David Archard

The chapter distinguishes between the parental obligation to ensure that the child has a parent and the responsibilities of acting as a parent. It argues that a causal theory of parental obligation—that those who cause children to exist thereby incur an obligation to ensure that they are adequately cared for—can be defended independently of a theory of parental rights, and has much to commend it. Nevertheless the causal theory must meet the difficulties of supplying a non‐arbitrary and non‐question‐begging account of who amongst those who caused a child to exist, and why only those amongst this set of persons, bears responsibility for caring for the child. The chapter then demonstrate the consistency of a causal theory of parental obligation with allowing others to act as parents to children they have not created. Someone thus can discharge their parental obligation by making provision for, or relying upon the institutional provision of, care of the child by willing and capable others.

The article considers whether a professional's sexual relations with a client are wrong, even if the client's consent is not coerced, incapacitated or manipulated, the impartial conduct of professional affairs is not interfered with, and there are no damaged third parties. It argues that consent may be ``exploited'' if it is forthcoming only due to the occupancy of respective positions within an unequal relationship whose scope excludes such intimacy. The article explains the use of the term, exploited', and exposes those features of a professional relationship which make such exploitation both possible and unjustified.

Much is said about the decline of the family, often in connection with the prevalence of certain social problems. In this article I consider two kinds of fear: (i) that the traditional family is disappearing; (ii) that new forms of family emerging are, in some or other respect, not worthy of the title. In themselves, neither fear, I argue, should give rise to pressing ethical concerns as such. On fear (i): if by ?traditional family? we mean one whose adult members are heterosexuals, normally married and bringing up, in a single shared residence, their own offspring to whom they are biologically related, then indeed this is threatened by certain laws, and social and biotechnological relationships that tolerate and make possible new kinds of parental relationships. But as there are clear ethical objections to the disadvantaging of non-traditional families, there is no clear-cut case that the decline of the traditional version is a bad thing. Fear (ii) typically reflects a concern about excessive separation of the social and biological aspects of parenthood?i.e., that the definition and function of the family in social terms has become detached from a strict biological understanding of such factors. I argue that this concern is misplaced, for various reasons. As a result, there is no good reason to worry that the family?in all of its myriad forms?does not have a future