at non-complicity also aim at corrupting their targets. Finally, sometimes imposing a risk of unintended corruption wrongs those exposed to such risks. (shrink)

Theories of threats and offers can blind us to some wrongs even as they illuminate others. Spouses sometimes negotiate divorce settlements by proposing to litigate custody unless given financial concessions. Supported by theories that rely exclusively on rights, courts often uphold these settlements saying things like "[s]imply insisting upon ... what one believes to be his legal rights is not coercive." I suggest a means of distinguishing (divorcing) threats from offers that explains why it is sometimes coercive to insist on (...) one's rights in negotiations. (shrink)

A non-derivative right to establish intimate relationships supports some, but not all, features of parental rights.