Anca Gheaus

Childhood looms large in our understanding of human life as it is a phase through which all adults have passed. Childhood is foundational to the development of selfhood, the formation of interests, values and skills and to the lifespan as a whole. Understanding what it is like to be a child, and what differences childhood makes, are essential for any broader understanding of the human condition. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into five parts: ¿ Being a child ¿ Childhood and moral status ¿ Parents and children ¿ Children in society ¿ Children and the state. Questions covered include: What is a child? Is childhood a uniquely valuable state, and if so why? Can we generalize about the goods of childhood? What rights do children have, and are they different from adults¿ rights? What gives people a right to parent? What role, if any, ought biology to play in determining who has the right to parent a particular child? What kind of rights can parents legitimately exercise over their children? What roles do relationships with siblings and friends play in the shaping of childhoods? How should we think about sexuality and disabilility in childhood, and about racialised children? How should society manage the education of children, and what values should inform such practices? What is a good school? How are children¿s lives affected by being taken into social care? The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of childhood, political philosophy and ethics as well as those in related disciplines such as education, psychology, sociology, social policy, law, social work, youth work, neuroscience and anthropology.

Many instances of parental enhancement are objectionable on egalitarian grounds because they unnecessarily amplify one kind of asymmetry of power between parents and children. Because children have full moral status, we ought to seek egalitarian relationships with them. Such relationships are compatible with asymmetries of power only to the extent to which the asymmetry is necessary for (1) advancing the child's level of advantage up to what justice requires or (2) instilling in the child morally required features. This is a ground to oppose parental enhancements whose purpose is either to merely satisfy parents' preferences or to confer on the child advantages above and beyond what the child is owed by justice.

This paper provides an answer to the question why birth parents have a moral right to keep and raise their biological babies. I start with a critical discussion of the parent-centred model of justifying parents’ rights, recently proposed by Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift. Their account successfully defends a fundamental moral right to parent in general but, because it does not provide an account of how individuals acquire the right to parent a particular baby, it is insufficient for addressing the question whether and why there is a right to parent one’s biological child. Such a right is important because, in its absence, fairness towards adequate prospective parents who are involuntarily childless would demand a ‘babies redistribution’; moreover, in societies with entrenched histories of injustice there may be reasons of fairness for shuffling babies amongst all recent parents. I supplement the Brighouse-Swift account of fundamental parental rights by an account of how adequate parents acquire the right to parent their biological babies. I advance two arguments to this conclusion: by the time of birth, the birth parents will have already shouldered various burdens in order to bring children into existence, and are likely to have formed an intimate relationship with the future baby. Denying birth parents who would make at least adequate parents the right to keep their baby would be unfair to them and would destroy already formed parent-baby relationships which, I assume, are intrinsically valuable.

Luck egalitarianism provides a reason to object to conditionality in health incentive programmes in some cases when conditionality undermines political values such as solidarity or inclusiveness. This is the case with incentive programmes that aim to restrict access to essential healthcare services. Such programmes undermine solidarity. Yet, most people's lives are objectively worse, in one respect, in non-solidary societies, because solidarity contributes both instrumentally and directly to individuals' well-being. Because solidarity is non-excludable, undermining it will deprive both the prudent and the imprudent citizens of its goods. Thereby, undermining solidarity can make prudent citizens worse off than they would have otherwise been, out of no fault or choice of their own, but rather as a result of somebody else's imprudent choice. This goes against the spirit of luck egalitarianism. Therefore (luck egalitarian) justice can require us to save the imprudent and avoid conditionality in access to essential healthcare services.

Analytic philosophers tend to agree that intentional parental genetic shaping and intentional parental environmental shaping for the same feature are, normatively, on a par. I challenge this view by advancing a novel argument, grounded in the value of fair relationships between parents and children: Parental genetic shaping is morally objectionable because it unjustifiably exacerbates the asymmetry between parent and child with respect to the voluntariness of their entrance into the parent–child relationship. Parental genetic shaping is, for this reason, different from and more objectionable than parental environmental shaping. I introduce a distinction between procreative decisions one makes qua mere procreator—that is, without the intention to rear the resulting child—and procreative decisions one makes qua procreator-and-future childrearer. Genetic shaping is objectionable when undertaken in the latter capacity: Both selection and enhancement are objectionable because they introduce an unnecessary and avoidable inequality in the parent–child relationship; in the case of enhancement, this also results in harm to the future child.

There is a widespread belief that, conceptually, justice cannot require what we cannot achieve. This belief is sometimes used by defenders of so-called ‘non-ideal theories of justice’ to criticise so-called ‘ideal theories of justice’. I refer to this claim as ‘the feasibility constraint on the concept of justice’ and argue against it. I point to its various implausible implications and contend that a willingness to apply the label ‘unjust’ to some regrettable situations that we cannot fix is going to enhance the action-guiding potential of a conception of justice, by providing an aspirational ideal. This is possible on the condition that, at all times, we cannot specify with certainty the limits of what is feasible for us collectively. The rejection of the feasibility constraint entails that there can be injustice without perpetrators; this is a theoretical price worth paying

Family relationships are often believed to have a unique value; this is reflected both in the special expectations that family members have from each other and in the various ways in which states protect family relationships. Commitment appears to set apart family relationships from other close relationships; however, commitment is in fact present in other close relationships. I conclude that family relationships do not have any special value; love does. In the case of families with children, however, a high degree of commitment between adults may be useful or even necessary for advancing children's wellbeing. This could be a reason to give special protection to relationships between co-parents

I review three existing arguments in favor of having some childcare done by nonparents and then I advance five arguments, most of them original, to the same conclusion. My arguments rely on the assumption that, no matter who provides it, childcare will inevitably go wrong at times. I discuss the importance of mitigating bad care, of teaching children how to enter caring relationships with people who are initially strangers to them, of addressing children's structural vulnerability to their caregivers, of helping children and parents contain the ambivalent feelings of the child-parent relationship, and of distributing the responsibility of care and the ensuing blame for bad care more widely. I conclude that nonparental childcare should be universal.

The evaluation of labour markets and of particular jobs ought to be sensitive to a plurality of benefits and burdens of work. We use the term 'the goods of work' to refer to those benefits of work that cannot be obtained in exchange for money and that can be enjoyed mostly or exclusively in the context of work. Drawing on empirical research and various philosophical traditions of thinking about work we identify four goods of work: 1) attaining various types of excellence; 2) making a social contribution; 3) experiencing community; and 4) gaining social recognition. Our account of the goods of work can be read as unpacking the ways in which work can be meaningful. The distribution of the goods of work is a concern of justice for two conjoint reasons: First, they are part of the conception of the good of a large number of individuals. Second, in societies without an unconditional income and in which most people are not independently wealthy, paid work is non-optional and workers have few, if any, occasions to realize these goods outside their job. Taking into account the plurality of the goods of work and their importance for justice challenges the theoretical and political status quo, which focuses mostly on justice with regard to the distribution of income. We defend this account against the libertarian challenge that a free labour market gives individuals sufficient options to realise the goods of work important to them, and discuss the challenge from state neutrality. In the conclusion, we hint towards possible implications for today’s labour markets.

The gendered division of labour in combination with the feminisation of international migration contribute to shortages of care, a phenomenon often called ‘care drain’. I argue that this phenomenon is an issue of global gender justice. I look at two methodological challenges and favourably analyse the suggestions that care drain studies should include the effects of fathers’ and other male caregivers’ migration and, in some cases, the effects of migration within national borders. I also explain why care drain is a problem of distributive justice, by looking at the background conditions that result in much of the care-givers’ migration.

Concerns about the under-representation of female academic philosophers and about the stereotype that philosophy is best done by men have recently led to efforts to make academic philosophy a more inclusive discipline. An example is the Gendered Conference Campaign, encouraging event organisers and volume editors to include women amongst invited speakers and authors. Initiatives such as the GCC raise worries about tokenism. Potential invitees may be concerned about unfairness towards whose who would have been invited in their place in the absence of affirmative action and about the way in which affirmative action can affect the quality of the conference or volume in question. And women philosophers often worry that, if formal rules or significant social pressures towards gender inclusiveness play a role in selection processes, their achievements will be discounted. I argue there is no good reason for these fears: there is no pure meritocracy in academia, nor is the ideal of pure meritocracy either feasible or desirable. There are several legitimate grounds — independent of professional competence — for including people in positions of visibility and prestige; gender is such a legitimate reason

In this paper we provide a critical discussion of how the most progressive parental leave policies are doing with respect to three goods which we identify as essential for liberal egalitarian feminists interested in parental leaves: the good of parental care, the good of gender fairness, and the good of individual choice. Then we offer our own model, based on the power of defaults, which promotes the goods of parental care and gender justice by sacrificing as little as possible of the good of individual choice.

In this chapter, I argue that children who were selected for particular traits or genetically enhanced might feel, for this reason, less securely, spontaneously and fairly loved by their parents, which would constitute significant harm. ‘Parents’ refers, throughout this chapter, to the people who perform the social function of rearing children, rather than to procreators. I rely on an understanding of adequate parental love which includes several characteristics: parents should not make children feel they are loved conditionally, for features such as intelligence, looks or temperament; they should not burden children with parental expectations concerning particular achievements of the child; and parental love is often expressed in spontaneous enjoyment and discovery of children’s features. This understanding of parental love provides a reason to question the legitimacy of parental use of selection and enhancement and to explain why parents should not engage on a quest for the ‘best child’

This chapter discusses gender in relation to the most influential current accounts of distributive justice. There are various disparities in the benefits and burdens of social cooperation between women and men. Which of these, if any, one identifies as indicative of gender injustice will depend on the theory of distributive justice that one endorses. Theoretical decisions concerning the role of personal responsibility, the goods whose distribution is relevant for justice, and the site of justice - institutions-only or individual behaviour, too - all influence how one thinks about gender justice.

Forgiveness is a compelling Christian ideal. By contrast, to many philosophers it is not clear that forgiveness should be endorsed as a moral requirement; some argue that unconditional forgiveness is morally wrong. Those who are required to exercise forgiveness can feel that their own dignity and moral worthiness is diminished by such requirement if insignificant recognition was given to the harms they suffered as victims.  This is particularly significant when thinking about women’s lives. Forgiveness and justice occasion particularly painful quandaries in feminist ethics. However, an important stream of feminist ethics—namely the ethics of care—can make a convincing case in favor of forgiveness. A main goal of an ethics of care is preserving relationships for which, in the less than ideal conditions of human life, forgiveness is essential. Thus, the ethics of care casts additional light on the tension between pursuing forgiveness and justice.   By spelling out these various dilemmas, I illustrate how a feminist ethics and a feminist philosophy of religion can be fruitful intellectual allies. A feminist ethics will benefit from cautious reliance on religious wisdom, concomitantly acknowledging the need for forgiveness and qualifying the requirements of forgiveness such that this ideal does not become, once again, oppressive for women. And a feminist philosophy of religion should be to some extent informed by feminist ethical goals, helping to unveil religious resources that give credit to our ongoing need for forgiveness, without however overlooking the importance of (gender) justice.

I argue that, in the currently gender-unjust societies a basic income would not advance feminist goals. To assess the impact of a social policy on gender justice I propose the following criterion: a society is gender-just when the costs of engaging in a lifestyle characterized by gender-symmetry (in both the domestic and public spheres) are, for both men and women, smaller or equal to the costs of engaging in a gender-asymmetrical lifestyle. For a significant number of women, a basic income would increase the costs of leading gender-symmetrical lifestyles because it would make it easier for both women and men to pursue gender-unjust preferences. I argue that preference satisfaction is distinct from justice. I conclude by showing why a basic income would lead to further privatisation of caregiving, and I outline the negative effects this would have on women.

I distinguish between three different ideas that have been recently discussed under the heading of 'the intrinsic goods of childhood': that childhood is itself intrinsically valuable, that certain goods are valuable only for children, and that children are being owed other goods than adults. I then briefly defend the claim the childhood is intrinsically good. Most of the chapter is dedicated to the analysis, and rejection, of the claim that certain goods are valuable only for children. This has implications about how a good society should trade off economic productivity on the one hand and goods such as play and unstructured time on the other hand.

Worldwide, many impoverished parents migrate, leaving their children behind. As a result children are deprived of continuity in care and, sometimes, suffer from other forms of emotional and developmental harms. I explain why coercive responses to care drain are illegitimate and likely to be inefficient. Poor parents have a moral right to migrate without their children and restricting their migration would violate the human right to freedom of movement and create a new form of gender injustice. I propose and defend an institutional solution. Taxes levied on the remittances sent by temporary migrants ought to be used to provide migrants' children with psychological counselling in order to mitigate the harm resulted from discontinuity in care.

The ideal of distributive justice as a means of ensuring fair distribution of social opportunities is a cornerstone of contemporary feminist theory. Feminists from various disciplines have developed arguments to support the redistribution of the work of care through institutional mechanisms. I discuss the limits of such distribution under the conditions of theories that do not idealize human agents as independent beings. People’s reliance on care, understood as a response to needs, is pervasive and infuses almost all human interaction. I argue that the effect of care on shaping the social opportunities of all individuals is huge, although often invisible. Much of the optimism of theories of distributive justice comes from ignoring or downplaying the way in which care influences most factors of social success. Jonathan Wolff distinguished between three types of resources whose fair distribution is important: internal, external and structural. Care, I argue, does not fit well in any of these types. Inseparably interwoven with relational realities, care cuts across these categories and thus poses a challenge to the feasibility of equal chances. I focus on the under-analyzed issue of bad care and show how difficult it is to dismantle legacies of bad care. Their effect on even close-to-ideal social arrangements is too significant to be disregarded, yet very difficult to tackle through institutional mechanisms. A commitment to certain elements of individual ethics – as opposed to merely political institutions – is required in order to bridge the gap between ideal theories of justice and feasible practical aims.